One of the challenges all performers face is the passage of time. Time continues to move forward and unlike the infomercials selling “youth in a bottle”… there is no magic elixir that will keep you young. We will all (if we are lucky) eventually see the face of our parents when we look in the mirror… and the truth is our audiences will too. For a performer, that moment can either be frightening or transformative. It all depends on how you use it. So my question to you is: Are you and your show growing… or are you simply aging?
There is a big difference. We have all seen aging performers. They are the lovable characters wearing the same 30-year-old outfits, doing the same 30-year-old illusions telling the same 30-year-old jokes. Many of those 30-year-old jokes were created at another time and they should have been put out to pasture long ago. We see them at magic meetings and magic conventions and yes we wince at the old routines and old jokes but we love them all the same because well… we knew them when.
But if we want to stay relevant as an aging performer, (and who doesn’t) we need to focus on growing our act to show who and what we have become. And therein lies a secret weapon. Ronald Reagan once took down a Presidential opponent with the line: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Age brings with it the power of “experience” and more importantly “experiences.” And we can use those experiences to create context for magic routines and stories in our show that audiences can relate to on a very personal level. What we have done, who we have met, and where we have lived are all fodder for the creation of and the context of a magical presentation. Age is power… and a weapon available to only those who have achieved it.
In my current show in Boston, I tell stories of how I became interested in magic. How I met my wife, my interactions with my children and now my four grandchildren, my TV appearances, and I even touch on subjects as personal as the deaths of my mother and father. Yes, it is possible to do that in a magic show IF IT HAS CONTEXT, and if it relates to the story, the magic and is consistent with the through line of the show.
In my closing illusion The Cups and Steel Balls, I relate it to my father’s job in a Pittsburgh steel mill, explaining: “I watched my dad come home from his job hot, tired, and covered in dirt. But because he was willing to do that for me … I get to do this for you … [the cups are uncovered] … a little tribute to my steel-town dad.” And now the audience is no longer simply watching a Cups and Balls routine, they are watching something much more personal.
There is power in age and experience… but only if you use it.
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