I wrote:I'll let you all know how the show goes.
As a sort of prelude to the show, I showed the kids (and the most enthusiastic adults) a small collection of online videos of magicians doing magic. This included Rune Carlsen doing the McClintock Twist (I felt Oil and Water was not right for the age group), Tommy Wonder doing Tamed Card, and Paul Daniels doing Torn and Restored with the chimpanzees. This was not in the same room as the show itself.
The magic in the show I handled OK, and I felt good about my stage presence most of the time, although I made some recoverable errors. For example, in the Magician's Choice component of my spongeball routine, I had the cards turned 180 degrees the wrong way so that when I asked my young volunteer to read what was written on the first card the writing was upside down! And in the Three Altars routine I temporarily lost my place in the patter a couple of times. I've been practicing that routine a lot, and made no mistakes at all with the method, but performing in front of a relatively large audience is not the same as a private practice or even a one-on-one performance, and there were distractions I'm not used to dealing with. I have no doubt that gets easier with experience.
Compared to the magic, the audience was more difficult to handle. It consisted of about a dozen of my relatives with ages ranging from six to sixty, and I do not have very much experience in herding cats. First there's waiting for the audience to be ready to come through into the show room in the first place (pre-show activities were chaotic to say the least), then there's pointing out that watching from the side is really not the thing to do (it would have been nice to have been able to arrange the seating before the show, but with the number of seats in the house not much more than the number of people, that wasn't practical). And then there's miscellaneous stuff having to do with convincing people to give the performance area something approximating the respect they would a real theatrical stage (I think people find that counter-intuitive).
It was hard to tell what people thought of the magic from their reactions during the show, but comments made to me afterwards made it clear that I had managed to impress them. Particularly with the Three Altars, but also with the sponge balls. So it all worked out well. I've also been told that I put in just the right amount of drama.
I don't want to say much about the childrens' contribution to the show, except that the younger ones of about six years or so have not developed the ability to imagine what things look like from the audience's perspective. Earlier in the day I had all the girls wanting me to show them lots of stuff, which I find hard to handle. Not because I find it unpleasant in any way, but because there are some temptations I don't need, and I'm not good at saying no. Some magicians thrive on the secrecy side of magic and think of it as part of the fun, but it goes rather against the grain of my personality. Keeping the secret is a necessary burden I have to bear in order to keep the magic working. (It's comparable to not eating the whole box of chocolates on the first day so that there'll be more for later.)
