Can You Perform Bizarre Magic for Paid Shows?

Can you perform Bizarre magic for regular audiences?

Add to that, can you perform danger magic for regular audiences?

I think you can…but you gotta be smart in how you do it.

This issue wraps up my month-long series devoted to spooky, bizarre, or dangerous magic in the spirit of the Halloween season.

For context, I’ll explain my magic origin story.

When I was around ten years old, my older cousin Becky was dating a youth pastor from a local church. Turns out he was (and is) an amateur magician.

He came to our house one night and performed about 30 minutes of magic. He did coin tricks, card tricks, and all sorts of things.

But the one routine that stuck with me was his Zombie routine. You can read details of it in last week’s issue.

After my cousin and the pastor broke up, he stayed in contact with me. He had a vast library of magic books. He’d lend me books and coach me as I tried to stumble my way through rudimentary routines.

Then one night, he invited me to his house. We were going to watch scary movies together. But he wanted to show me something first.

He led me to a room in his house. This room had red walls and black bookshelves. On the shelves was a strange collection of wooden boxes, strange bottles, and much more.

Then he proceeded to perform magic.

A Tarot deck cut itself to selected cards. And floated in the air. But the true magic was the mood he set, with strange stories, augmented by candlelight and spooky music playing in the background.

As the years went by, others were added to our little club. And we’d gather once a year in that room and try to scare each other with bizarre magic tricks.

While other magicians got their start in the art with coins or cards, I got into it with needles, Tarot decks, and an eye for the macabre.

It was great fun!

As the years went on and I made magic my full-time living, I left most of the weird stuff behind.

I did add spooky kid-friendly tricks to some of my shows. But my adult shows were mostly comprised of mentalism.

Nothing too scary.

Even my signature adult show, Murder By Magic, was polite and safe enough for the most conservative of corporate clients.

But over the years, I discovered you can, indeed, bring out the Bizarre stuff. If it’s the right context.

The first, most obvious, place to turn to was Halloween. Under my good friend Jim Kleefeld’s guidance, I developed my New York Spirits and Tales From Beyond shows.

These were shows that educated viewers about the haunted history of our area or macabre happenings from around the world.

Marketing these programs to libraries, I had (and still have) great fun doing spooky and bizarre magic for adult and teen audiences under the guise of education.

I also occasionally do bizarre magic for teen groups during post-prom or grad night events.

Sometimes I start my hypnosis shows with some strange and weird magic to get the kids into the mood. The last few years have seen some of my clients hire me for my ‘ghost hunting’ shows.

These are short 20-minute shows where up to a dozen kids come into a dimly lit room and watch as we try to contact the ‘other side.’

Essentially, I’m performing a modified recreation of a seance. But I don’t use the word séance. It’s just too loaded with negative connotations that might scare some of the parents.

These have been wildly popular!

Before I got into hypnosis, I occasionally was booked for a post-prom or grad party event where I performed an entire stage show of bizarre magic. Needle Thru Arm. Smash and Stab. And even the legendary Psychic Surgery.

Kids and parents loved these routines.

Even though I can sometimes perform bizarre magic for adults or teens, I always do one simple thing first.

Clear any potentially offensive material with the client.

Mentalism and effects that appear to be real mind reading don’t concern me. But anything that looks dangerous or uses stage blood I always clear with my client.

The times I’ve performed Needle Thru Arm for teen groups always were preceded by careful conversations with the adults in charge.

I explained exactly what the effect looked like. And that it would appear I would bleed.

Happily, every show where I offered the effect saw the adults in charge get really excited. “Oh, that sounds awesome! The kids are going to love that!”

This goes for adult shows, too. I always clear anything potentially off-putting by speaking to my client or someone else in charge.

And some effects, like Bill Abbott’s Voodoo, aren’t really that off-putting.

They add a bit of spice and variety to a standard mentalism show for adults or teens.

But I always save the blood for teen shows.

So if you’re like me and enjoy bizarre magic, know that with extremely careful handling, you might be able to perform some of these effects for paying audiences.

This ends my Halloween series of newsletters. Next week, back to more ‘normal’ topics.

As always, thanks for reading.

--Cris

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