Had another festival this past weekend that I was planning to do magic for. Due to a series of events, I went from having the potential to perform for three days to performing for about 4 hours.
The festival kicks off Friday afternoon, runs through Saturday, and ends Sunday evening. I had an obstacle course race that I signed up for back in March on Sunday, so I knew that day was going to be a loss anyway. A few months ago I scheduled a follow-up doctor's appointment for an ear infection I had been fighting since a Spartan race last October (go to the doctor early, kids) for the Friday afternoon, so I took a loss on that day too.
No problem, that left me with all day Saturday to hit the festival. I did pretty good in one day the last time, and that was with lousy rainy weather. Things would work out well, right? I kept procrastinating getting in touch with the festival organizers to arrange permission to perform. I meant to do it immediately following the last festival, then weeks and months passed and I still hadn't done it. I don't know why, other than a complete lack of motivation and discipline. Which is weird, because this is something I actually want to do. It's not like I'm trying to find the motivation to go the gym or something. Anyway, I digress.
I finally emailed them about ten days before the festival and ended up never hearing anything back one way or the other. I decided to take the approach of "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" and just go do it anyway. I arranged with the owners of one of the business on the street to set up in front of their place to perform. I was all set to go, and then two days before hand one of my day jobs called and asked if I could work from 3 to 9 because the person who was going to cover me had a death in their family. Couldn't say no to that, so there went my Saturday.
I was really tempted to just call the whole thing off, but I knew in the long run that wouldn't be a good idea. I ended up setting up from 11 to 2:30 and just doing my best. Unlike last time, I wasn't really able to pull a good crowd. I had maybe one decent one, but that's about it. Fortunately I wasn't trying to get a crowd and pass the hat. Instead, I pretty much was just presenting the Invisible Deck over and over again with a tip jar, which is basically what I did last time. It was nice because when I got people to stop I could cut it short if they were done after that one, or move on to a couple other things if they were receptive. I went long a couple times, but most people just watched the first trick and were ready to go.
I did notice that while I got a decent amount of people to stop, I didn't get a lot of them to pay. The ones that did pay only gave a dollar each, while last time I got several fives. I'm not sure why that was. My theory for the ones was that I didn't seed the tip jar with any fives this time. As far as not getting people to transition from watching to tipping, no idea. I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything wildly different than last time and I was getting cash left and right then. I think it was just a different crowd.
I had at least four different people tell me I should go on America's Got Talent which really made me laugh. I wish I could have told them that the trick I was doing had been on AGT several times to see what they said to that. Still, it was nice to hear the compliment. I talked to a guy for a little bit who knew a little magic from when he was younger. He showed me his French Drop that his friend taught him years ago and asked for my critique. It was actually pretty good! I showed him a couple subtleties, he complimented my FD, we talked about David Copperfield a little bit and then he had to go meet his friend. Really nice guy and probably the highlight of my day.
All in all I had a lot of fun. It wasn't a financial success, with me making a whopping $16 and then spending ten of that on a Cuban sandwich and chips from one of the local restaurants for lunch. Still, I made more money than I would have sitting at home, I got some business cards out there, and most importantly I got more practice in front of real people. Best of all, I only blew the ID once this time, ironically immediately after thinking "Gee, I haven't screwed up at all this time!"
- Andster
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