Performing Magic Tricks on Stage:
Tips from a Corporate Magician

Performing magic tricks on stage was not as linear of a move from strolling magic as I thought. Take what I’m saying seriously…if you don’t do a few specific things, you might have the wake up call of your career…and you’ll have it in front of an audience.

At the start, I was just a magician in North Carolina doing strolling magic in as many as many as 5 restaurants a week, every week for 14 years. Warning: The next sentence contains bragging. I was good at close-up magic. No other way to say it. I had seen and interacted with any type of person you could dream up and knew how to perform for them. I thought moving straight to the stage would be a transition so seamless, it wouldn’t even register. Spoiler alert…it registered.

Before we continue, when I say “stage” I don’t just mean a stage. I’m referring to a performance in front of 40+ seated people vs. a group of five cocktail holding people, waiting for a table to open up.

Know Your Craft Inside and Out

How did I move from strolling magician to stage?

Strolling magic can help prepare you for stage…kinda. It all depends on if you’re doing it right. If you’re performing a trick like it’s a close-up trick, then it’s only preparing you for close-up. When I did strolling magic in Charlotte restaurants, I would take the smallest trick that I had with me and perform it like I was playing to an audience of 50 people vs. 5. This drastically changed every movement I made. Instead of being so close to each other that our elbows were touching, I would take a few steps back. Then I would perform the trick big, taking up as much physical space as I could (sometimes extending my arms, walking a few steps, etc.).

Guess what? Reactions were bigger. I wasn’t telling the people to react bigger. Those subtle changes just commanded a bigger reaction.

BUT…can strolling magic prepare you COMPLETELY for the stage?

Not a chance! It’s a nice thought, but there are things that you never understand until you’re in the moment. If you’re a strolling magician, when something doesn’t work exactly like you want it to, or maybe your four person audience isn’t responding well, you finish the trick you’re on and it’s, “Thanks, enjoy your night!” A friend of mine who used to be a magician in Raleigh told me that he would walk up to a table in a restaurant, and if he didn’t like the vibe from the group, he would leave without showing a trick. If you’re a corporate magician and you’re on stage in front of 600 people, when something goes wrong, or the audience isn’t responding well, guess what? You’ve got nowhere to go and possibly as much as 45 minutes left. There’s an experience for you.

So…what can you do?

Study Widely, Don’t Box Yourself In

It’s tempting to pick a style early on and stick to it. DON’T! I always like to say that in the first 10+ years, I tried everything. Get as far outside your comfort zone as possible. Sounds uncomfortable…hence the name ‘comfort zone.’ Combine ideas. You really may stumble across something career changing that had never entered your mind, nor would have, if you hadn’t explored your options.

Repetition = Mastery

Obviously, practicing in front of a mirror is an absolute necessity. That’s going to help show you where your technical abilities lie. What helps even more is videotaping because you’re not thinking about what you have to do next in the performance. You get to just be an observer. But just as important, if not more so, is practicing in front of an audience. This is what shows you the most important part…the entertainment value. Without it, you’re just doing tricks.

A very funny magician friend of mine practices the scripts for his routines at open mic nights without doing the tricks themselves. Talk about a no beating around the bush way to know whether or not your script holds up in front of an audience. For so many magicians, if you take away the trick, there’s nothing left. In this case, you take away my friend’s trick, there’s still a quality piece of entertainment left.

I’m kind of paraphrasing Penn & Teller and adding a little bit of myself to this next one, but I always assume that the audience knows how every single trick in my show is done. If I do that, I can’t rely on fooling them as a form of entertainment.

Be prepared for anything…trust me, you won’t be.

You can’t possibly be too prepared. Always be thinking about what can go wrong in your show. You have to look at it from the show as a whole, to each individual trick, to each individual moment of every trick. That includes what trick #2 has in common with trick #5. There’s an infinite number of things to be prepared for.

If you want my most recent wild experience…this happened in a show for a small group in San Antonio. I had a woman walk up in front of the room with a cup, stand next to my table behind me that has a small bucket from an earlier trick, and try to pour from her cup into the bucket…a live frog. I promise, you read that right. A small, green, ribbit yelling frog! To say that I never expected that may be the understatement of the decade. It’s true, I didn’t have too specific of a line to cover the moment. However, as I sent the lady and the frog back to their seats, I said to the audience, “Let’s just all marvel over the fact that before she walked up, she actually thought that was a good idea.“ Everyone busted out laughing, including the frog wielding lady, who really was just doing it as a joke. It ultimately was a very funny moment, but without giving too much away, it nearly ruined a much bigger moment that was just a few minutes away.

So, when you have a moment like that in your show that you’re not prepared for, make a note of it. Then after your show, brainstorm every possible response you could have to that moment.

Finally, absorb everything!

There’s a lot more to learn than just your performance. Think of everything that exists in the performance space. How many different types of microphones are you familiar with…what about microphone brands? What about stages…how high, where should the stairs be? Will there be a backdrop behind you…if not, what do the walls look like? How many people are there vs. how high is the ceiling…did you know that larger groups can feel claustrophobic with a low ceiling? There are things I’ve learned that you wouldn’t believe. And if you do this long enough, you’ll be able to say the same thing.

In closing, here’s almost some encouragement.

You’re never going to be completely prepared. Accept it and you just might drive yourself less crazy. Being prepared on stage doesn’t mean being perfect. It means knowing enough that when things go sideways, the audience still sees a performer. If you build a good show, rehearse, plan for disasters, and respect your audience, you’ll become someone audiences want to see again and again.

Whether you’re starting out like me, a magician doing only restaurants, or someone who’s stepping on stage for the 957th time, or anything in between, there’s never a time when being prepared will have an expiration date.