I've been learning about magic for a little more than a year. I became interested after a local magician, Morris Taylor, got me hooked on The Magic Book by Harry Lorayne. This is a book I highly recommend if you are interested in getting started with magic.
In 1999, I met Bob Brown at a party for a visiting magician, Olde Rabbit. This year, I began taking lessons from Bob. A large part of what we worked on was magic that can be appreciated by all age groups. Upon reflection, I realized that I work best when I have a specific goal, so we began working to prepare a magic show for my nephew's seventh birthday.
The party approached more quickly than I realized, but I was able to pull together a reasonable thirty minute show.
Michael's birthday party was on October 7th. He was turning seven, and there were about ten kids there, from five years old to 12 years old. Most of them were five to seven, except for Michael's brothers.
The show went really well. I'm not a seasoned professional, so I'm sure most kid show magicians would have done a better job. But I was very happy with the result. I was able to make the kids wonder at the magic and to laugh. The adults laughed and enjoyed the magic too. My blunders were pretty minor. I felt pretty comfortable with the magic, and I had fun doing the show.
I opened with some rules and a warm up, then followed up by producing a paper hat from torn-up paper. I probably should have used a color other than purple: I'm not sure it was the best little boy color. I gave the hat to Michael, the birthday boy, and gave him a wand that he could use throughout the show.
After producing the hat, I started to cough and suddenly some brightly colored paper started to come out of my mouth. The paper kept coming, and coming, and coming. I had no idea this would be so well received. Afterwards, one little girl was worried that I had had a lot of paper in my tummy that I had thrown up, but it wasn't a real problem.
I produced some streamer silks from production panels, then did a change bag routine where I changed three silk handkerchiefs into a large printed silk handkerchief, after some byplay with the three handkerchiefs.
After that I did a bunch of rope magic, including some stuff with rings and I made a rope go through Michael's dad's finger. I did one of my favorites, the Professor's Nightmare, where three ropes of different lengths become three ropes of the same length.
I then introduced Houdini's teddy bear (who taught Houdini everything he knew) and the teddy bear brilliantly escaped after being securely tied up. (This is the classic "Cords of Fantasia".) It was an excellent routine to do, because it got three different volunteers involved, Michael got to use his new wand, and the whole audience helped me with the magic words.
I finished up my rope magic with a classic cut and restored rope routine. It got great laughs when my volunteer helped me tighten the rope and pulled me onto the ground.
I closed by producing some candy from my production panels. I think the kids really liked that.
I learned a lot more specifics about my show and performing magic as well, and that's perhaps the most important lesson: I learned a huge amount from actually performing my show. No, my show wasn't perfect, but the road to perfection requires real performances to learn what I can't learn in front of my mirror. As Bob Brown tells me: "We learn our craft by ourselves, we learn our art from our audiences".
I was on a huge natural high for hours after the show. It felt great. I suspect there is more magic in my future.
I would have never hooked up with Bob without MagicTalk. A hearty thanks to everyone on MagicTalk for being a great community.