A week ago today I had my gig. Against all odds, it actually went pretty well. I definitely prepared more for this than I have in the past, but I also know that I put preparation off for way too long and could have done more. There were between thirty to forty people there spread out across eight different tables. Most of the tables had about six or eight people at them, but there were a couple that only had two or three.
What I had planned were two different routines that ran about seven minutes each. Just about everything was card-focused, which is something I would like to change in the future. I do think I had a good variety though, so it wasn't just a bunch of "pick a card" over and over.
The first routine centered around the four aces with a loose theme of "Luck of the Irish," I produced the aces one at a time, did a modified spectator cuts the aces, twisted the aces, did two sandwich effects with the red and black aces, and finished up with invisible palm aces. I had a lot of fun doing this one, and overall I think it was received well. The sandwich effects could have been routined differently for my tastes. I didn't get the pop I was expecting out of it. I'll talk about that more another time.
The second routine started with an Invisible Deck with a 52-on-1 card, then a slightly modified Color Monte and finished with a version of Mr. Stickman by Richard Sanders. This routine was slightly shorter than the others as far as number of tricks, but it played about the same length of time. I wasn't super happy with this routine and wish I had taken the time to do something better. I didn't have a natural way to work St. Patrick's Day into this set like I did with the other one (which wasn't asked of me, I just thought it would be a nice touch) so I shoehorned it in by making Color Monte a demo of when I got hustled by a leprechaun and turned the stickman into a stick leprechaun.
During the second routine I did mess up twice, once revealing the ace of clubs instead of the ace of spades and once during Color Monte when I let my mouth get ahead of my brain and forgot where I was in the script. Fortunately (or not) these happened at different tables. Both of these could be solved with more practice, especially the Color Monte issue. I also usually use a line when asking them to think of a card that eliminates obvious cards, but I didn't this time. I should make sure I do that in future performances of the Invisible Deck.
I managed to hit all the tables in 57 minutes, just shy of the hour they asked for. The perfectionist in me would have liked to his that hour exactly, but there were no complaints. I was afraid of coming up way too short, so I was happy. I would like to figure out a way to carry water with me or something because I had dry mouth pretty bad by the end of it after talking almost nonstop for an hour. Maybe I could keep a bottle with my stuff and make my way over for a swig after every couple tables. I also need to do better about bringing the magic up to chest level. I spent the whole time bending over working at the tabletop level, and my back killed me when I was done.
All in all, I had a great time and I think it was successful. I learned a lot and now I have some things to think about and work on for the future. Don't know when my next gig will be. I know for sure I'll be doing a festival at the end of June, but maybe something will crop up in the meantime. I'll keep everyone posted.
- Andster
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