How to organize your magic show

By Catalogs Editorial Staff

Successful magicians know how important it is to set up their shows properly.

Organizing your magic show is an important part of the show itself. You want your show to make sense and flow smoothly. You can organize your magic show in many different ways. Have your show to start off with less-sophisticated tricks and end with your most elaborate performances. If you lead with your biggest and best tricks, your audience might be bored by the time you perform your lesser tricks at the end of your show.

You want your show to build and get better as it progresses. Your audience should be wondering what’s going to happen next at all times. But most of all, it’s important that throughout your performance you remember that you and your audience are there to have fun.

The Three-Part Magic Show

Just like a book or a movie, organize your magic show in three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. The parts of a magic show are also called the opener, the middle and the closer.

The Opener

The first act is the most important because that’s when you hook your audience and make them want to stay to see what happens next. You want the show to be fun and upbeat. In the opener you’ll want to do all your shortest tricks.

You’ll be doing several different tricks in the opener; they need to be fast-paced and impressive. This might be where you do some quick card tricks (like making cards disappear). This might be a good time for your magic wand to make its first appearance, perhaps appearing out of thin air or from a piece of silk. You might even do tricks with other magic accessories.

Your opener should be a big, fast-paced flourish. Use fun colors, upbeat music and move quickly from one short trick to the next. Keep the audience’s attention through your magic tricks and don’t say a word during any of this. Just bounce from one trick to another.

The Middle

In the middle of the show you’ll want to get in your jokes and have audience participation. Do your mind-reading tricks with members of the audience. Maybe do a few card tricks with stories that go along with them. Whichever tricks you include in this section, they should be impressive and take longer than your opening tricks. They should not be too elaborate. Do several audience-participation tricks at this point. This will keep the audience’s attention on you, partly because they’re into your tricks and partly because they want to be the next volunteer.

The Closer

This is your final trick. It should have a great story as to why you’re doing it or where you learned it. It should be quite an elaborate stunt. You’ll want to keep this one trick as your closer for a while and become known for it. Don’t change it from show to show. The important part of this trick is that it’s your biggest and best trick of the night. Make the audience want to come to your next show to see it again.