We’ve all been freaked out and amazed by magicians like Criss Angel and Houdini, but what is being a magician really like? What kind of person should you be to enjoy it and what do you need to know? Let’s delve a little bit into these questions and find some answers for anyone who is thinking of being the next famous magician.
Magician
What does a Magician Do?
A magician is a performer, probably most closely tied to an actor. Through tricks, illusions, and prestidigitation, you reform the reality of your audience to suit your reality. You are dramatic, humorous, mysterious, and romanticized, never fully understood by anyone except by yourself. You make people gasp, laugh, and look on with awe. You challenge the boundaries of normality and science and make people wonder ‘what if?’
What are the perks and benefits of being a magician?
Like any performer, you get to decide reality for your audience for a time. Through mystifying feats of magic and prestidigitation, you control what your audience sees, hears, and feels for the length of the show. You will bring magic into lives that before meeting you were very mundane. You can make them laugh, gasp in wonder/shock/horror and even make some of the weaker willed faint dead away. For an hour, you are God, the miracle worker and no one knows quite how you do it, though plenty will speculate. Neat, huh?
Plus, there are the perks of working for yourself or in a small group, deciding your hours, making your wages, and tons of travelling. Perhaps you want to do the birthday party circuit to start out and work your way up to having your own show that crosses the country. It’s up to you what kind of magician you want to be, what kind of tricks you want to perform and what the audience will see.
What do you actually need to know how to do? (Besides tricks)
A magician is a performer, just like an actor or a singer, so you have to be able to communicate clearly and dramatically to your audience. This may require acting classes to teach you how to best speak and move across the stage so that the audience is captivated from the first moment to the last. You should have a sense of humor, a sense of the dramatic, and a real flair for speech, all of which will be best honed through practice and education. You have to be organized; know your tricks extremely well and figure out the lay of the room you’re performing in so that you aren’t surprised by weird acoustics, furniture, or a strange stage.
The best way to do this is to do a dress rehearsal a few hours before the actual show so you can get a feel for the room. You have to know exactly how all your equipment works and make certain you can maintain it all. And of course, you have to know how to do tricks, the more unique the better, though you should have some old classic crowd pleasers in your arsenal as well.
What are some of the Myths of being a Magician?
A lot of people don’t quite realize how much work goes into every show. It’s exhausting! You will spend many, many hundreds of hours learning your tricks and putting together a working show. On the other hand, it’s not always necessary to have an agent, like actors or singers. If you are confident enough, you are more than capable of representing yourself and that means more money and less hassle for you. That’s not to say you won’t want one-if you can find one that works well with you, it’s a real boon in the beginning especially. A final big myth is that there’s only a few kinds of magicians; stage, children’s magicians, and the television ones.
There are actually many different kinds of magicians that cater to all different kinds of tastes, especially in the broad field of stage magic which can roam from being very dramatic to extremely humorous. This field really allows you to explore your creativity in ways that are vastly different from the typical artists/writers/actors.
What kind of person should you be to be a magician?
Creative, organized, and confident! The best magicians are a combination of the three. Creativity is probably the most important aspect as you have to design many of your own tricks, costumes, personas and settings and then have the ability to bring an audience into your world and convince them that your world can be real.
You also have to be able to improvise, just in case a trick goes wrong or you forget something. Organization is also very important, as detailed above, because magicians tend to work for themselves, so they have to set up their performances, figure out their finances, and be able to travel. Finally, you have to be very confident. If you don’t like acting and speaking in front of people, this job is not for you.
What are some bad/embarrassing experiences to prepare for?
No matter how much you practice, a trick can always go wrong somewhere. The old handcuff trick may have worked for you the ninety nine times you practiced it and then on the fatal hundredth time in front of an audience, your mind goes blank and you can’t remember how to get out of the silly things. The best thing to do in a situation like this is to not panic and make it seem like part of the act. NEVER LET THE AUDIENCE KNOW YOU’VE MADE A MISTAKE; instead, use it to build up tension for the climax of your act while you remember what to do.
Especially if you’re a beginner, but even if you’re a master, you may run into those sceptical hecklers. Don’t let them rattle you; instead, either ignore them until the act is over and then take their questions, or incorporate the heckling into your act to either make people laugh or make the hecklers look foolish when stacked against the power of your tricks. If you’re new to the business, it’s best to just ignore them.
The world needs a little more magic, so if you’re reading this and considering the idea, remember that although it’s hard work, being a magician allows you to bring back some of the magic lost to the world.
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