Becoming a Magician
Considering a career as a magician may not be an easy task, but it’s not impossible. Just follow these tips.
1. Keep studying, maintain high grades, obtain a scholarship, study and finish a degree, and have a ‘real’ occupation. Magic may be a good hobby, but you should not look at it as your main career choice. Your chances to become a wealthy and famous magician are just like having chances to become a really prominent rock star. Not to discourage you in following what you want, but it might be wiser for you if you have other back-up plans in case being a magician does not lead you to your ambitions and goals in life. Many amazing artists, including magicians, died hungry and penniless.
2. Take classes on drama in your high school as well as college studies. Learn to act. Learn the process of building sets, in writing, directing, and producing. You should get some speech classes. Learn aspects on timing, annunciation, and presentations. By learning these things, you are building your blocks to performing success.
Knowing the secrets and moves of the magic trade are of course valuable, but it means nothing compared with the true value of presentation.
3. Creating your character. Have some costumes like a tuxedo to match your character. Like a doctor when he or she wears his or her white cloak, or a clown when he or she puts his or her make-up, you transform yourself into a magician upon wearing your costume. Have you decided already what your stage name is? You could make up one or just your real name. Are you serious or funny, or both? Are you mysterious and dark, or flashy and bright? Create who you should be. Do not worry that you’d get stuck with the character that eventually you do not like anymore - the character you have will grow and evolve as you go and can be changed anytime.
4. Creating your act. Create a list of all the tricks you know. Then, sort them. Are these tricks parlor-sized, close-up ones, or actual stage performances? Once you have sorted them, list all the tricks according to their order of presentation and impressiveness. In short, what are your best acts, and what are the worst? List first your worst tricks and then the best ones at the last items. Remember that you should always finish with the best tricks that you have.
Your act should always begin with tricks that are flashy and visual. Get the attention of your audience before building their amazement all throughout your show and end with the best trick.
Being Good With Magic
In medieval times, magic was associated with sorcery and witchcraft. People who possessed such a talent or gift were considered as heretics and were burned at the stake.
Years later, magic was given a new connotation. It provided people with a form of entertainment like making a plane disappear or cutting a person in half. These are all illusions from the simplest trick like making a coin disappear which just goes to show that the hand is quicker than the eye.
There have been a lot of talented magicians in this lifetime alone such as the likes of Harry Houdini who was an escape artist, David Copperfield who traveled around the world and amazed people with his large scale acts and lately David Blaine who is seen on television performing magic tricks that are seen by millions of viewers around the world.
What then makes a good magician is the one common question asked by several magician wannabe’s. Is it talent, a gift or sheer luck?
Everyone has the potential of becoming a ’somebody’ in the future, even magicians. Here are some traits that one might need to possess to be successful in life even if in the end, one does not become a magician.
- Patience. Nobody became a successful magician overnight. It takes time to learn a trick, to practice it and eventually be good at it.
- Confidence - some people have a hard time delivering a speech to a large audience. It is same thing with magic since there are a lot of people staring at just one person. The best thing to do is practice with a small audience first like some family members and friends and once that stage fright has been extinguished, one can perhaps get a larger crowd and do more.
- Open mind - a lot of well known magicians started in the confines of home watching how other people do it and reading up on such tricks. Some children started out by even buying a magic toy set with a variety of gadgets and followed the instructions until these people were able to do it with any need of guidance.
- Excellence - magicians can’t always use the same tricks in every show. There has to be changes and improvements that will make people old and new come back for more. By spending some time thinking about what to do or what has not yet been done and working on it, it will make that person stand out above the rest. Such reinvention will make a magician quite a gem in the field of magic.
