talkmagic.co.uk

I have agreed, to my surprise, to do a turn at my ex's daughter's birthday party on Sunday. The guest of honour will be 2 so it's not so much for her as for the other kids who are a mix of our shared daughter's school friends (she's eight) and other kids of friends of ours.

Oldest is 13, most are 6-8, this means.

I'm going to borrow (/adapt) the letter routine above as it's the sort of panto I know they'll enjoy. I've also got a few other bits and pieces but when I asked my ex how long a stint I should prep she just said "however long you think"

I'm thinking about 20 minutes, allowing for lots of "oh it hasn't worked because you weren't loud enough" - does that sound reasonable?

I usually do a 30 minute set, but a friend asked for a 45 minute show for his Son's 7th birthday last week, the length of time was perfect, first time performing for children? 20 minutes will be long enough!

If memory serves you enjoy cards? DO NOT DO ANY CARD STUFF for anyone under the age of 9/10 - this was a learning curve for me, I started out doing Jumbo 6 card repeat for 4/5 year olds...oops

Stuff you already own that is suitable? Sponge balls, silks, something with a TT

Stuff you can buy that is cheap and goes down well? Mouthcoils always get a nice reaction, I now use as a finale for my D-Lites routine, which will work well if you own those?

As I have learnt over time, its not so much the magic as the showmanship that gets the reactions, I managed 3/4 minutes from an oversized, inflatable wand last month because of the reactions it was getting

Do you have time to pop into International today? Maybe buy a flower production bag and Crystal silks? Topsy turvy bottles also works well at this age

Lol, yes have already set cards aside!

I'd forgotten I'd got a pair of D Lights! Thank you, and thanks for the advice

fiftytwo wrote:Lol, yes have already set cards aside!

I'd forgotten I'd got a pair of D Lights! Thank you, and thanks for the advice

Remember children like a story, when I first did D Lites, they would just go in and out of my nose/ears/mouth etc

After 6 months of the children really loving them I came up with a story line, they live in boxes, and thanks to a certain Mr.Tipton they are now called Mr.Blinky and Mr.Twinky...they are now held under white handkerchiefs...but guess what? The children seem to drop them!

They end up in all sorts of places!

Oh a decent Colouring book routine, although very common will also go down well for this age group

What are your plans? Order of tricks? etc

So, how did it go?

Exceedingly well! One of the props jammed, so I had to do a little unceremonious dumping, but as by then I’d established the theme that the tricks only worked properly when the children joined in this seemed to be a continuation of the theme.

They all got proper shouty, especially when I got things wrong. (c: I was asked by one of the Dads afterwards if I was okay with the level of heckling and I laughed and explained that without the panto-style banter I only had about 10 minutes of material.

As it was, I stretched it easily to 30 minutes. We started with the Letter. They were besides themselves by the end of that with the “It’s under your arm!” “Now it’s on the floor!” “No, behind you!” One girl was clutching her hair and showing her bottom teeth in a way that made me glad they didn't have weapons.

We went from that into the Magic Colouring Book. I couldn’t colour it in with my wand, or with the magic words I knew. One little girl when asked if she knew any other magic words offered “Please?” which raised a laugh from the adults as I demonstrated how that didn’t work! I’d made a packet of disappearing coloured pencils so the children could help with the trick, and they all wanted Invisible Colours which lent itself well to humour. "There you go, Tourmaline! Amethyst! Emerald! No I don't know what those look like either, but it's okay they're invisible." One of the Mums suddenly chipped in last “Hey, I didn’t get one!” so I gave her beige. “Beige?!” “Well, ask earlier next time before all the cool colours are gone!”

Once the book was coloured I had identified the two liveliest kids, so I got them up front for a D Lites piece. I pretended I was reading their minds, taking thoughts out of their heads and listening to them, or tasting them, or smelling them. As there was two kids I took lights from one and put them in the other.

“Aha,” I said eventually, “you’re both thinking of sweets.”
“Well I’m not.”
“No? But I just said sweets -aren’t you thinking of them now?”
“No.”
“Sweets sweets sweets sweets. How about now?”
“No, I don’t like sweets.”
“Wow, well then you’re not going to like the next trick!”

Finale was a Candy Factory, and we had to see me fail with my wand and then get the colours back out of the colouring book. I distributed Appearing Wands (the cheapo foil type) and everyone was very excited by that.

I panto-d my way through children demanding I prove it was sugar by tasting it – I pulled all sorts of faces and only pretended to the first few times. One of them wanted it to specifically be Haribo, and when I said “Harry who? Is he like Harry Potter?” exclaimed in exasperation “You’re a rubbish magician – magicians are supposed to know everything!” and I got a very big guffaw from her Mum when I said “I don’t need to if you’re here.”

The insert jammed on the Candy Factory, and I couldn’t free it without covering a small amount of the floor with sugar. I’ve worked out how to mod it slightly so that won’t happen again. When I produced the sweets they all went wild.

I said I was about done, I just needed to clean off the remaining spilled invisible colours off them and wiped several faces down with a colour-changing scarf which got wide eyes when I swapped it to the coloured side.

Then it was a bow, a promise to show them how to roll the wands back up so they could take them home if they kept hold of (or found, otherwise) the elastic bands and I went to find my family in the garden to rest my throat.

Apparently three parents asked the birthday girl’s Mum if they could hire me for their children later in the year (and she told them yes).

Later that night I got an email from the woman I handed the beige invisible colour to, an old friend. Apparently just before bed her son had said “I wish I could do real magic though, like Marcus can.”

It didn’t go perfectly, but what went wrong I coped with. It was very boisterous, but my old Cub Scout Leader training came in handy to just encourage and then steer the exuberance. The adults who weren’t watching got half an hour in the garden to talk adult with tea and no kids.

I’m very happy. I like things that make me very happy.

Sounds like a brilliant show!!

Hope you enjoyed it, if i ever have any kids i'll be sure to hire you and if you want to do more childrens parties PM me with the area you're willing to cover and i'll gladly promote your services in the area!!

Much love

Aza