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As some of you who have read my previous posts may know, I have been practising magic seriously for many years now but have never performed for anyone outside of my circle of family and friends. Now that I am about to embark on a three month long university holiday ( ) I think that the time has come to finally take my magic a step further and branch out into public performance.

My main aim for the summer is to get myself a restaurant gig, and then hopefully the publicity I gain from that will lead to more bookings and so on. Over the past few months I've read everything I can find on the internet about restaurant magic, and I have also worked my way through the very helpful Restaurant Worker's Handbook by Jim Pace and Jerry MacGregor. I have set up a website, which I intend to act as the main source of information for potential clients http://www.michaelgrantmagician.tk and had a load of business cards printed. I've been working on some close-up sets, which are as follows:

Set 1
Coin through Handkerchief (Bobo)
Coin through Pocket (Bobo)
Coin through Hand
Ambitious Card

Set 2
Sponge Sorcery (Mark Wilson's Complete Course)
Design for Laughter (RRTCM)

Set 3
Ring on Rope (Mark Wilson's Complete Course)
The Five Rings of William (a linking ring routine from McComb's Magic: 25 Years Wiser by Billy McComb)

I might still tweak them and maybe swap one or two things around, but they should stay more or less as they are for the moment. I have also recently sent out some letters to local restaurants and a couple of charity shops (who I am hoping will allow me to volunteer a few hours each week to perform magic in return for publicity), and I will follow these up at the start of July with a few phone calls.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, to be honest because I hope someone out there will find it useful or at least interesting to read of my experiences trying to break into public magic performance. I'm not really looking for suggestions or hints, but any encouragement would be very much appreciated. I intend to keep posting on this thread regularly to keep you all updated as to what stage I've got to and how I've got there. Essentially, I want this to be a record of my unconventional summer job, in which I can share the ups and downs that I encounter.

So, here's to a fun and successful summer!

Best of luck to you, old boy! It always pleases me to see someone take that giant step into professional performance. Resturants are notoriously difficult gigs to secure so don't be too down hearted if at first you don't get many takers, just keep on trying.

Indeed, when i did 'normal' magic i performed at some restaurants and they were sometimes hard to get into. I wish you the very best of luck with it.

Good luck, and please keep us updated as to how it goes!

Best of luck, hopefully the first step into a career!

Good luck, and if you die at first remember that it's not fatal! Get back up and have another go.

Tomo wrote:if you die at first remember that it's not fatal!

Ha ha, I love that. This must be one of very few situations in life where that is true!

Best of luck, and congrats on that first step. It is always the most difficult.

Best of luck to you, I hope it all goes well

Hope it goes really well. The real fun in magic is in performing...

Well, today I moved on to phase two of my plan to get performing: I made a few phone calls. These were to follow up on two letters I had sent a few weeks ago to the local Oxfam and Arthritis Research UK charity shops, about the possibility of me volunteering some of my time each week to perform in their shops.

I don't like introducing myself to someone unfamiliar on the telephone at the best of times, so you can imagine that despite all the deep breathing I did beforehand, I was still pretty nervous when I got put through to the respective managers! Fortunately, I had written out a rough script for my conversations, which gave me something to cling to and stopped me waffling aimlessly.

The manager of the first shop I phoned hadn't received my letter (she'd been away the previous week), so I briefly explained what it is I do and how I would like to meet up this week to discuss the idea and give a brief demonstration. She was more than happy to oblige, and as a result I will be going over on Thursday for an interview/audition.

The manager of the second shop was off sick, but the assistant manager had read my letter and was happy to offer me a time on Saturday to come and introduce myself. She said she would have to check it with the area manager as well, but there is a possibility that he will also be in on Saturday which would hopefully speed things up a bit.

Overall, both sounded rather positive - not at all the 'Get lost and never call me again' attitude that I had been dreading most of all. I've just been thinking about what to perform in my 'audition's. I think I'll go with Triumph, because I have performed it many times and feel that that is perhaps my most confident trick. In fact, a friend of mine recently described it as "The most amazing magic trick [she] had ever seen." Let's hope the shop staff think likewise!

Yesterday I met up (very briefly) with the manager of the local Oxfam. It seemed that she was just glad to have someone volunteering in any capacity, so I certainly didn't get anything like a 'hard time'. She didn't even ask for a demo! Anyway, to cut a long story short she's going to phone up early next week, when she's not as busy, and arrange a day for me to come in and do my stuff. Nice one!

Well done you! Great opportunity for you to get out there and perform. Good luck with it.

How exciting!

I'll look forward to reading how you get on over the summer. I wish you the very best of luck with it.

Shaun.

Yesterday I met up with the assistant manager of the Arthritis Research UK shop. Again, she didn't seem interested in a demonstration, and we very quickly agreed on a spot for me to perform in and exactly how it would work. I'll be doing two hours there a week over the summer (if all goes well), which is more magic than I've ever done before, so it will be a great experience to both hone my routines and improve my confidence performing. I'm going to put together some posters for them to put up in the shop as advertising. And hopefully, with the opportunity to hand out business cards and so on, this could be a stepping stone to greater things!