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I was going to post this in support but I think it's probably a little late to get advice now. Maybe not.

More importantly, I have something of an important gig coming up tomorrow. Not a paid gig, nor an audition, it is however the first time I will have performed for other magicians. Somewhat nervous about the whole affair.

To give a little background, I have been a member of the Pentacle Club for a few months now and have been rather nervous about performing for them. Sort of a proving ground thing. I've mentioned before that I'd like to join the Magic Circle some day and given that other members have to recommend me, this will almost certainly where such a recommendation comes from.

As such, I'd like their first impression of me performing to be something other than "Yeah, she bumbled through it."

That's why I was holding back, practicing, biding my time. The last meeting two weeks ago was a mentalism week and although mentalism isn't really my thing, I'd been talking about an idea for a mentalism piece and I think they expected me to perform it. However I hadn't been able to collect the required props and so it didn't happen. Everyone said it was disappointing to not see me perform, after which they asked if I could perform at the Christmas Social.

Apparently most members will be. Additionally my fear of failure is ramped up by the fact that the Christmas Social involves many non-member guests higher than normal member turnout and the routines all have to be Christmas themed.

I've spent the last two weeks trying to hurl together a Christmas theme from the routines I've practiced, having finally decided to give it a whirl doing a bit of my fibre optics based rope routine with tinsel.

However, tinsel has a few problematic properties which make it difficult to perform with. After almost a week of buying different types of tinsel and Christmas decoration, I've decided my best bet is bead garlands.

Irritatingly they move quite differently to rope and so I've had to do last minute cram practice, and I'm still far from perfect but the gig is tomorrow, so I am sort of out of time.

Right now I'm in two minds, whether to back out because I am unsure of my readiness or to stride forth and do my best, racking up a bit of a wider performance experience. If I keep succumbing to nerves I'll never get over it, but right now I'm not sure whether this is regular get-over-it stage fright or genuine concern for my abilities coming up short.

Anyway really I just thought you might want to wish me luck and know that I'm still out here, it's been a while since I posted anything interesting.

I genuinely hope I have the guts to go through with this, even if I balls it up. If I can stand the pressure it'll be a character building experience either way.

-Stacy

Best of luck m'dear!
You're going to do just fine, but then you know that already I, for one, despise performing for other magicians. I find it the most vile thing in the world and is one of the reasons I refuse to join any kind of magical 'club'. I don't mind other magicians coming to my gigs, in fact I encourage them, but to perform solely for them? Nah, forget it. I still despise performing for other magicians even at our regular TM social.

All said and done though, as I've mentioned, you'll be grand. You've obviously put thought and effort into your performance and I have no qualms that you'll do brilliantly. Most of all, enjoy it. After all, what's the point if you don't?

Do it. Just do it.
I agree that performing for magicians is a generally unsatisfying pastime, but feel the fear and do it anyway.
Just remember that you have something that they don't and that they have never seen. You received it recently, in the post. Don't let me down - hahaha, more pressure
T.

Best of luck, just go for it!!!

Just go for it, you'll regret it otherwise, and like you say the nerves will always be there, and possibly get worse

Good luck!

Best of luck Stacy.

Have a great time, enjoy it, & knock em dead....

CArlxx

Go and give it your best, I'm sure that you'll be just fine and will go down a storm.

I'm especially with Ted on this. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Make sure you know your set backwards. Nothing really bad happens if you fail, so take a deep breath, walk out and have fun. If it all goes wrong, it's fine.

Just relax and enjoy the performance. Best of luck to you.

Good luck! just do your best. I have a magic audition coming up so I know how you feel. As Hugard and Braue say, 'Confidence in yourself is the main thing' (The Royal Road to Card Magic).

Good luck! I hope things go well for you.
Don't forget to let us know how it goes and what routines you did.

So I'm back. I'd say in terms of performance I did about 40% of what I seem to be able to pull off flawlessly in practice (always the way...)

So the plan was to do a rope routine, but with a bead garland (I tried tinsel but it falls apart) for a christmas feel.

It should have been quite simple, 3 impossible knots with some patter about christmas decorations getting tangled too easily, cut and restore to lead into a little bit of the fibre optics ends and middle routine, and then finish it with a setup for a middle removal, but use it as a second cut and restore, this time a 'cleaner' one without all that odd looping.

