A Recap of My Magical Career In 2020-22

 

From My Summer 2021 Virtual Magic Show called The Lift-Off Magic Show

Let me begin by saying, I totally forgot I had this particular blog. I've sort of gotten away from the entire blogging thing. I switched to podcasting and with that I only podcast on magic history. My podcast is MagicDetectivePodcast.com for those interested. It's currently in Season 4 with 74 episodes and growing.

But I would be remiss if I didn't discuss a few things for posterity sake. Like the last 2 years and the damned Pandemic that swept through the world. It began as the Wuhan Virus or the China Virus because that is where is originated. But the politically correct class deemed such terminology racist. Even though we have referred to viruses by the origin for hundreds and hundreds of years, and then did again AFTER this virus.  At any rate, that really doesn't matter at this point. It began as a pretty harsh virus and mutated into a much weaker one. The real nightmare was how it was handled. History will debate that and many figures who today are lauded for what they did will likely not look well over time. 

The government basically shut everything down around March 13, 2020. I give that date because that is when I did my last in person show that year. Everything after March 13th canceled. And to say I lost a ton of shows is no exaggeration. My summer went from having close to 100 shows booked by that time, to eventually salvaging only 18. And all of those were a new type of show, something called a virtual show.

You see, this government lockdown that was supposed to take 2 weeks to slowdown the curve of the virus, was in place for months(years). They kept changing the goalposts on us. Now, I'm not debating the right or wrong, I'm telling what happened. I'll let history decide.

My first virtual studio. It eventually got more sophisticated.

So this virtual thing, was a live show presented over an internet platform called Zoom. There were other platforms that people used, Facebook LIVE, Streamyard and more. Each allowed various options on how your program looked and the features it could provide. Depending upon your computer and your camera, you could look very primitive or you could look like you had an entire Television production. I would say that my virtual shows fell somewhere in the middle. I was unable to run the higher end software like OBS, but I still managed a visually appealing show with 2 cameras and lots of interesting green screen backgrounds. One of the major selling points of the virtual shows was the interactivity, and this led to a whole new sort of magic.

Interactive Magic. It had actually been around for years, but it wasn't used to a very large degree. However, if you had a decent magic library, you likely had access to some good magic that would work online. And the Interactive Magic were things that the audience could do along with you. I think there were really 2 types of Interactive Magic. The first were tricks were the audience was involved, but to no more of a degree than they were involved in an in person show. For example, they picked a card, they chose a word, that sort of thing. But the other type of Interactive Magic was when the audience had a deck of cards in their hands, or coins, or some of objects, and they followed along with the magician and the magic happened right there in their own hands.

This sort of thing had been popular as far back as the 1980s with Max Maven and his 'touch the screen' routines. These were then picked up by David Copperfield and used in some of his later specials. David even used a version of these interactive routines in some of his touring shows, by providing everyone in the audience with a printed sheet of paper that they would use to do the magic. He's always ahead of everyone when it comes to concepts. 

But now, this idea of audience hands on magic, interactively participating with the performer LIVE, was now in all of our hands. I can't speak for anyone else because I think many individual magicians realized this at different paces. I know some of the first virtual shows I saw used the touch the screen idea. But I didn't go that route. I went with the audience having some cards or a deck of cards or whatever. Why? Because I had a bunch of Jim Steinmeyer's books, the Impuzzibilities series and these were chalked full of those very kind of tricks. I also knew they worked because I had used some on the radio. YES, on a couple LIVE radio interviews, I presented a virtual or in that case an audio magic trick that the audience could follow along with. And it played incredibly well.

So now, I had this new weapon of mass amazement, if I might call it that. And I used it on most of my virtual shows. It worked most of the time. Occasionally I would see someone struggle. YES, that was another aspect of virtual, you could SEE the audience through the computer screen. They could see and hear you and you could see them and if you had them unmuted, you could see them.

I actually had two types of virtual shows, actually 3. I had the LIVE virtual that my clients could buy for just their group. I had LIVE ticketd shows that anyone could buy tickets to. Then I had a third which were recorded shows, that were not live, but customized to each client. This allowed them to show them more than once. It also allowed clients who didnt have internet or strong internet in their building to show their audiences via a thumb drive. 

My live virtual shows for clients were a resounding success. A huge hit with every client. Most clients who purchased one show purchased multiple shows over the course of the pandemic. The ticketed shows were another thing. The audiences who watched the ticketed shows were amazing. But the numbers were never quite there. It was so frustrating to try and sell tickets. I watched as Justin Willman, for example would have 1000+ at a show and have numerous shows a month, sometimes per day. And I couldn't get even 50 tickets sold. Granted, he had a bigger fanbase and better outreach strategy. But I never cracked the code on that. It drove me insane and still does to this day. In fact, I have a virtual ticketed show scheduled for two weeks from now. We will see.

Let's now go to Fall of 2021. I finally got my first booking for a real in person show. It was an outdoor festival and I couldn't have been more happy. Some folks wore masks, some didnt. I didnt wear a mask if I was more than 6ft from a spectator. The shows were overwhelming hits. It was such a breath of fresh air to be in front of real people performing. The audiences were spectacular. I believe all of my shows sold out during the run. I received a great deal of praise and expected this to be a turning point...however....

Then in October of 2021, I was booked to return to the Dulles Town Center Mall in Sterling VA. I drove 600+ miles back to Virginia and was sitting in my hotel, the Saturday before the show when my phone rang. It was the Mall Manager with some bad news. Apparently, there had been a possible terrorism warning directed at 'shopping malls and voting stations'.  And due to an abundance of caution, they had to cancel the event and thus my show was canceled. I harbor no ill will towards the mall, they did what they needed to do. But I was now out a LOT of money. 

A similar thing happened in January with a corporate client. Another high paying gig and they had to cancel, this time due to the covid outbreak getting worse. Actually, I lost ALL my gigs in January. And February faired no better. How could 2022 be worse than the two previous years? Well it was beginning that way. 

Thankfully March of 2022, I finally had some in person shows, along with some virtual shows that helped me to recover to some degree. So to say that the pandemic was a struggle, well, that's hardly touching the surface. Yet I know folks who did hundreds of virtual shows over the two years. I know one guy who did almost 500 in one year, and he was no one famous. Some folks really did well during this time, others lost everything, some lost their lives. I guess I fell somewhere in the middle. I didnt loose my life. I managed to survive over that time. Now the pandemic has been downgraded to an endemic.  I'm rebuilding my business and life, and the future looks bright....well if you don't count on Nuclear War...