Magic Shows and Magic Tricks: How One Magician Does It

By Ellen Zucker

And...he talks about some of his tricks.

Magic Shows: an overview
Children's Magic Shows
Harry Potter shows

EMZ: Let’s start out by asking you, what do you do? What are your services? What do you offer?

SY: Well, I perform for at least 45 minutes to an hour depending on the children or the grownup people I’m entertaining.

EMZ: So you perform magic and magic shows.for both children and adults. Not just the children.

SY: And senior citizens and whatever.

EMZ: OK.

SY: My performance works with anybody. If I’m walking in blind to an event-that is where the client doesn’t tell me how many people are going to be there or anything about the people that are going to be there, I have enough magic to cover anything under those circumstances. Whether it’s small children or from grade school children or anyone up to 65, 70 or all the way up to 100.

EMZ: In your magic shows, do you do different kinds of tricks for different age ranges?

SY: Oh, yes, and everything works on this basis. I do not perform the magic show all by myself. I interact with the audience.

EMZ: OK

SY: And especially the children. At a children’s birthday party, I work with the child. The child comes up, he sings “Happy Birthday,” we present a cake and a few different little items which goes along with the child’s birthday.

EMZ: You actually bring the cake? Or is it their cake?

SY: Oh, no,no, it’s a pan that you show that it’s empty. And then they wave a magic wand, and all of a sudden a birthday cake appears in there.

EMZ: Oh, cool.

SY: Not a live edible birthday cake, but a sponge cake. But it goes over big, because they see nothing and then they see a cake in there.

EMZ: Oh, that’s neat!

SY: All right, and then we interact with all the children. And the birthday child helps me to introduce the rabbit and the dove.

EMZ: OK, you use live animals which not every magician does.

SY: Well I use animals all the time in every one of my magic shows. Unless they specify that no animals can be allowed to be brought into the restaurant. Or someone is allergic to animals. Then I don’t bring the animals.

EMZ: OK.

SY: But 95% of the time, only once in a great while, do I say they’ll say that no animals are allowed into my magic show.

EMZ: So, you need to make sure that the venue is aware that you are bringing in animals as part of your magic show and that that’s OK.

SY: That’s right. But most people want the animals in their magic show if it’s part of a private party at home...But it’s only in public places like restaurants that you have to ask. Nine times out of ten, they don’t care.

It depends on where it’s being done.

EMZ: Do you have any kind of insurance?

SY: Oh, yes. I carry insurance. Most definitely!

Illusions

EMZ: You’ve used the term “illusions.” What are illusions and what does it mean in the context of a magic show?

SY: Illusions are when I bring out, you know what a caboose is on a train, right?

EMZ: Yes.

SY: Well I have a box that looks like the back of a caboose.

OK, I open it up and I say “What does this look like, children? What part of the train is this, first?” I say.

I’ll get a few children say “I don’t know.” One will say, a caboose.” I’ll say, “You’re absolutely right! He knows his trains. And this is is actually, it looks like a caboose, but you know what, children?”

Then I hold it in one hand and I’ll pull it in the front and out comes this big drawer. I say, “Look what this is. It’s a box. And in this box is a silk.”

And I get the birthday child to reach in grab the silk.

I say, “Wait a minute, you have a black and white silk and what is on the silk?” And he manipulates it around until it’s right side up.

“Oh, its a bunny rabbit.”

“Where there any bunny rabbits in this box? Does anyone see that knife?”

I push it and lift it and point it to the audience.

They say, “No.”

“OK, just put that silk back in the box, I’m going to show everybody what a great magician you are.”

He puts in it and I close the box. And I swing it towards him, the whole box. I’m holding it in two hands.

I say, “wave over the top, say the magic words and pull the drawer.”

“Abracadabra.”

I say, “Have a banana.”

“No, no, I don’t want a banana, we want a rabbit.”

Oh. I thought you said “have a banana.”

So that’s another interacting thing that I do at magic shows.

EMZ: So the illusion is that the rabbit sometimes looks like it’s there and sometimes doesn’t?

SY: Absolutely. You’ve got an empty box. So then you pull the drawer out and out pops this rabbit. Out of nowhere.

That’s an illusion. You create something that’s not there to begin with...I mean if you’ve ever seen a magic show where you see this great big giant thing hanging from the ceiling, then there’s a big curtain over it. Then they drop the curtain in a split second and there’s a tiger in it.