So the opening was meant to go
Open box with long bead garland, unravel, cut a length. Even this part went wrong when I couldn't find the end and had to untwist a piece of wire holding them together.

The first intended line was I was going to do this with tinsel, but it keeps getting knotted up" And immediately do a lightning knot.
This went well, lightning knot formed perfectly.
However, bead garlands move in such a way that the knots are hard to see. As such when they noticed it, with me pretending that the knot had happened by accident, assumed it had been there all along.

Second, hunters puzzle knot. This is a clearer display of an impossible knot because there's a lot of twisting involved. However on the final move the beads snagged together and they knotted with a loop which wouldn't then undo. I hurled the rope aside, pulled a new length of beads and cut it off, to realise it wasn't long enough, discarded that, handed the scissors to someone else and asked them to cut it, so I could better judge the right length.

Of course, having to discard a piece that was too short left me with no real premise or patter for why I was about to cut this length in two. I don't even remember what I said.

I left them with the scissors for the cut & restore, which went well. Used the simple method with the ends in the left hand, right hand pulls up the hanging loop and adds an unseen twist.

When the cut was made I held them out and said "Well at least they didn't knot together this time... although they aren't quite the same length." at which point I grabbed one of the dangling ends, brought it to the top and revealed the rope to be once again whole.

First applause. Finally, applause.

Interestingly I totally forgot the rest of what I said. It's lost to the mists of time now as I put the ends together, pulled them to one side and transposed them to the other. It went well but my taking the ends back to my starting position was sloppy. Not sure if anyone saw it.

This was the third time I had to brush my hair out of my eyes. I really must come up with a better way of dealing with that.

I then took the ends off completely and placed them in my mouth to do some endless loop moves. Normally I wouldn't put them in my mouth for those moves, but my usual pocket had a hole in it and I couldn't stand the idea of losing my short piece and having to think around it again.

When the ends went back on, "I said come on lets cut it for real this time." as I placed my short loop in the middle, where I instructed my scissor man to cut it. I then asked him to cut the ends off. When I'd practiced this i imagined fevered snipping, allowing me to discard my last bits. In hindsight I should have asked him to give me the scissors to complete that part, because he wasn't cutting fast enough (presumably because he didn't realise at least 60% of my frenetic manner was intended) the ends I was hoping to discard in a flurry of snips simply fell out quite visibly, but probably only he saw it.

I then totally forgot to leave any sort of pause before revealing the restore, which was meant to be my big finish.

So I suppose what I really showed was that it hadn't actually been cut. Which was a bit of an anticlimax in hindsight.

I was the last act of the evening. Luckily it was a low turn out.

I will say however, despite everything having gone wrong, I feel like I am now sort of more accepted there, simply because I have now performed, so they know I'm at least trying.

Yeah. Not great, but not terrible.

And with every performance I learn about 20 things I could have done better, which improves my handling in the long run. I should beat the fear more often.

-Stacy

Well done, it takes courage to get up in front of people and do stuff like that. Just think, you were saying to yourself that you wouldn't be able to perform in front of those people. But you just did. So you've already achieved something you thought you couldn't.

I wouldn't worry too much about the things that went wrong. I don't think I've ever done a performance where I've thought 'that went perfectly' - there's always bits you know you should have done better e.g. cleaner handling/less fumbling of the cards, picking better moments to perform secret sleights, etc. I guess that just comes with experience.

I've got an audition next week, I'll let you know how mine goes...

Well done again. cc100

Stacy!
Why don't you use your insecurity as "part of the act"? Take it to the other extreme. Get on stage sucking your thumb, prepare 2-3 obvious "arranged blunders", and go ahead with your show. This way if you blunder, it will seem as if it was also arranged and when you succeed, (which you will), the contrast will bring you a standing ovation, (which you deserve anyway).
Hope I have helped
Ronny

good skills, glad you did it and i bet you are to secretly....

i have an audition at the local magic cirlce in the new year and am so petrified i wish i could just do it today and get it over with because i know no matter how much i practice nerves will play a major part!!

love ronnies idea of playing to it tho!!!

hope you get in

miriam