Tips on Magicians and Wedding Fayres

Working a Wedding Fayre

I've watched many magicians work at wedding fayres and many of them make a very costly mistake.

Over the years I've attended hundreds of wedding fayres and have found them to be a great way to fill the spaces in my magic diary. Today, I only attend them if they have the right demographic for my fee's, or if I'm fronting for an agency and can pass the work on. However, they are an easy way to reach hundreds of cleints that are about to host the biggest parties of their lives. If you want to start off as a paid magician, they are a great way to build up steady work.

YOU SHOULD NEVER STAND BEHIND YOUR TABLE

It always amazes me to see magicians standing behind a 6' table waiting for people to approach them and ask about the magic. That's just madness! The secret of getting a lot of gigs from a wedding fayre is to get out into the flow of people and talk to as many as possible. Like any form of direct marketing, it's a numbers game. The more people you 'touch' with your magic, the higher the conversion rate. By all means, set up a great display, but then don't become trapped by it. I just have a simple pop up banner and a small close up table. It allows ME to be the feature of the stand and build a crowd. That's what brings you work.

View EVERY couple as a potential gig, and keep on your feet the whole time. Use just one or two tricks that you know will get great reactions, and repeat them to everyone that you can. Move around the room. Perform in the cafe area in the reception, even at the top of the stairs. Although you should not stand in front of another exhibition stand, you are free to move around and you should use that to your advantage.

In summery, if you want to get the most from a wedding fayre, you need to make sure EVERYONE gets to see your magic. It's so easy to prejudge people if you don't make the commitment to perform to everyone. Prejudging people is terrible marketing, so avoid it at all costs. If you stand in front of your stand and perform continually, you will find that wedding fayres can give you many many times the return on investment that any other form of advertising for your magic ever could.

Avoid These Magicians – How Magicians Annoy People

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

What’s the difference between an annoying ‘show off’ and a highly successful entertainer? Why do some magicians constantly annoy people?

By Dominic Reyes

Have you ever seen skilled magicians that you simply don’t like? They may be highly recommended magicians, but for some reason, they rub you up the wrong way. Why are some magicians great at entertaining people, whilst others simply come across as show offs?

I don’t think the difference is talent. There are hugely talented magicians who seem to be nothing more than self promoting egos. Yet at the same time, there are highly successful magicians who only perform very simple techniques, yet hold everybody spellbound.

I suspect it’s about the choices that the magicians have made when they have developed their performing characters. Without thinking about how they come across to spectators, some magicians fall into the trap of believing their own hype, whist as the same time, becoming generic and interchangable in their performing persona.

I've found that the following characteristics can be common in many magicians who have not taken the time to think about their performing character:

Irritating
Attention seeking
Cheap and tacky
Patronising
Annoying
Self promoting
Arrogant
Superiority complex
Fake
Generic

Lets look at a few ways to avoid these characteristics that lead to magicians annoying people with their magic:

Use your natural personality

Be who you really are. Develop a stable consistent version of your own characteristics that you can project into your performing style. This will give you a unique and predictable character that audiences will believe in.

Don’t annoy people.

You’re goal is to entertain and delight people. It’s not a game between the spectator and yourself. Try not to push yourself into peoples conversations, force magic down peoples throats and demand to be the centre of attention.

Avoid being arrogant.

You may be a skilled performer, but that doesn’t mean you are better than your spectators. You don’t know who they really are, or what skills that may be an expert at. It doesn’t matter how many years you have been practicing your sleight of hand, or how good your misdirection may be. It’s totally trivial to anyone who doesn’t care about it. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you are special, simply because you are really good at fiddling with playing cards, following magic trick instructions, or because you can be charming. Respect everyone you show your magic too. Don’t let the status of a magician go to your head. There are experts in their own fields everywhere. Looking down on people is a sure fire way to lose work, and fail as a magician.

Never be tacky.

