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A couple of days ago I preformed my first real gig. And to say the least I was nervous as hell. It didn't go quite as well as I could have hoped but wasn't a disaster either. Please comment with kind words and gimme some support, as this was my first gig.

So, the setting was my fathers friends 50th birtday. It was a really dressed up event, a rented restaurant, people in suits and dresses, the works. They were mostly families though; out of the 7 tables, only one was exclusively filled with couples. Any way, I decided that as the first table went to get food from the buffet I would go preform to the last table.

The choice was right, as I immediately saw a man that seemed interested about what I was going to do. Some of the other rather erm... *snobbish* people did exactly what I feared and dismissed me as a child with a magic set, but after the first trick they seemed interested as well.

So, my first trick was dream of aces. Not too intimidating as it deals with a common prop: cards, but flashy enough to catch their attention. As it was a quite long rectangular table, I asked for the people to gather at one end to see the trick. In the middle of the trick i screwed up. I was so nervous that I accidentally flashed one of the *real* aces. The specs noticed and I stalled. After a short paused I picked up the ace, slipped it into the deck, preformed a pass and dealt the *new* top card in turn. Other than that the trick went fine but I did have to take a breath of relief before the next trick.

I then decided to pull my cups and balls and move to the next table. I did the trick succesfully and in the end I produced 3 limes, which got roaring applause from the specs and one of the men even stood up to applaud me.

I continued along the tables, with different tricks but always ending with the C & B. I avoided the dream of aces because of the problem that happened at the first table.

Over all the preformance went nicely. I was not so nervouse towards the end, but I chose not to preform to the last table with the couples because they didn't seem to care and the band was coming in shortly.

The only other problem was the fact that the room was so small that the other tables who hadn't seen the magic yet stood up to see what was going on and so the tthe final production was not as much of a suprise as they did see earlier that it had somthing to do with limes, but they still found it shocking that they apeared out of the earlier empty cups.

anyway I hope this reassures some other first timers to go out and preform because, no matter how many times you screw-up, you still learn something from each preformance.

Regards,
Jacob

Glad to hear it went well (ish ).

Also, it's good to see that you managed to recover quite well when you messed up. It would have been very easy to go to pieces and completely lose the plot, especially as it was your first gig.

I, personally, have never done gigs etc (I'm quite happy performing to friends and unsuspecting people in the pubs, etc ), but I think I can see that you'll prob learn alot from this experience - all the best for the next gig(s) .

Thanks for telling us how you got on, I have been asked to perform at tables at a fund raising ball, I am not sure if I will do it but I might give it a go, I cant help myself when ever I am around people I have to do a trick or they ask to see one. How many tricks or how much time did you allocate to each table?

It was about 6-8 minutes per table and about three tricks, although this varied from table to table (eg. I was preforming and I noticed that it was this tables turn to get food, so I cut it short a bit).

And thanks for the comments.

Sounds like you had a great time doing it too, which is the most important thing I think. Well done to you

theunknown wrote:It was about 6-8 minutes per table and about three tricks,

Excellent, that is what I was planning to do (if I decide to go ahead with it) Go to a table, engage them with some tricks and leave when they all start saying 'how did you do that?' 'Show us again'.

Hah, yes...

And I definitely encourage you to go for it. If not for the money ( if your getting paid) but for the experience. It was really very fun getting to preform.

I think I will do it as its for charity and I am not billed as performing so I can be extremely impromptu, did you practice a routine or did you use tricks when you felt best suited?

I practiced a set of trick which I would be using for the show and then chose the ones I was going to do for each table depending on the situation.