You have just discovered
wonderful world of magic. Trip after trip to magic shop has added to your ever growing arsenal of magic tricks. Thirty-three days later credit card bills arrive to remind your wife that this IS an expensive hobby. No problem! You will make back all of money you’ve spent and more by becoming a part-time professional magician. Looking around for places to hone your craft, you suddenly remember that you niece has a seventh birthday coming up. You call you sister and offer your services in lieu of a gift.
Two weeks later performance time arrives. You pack all of your “A” material into two large cardboard boxes. You start show for sixteen first graders and all of your relatives. The show goes well. Everybody is laughing and having a good time. You take some theatrical pauses to build suspense as you search your boxes for next great trick. Finally, your fifteen minute show concludes after fifty-three minutes. You never realized you had that much great magic. The kids cheer and applaud for your debut magic show. Even your sister, wiping tears from her eyes, says, “I have never had more fun than I did watching your magic show. It was great. John got it all on tape.”
This is how many part-time professional magicians attempt to begin their career. They look around and decided that doing kid shows is best way to start. Performing magic for kids is one of most difficult areas of magic to do well. This article explores some of challenges of performing children’s magic.
--You are training children--
Children don’t understand many of common cues in a live performance. Most children are raised in age of television. Not a bad thing, except laugh tracks prompt children when to laugh. No laugh tracks and children are left out in cold. They are quick and will get up to speed in no time. But they need your help.
The same issue is even more problematic with applause. Children are not used to clapping. They don’t understand applause cues. Those wonderfully timed applause cues will leave you and your audience with a lot of uncomfortable silence.
What can be done? Everything. One of your most important tasks as a children’s magician is your opening. The beginning of your show must do four things:
•Establish audience control •Teach children to react to applause cues •Set tone for show •Introduce your performing personality
The audience needs to be warmed up prior to your magic show. It seems hokey and a waste of time, but it can make difference between a great magic show and a horrible one.
Children love to have fun. Even in school children are taught to obey those in authority. For some reason, many magicians forget to establish authority early in show. The result resembles a saloon brawl in wild west.
When you step out for start of your show, you have perfect opportunity to establish ground rules for show. I don’t mean that you should bring out a list of house rules for show. Instead come out with confidence and warm up your audience.
After you welcome everyone to show, look out over audience and say, ”This looks like a really great crowd. Let’s see how loud you can clap. On count of three ONE. . . TWO . . THREE . .Not bad! Let’s try it again. On three . . .” After some byplay conclude by saying, ”What do we do when we like magic? (pause) What do we do when we LOVE magic?” (pause and react strongly to crowd)