Avoid terrible jokes and one liner gags as much as possible. It makes you look cheap and generic. Add your own humour and style. Be witty and comic if that suits you, but smutty jokes and put downs make you look ‘low rent’.

Do This:

Think about all your best characteristics. Take a moment to write down all the best things people like about you. If you are feeling brave, ask some trusted friends to write a short paragraph about what they like about your character and personality. Once you have this list, look at ways that you can communicate these characteristics into your performing persona. Perhaps the backstory to your magic powers? Maybe by using presentations that describe a story about you, and how you reacted to a specific situation?

Look at one liners that you may use, and the jokes and gags you like using. Do they fit with the description of the person your friends have described? Decide WHO you want to be. You are what you do, and because of that, you have control over how you will be perceived by your spectators. It’s a fantastic opportunity.

How to Start a Career in Escapology – Roslyn Walker Interview

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

By Bryn Young-Roberts

ROSLYN WALKER GIVES ADVICE ON A CAREER IN ESCAPOLOGY

One of the most spectacular, and frequently glamorous, types of magic act is escapology, the art of freeing oneself from restrains under often dangerous circumstances. Escapology is a breed of magic that has been with us since the mid-1800s, the art originating as a by-product of disappearance and transmutation acts, and later developing into a spectacle in its own right. While there have been many great escape artists over the last 150 years, if you’re looking to get into escapology then there is one name you simply can’t avoid: Harry Houdini.

‘He took a very old art form and transformed it into a massively successful performance piece,’ explains Roslyn Walker, a globally acknowledged escape artist, ‘before him magicians would use the ability to escape from cuffs and other restraints in order to perform pseudo psychic demonstrations. He was the first to see the potential of using the escape itself to entertain’.

Following in the footsteps of the greatest escape artist of all time seems to be the primary piece of advice for those interested in developing a career in the business 'Houdini obviously influenced me' says Walker, 'it's difficult for him not to have… history has always been massively important to me and my work. If you don't know and understand what's come before it's impossible to move forward'.

Although Houdini may be the top inspiration for escape artists the world over, Walker argues that it’s important to not be limited by his influence. ‘The time in which he worked was vastly different to now,’ admits Walker, who himself has been voted the 6^th greatest escape artist in history, ‘he could get away with escaping a single pair of handcuffs out of sight inside a cabinet and take an hour or more to do it. His audience wouldn’t get bored – try and do the same thing today and you’ll emerge to an empty theatre’.

While Houdini might take over an hour to escape shackles, modern audiences need to be rest assured their attention will be kept for much less time, but with just as much intensity. In a recent major outdoor event in front of a crowd of no less than 3000 spectators, Walker ‘took just over four minutes to free myself’ in a duplication of a famous Houdini stunt.

‘The same rules applied to me as they did to Houdini’ says Walker proudly, ‘I was challenged with the cuffs… I wasn’t allowed to see them until they were snapped on my wrists and I wasn’t allowed to have them taken off unless I admitted defeat, or I escaped on my own’. Furthermore, not only did he gain one-upmanship on Houdini by escaping quicker, but unlike his Victorian counterpart, Walker did it in plain sight of his audience and not behind a concealed, private environment.

The benefits of the job are obvious, freeing oneself to the awe and cheers of a crowd is a wonderful feeling, but on the downside doesn't escapology also have a reputation for being dangerous? While a genuinely good artist is never in any real trouble – after all, it is only supposed to be a show – the act is perhaps still better suited to those who love to flirt with, sometimes literally, breakneck situations.

'My background in circus has really helped me,' explains Walker, who is also a stuntman, 'most escape artists get into the art through magic. They train as magicians first then find escapology'. While this seems to be one of the most popular avenues into escaping for a living, Walker feels that having a more varied background can be beneficial. 'Personally, I think it's an advantage to also have knowledge and experience in other performance arts'.

For further advice on entering a life of escapology from Roslyn Walker, and other famous escape artists, check out the full Escapology interview.