That’s the same basic thing I do with the rabbit.

EMZ: Yes, so that’s an illusion?

EMZ: Yes, that’s an illusion.

SY: That’s something that people should expect to see. They should see some illusions in a magic show?

EMZ: Well...

EMZ: What should they expect to see in a magic show?

EMZ: If you’re a magician like me, all the shows should produce animals if they want animals. And those are illusions there.

But there’s other illusions that I do with, for example, two cylinders and two bottles. And it’s called “Topsy Turvy.”

EMZ: So, basically you do different sets of illusions for seniors and adults vs. children?

SY: A lot of interaction with the children. I do rope tricks with the children, I do balloons where I hand them a balloon and they say that there’s nothing in it...

Walk-Around Magic Vs. Sit-Down Magic Shows

EMZ: You said you have two kinds of magic shows. You’ll perform in front of a sitting audience for 45 minutes to an hour. But sometimes you’ll go around from person to person.

EMZ: I think you call that “walk around magic?”

SY: Yes, that’s considered “walk around magic.” Those are two different kinds of shows.

EMZ: Given the two kinds of magic shows you do, when is it good to have a show where you are in front of an audience and when is it good to do “walk around”?

SY: Doing a regular magic show is good for when people are sitting down and they want to watch a show. But sometimes, there’s a small space and there’s no room for a full show, so you have to walk around.

But sometimes I do a small magic show and little bit of walk around, so its a combination. There’s certain things I can do if there’s no allowing animals, for example. I do Topsy Turvy bottle, I do a couple of rope tricks. I have someone come up and take a ball of twine and I cut out maybe four pieces of twine.

I give her scissors and I say “are you good with scissors?”

I create all of my magic tricks, whether it’s rope tricks, whether it’s illusions with boxes, or silks or anything else, they all seem to help me with it and that’s the way most of my magic goes.

I say to them when I start my show, “Ladies and gentlemen, my show today, my name is Stephen and I’m called “Two Faces of Magic.”

Today we’re going to have a little fun magic for the children and we’re going to have some sophisticated magic for the grownups. Now we will have one of the grownups or two to come up and help us.”

Probably the Grandma. They’ll see this hand, with a mechanism sticking through it and its a false hand and its a chopper.

I say ”We might just get Grandma to come up here and put her hand up in this illusion here and we’ll chop off her hand. And if her hand comes off she gets two million dollars! And if she has a nice husband, he’ll be tickled to death to get two million dollars.”

And when her hand is in there and I say that the blade is above her hand, and she’s holding her left hand, because I don’t want it to drop and hit the floor, or you lose your two million dollars. And I let go of the mechanism, she’s holding the whole thing in her left hand. And the blade is above her arm.

And I say, “can I do this, children?” and they all say, “Yeah! Do it. I want to see the hand come off.”

EMZ: Laughter.

SY: Actually it’s not going to come off, of course. I take the blade and I say to her “Look, do you see where the blade is?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel it? It’s just above your hand.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the carrots?”

Two carrots are at the bottom.

“Let’s do it.” And the blade comes down and goes through her hand and cuts the carrots and they fall on the floor. And I say, because she’s holding her hand and her hands are turning white because she’s squeezing so hard. She jumps.

“I felt it go through.”

“Can you wiggle your fingers?”

And she wiggles them.

“Oh, that means your hand didn’t come off! Son of a gun! I don’t get to get that watch and the watch and the beautiful ring on your hand because that what I get my wife when I do the hand chopping. I keep the jewelry and the hand and everything else. But it looks like she doesn’t get any jewelry today!”

So, it’s a whole lot of fun!

That’s the way I do my show. And people roar when I do that especially when I do the Grandma or the Auntie or somebody...

And I usually try to get someone with a lot of jewelry, because I can say “that’s how I get my wife all my jewelry, I get it from my magic shows.”

EMZ: So tell me, how long have you been performing magic shows? You’ve been doing this for a long time, haven’t you?

SY: I’ve been doing it since I’ve been a kid. And I do know how to interact and I know how to pick the people out of the audience, and it’s the same thing as when I do walk around.

When I do walk around I entertain-at a Country Club or a convention or whatever, weddings. I’ve done several weddings. Nine times out of ten, they want a little magic show and they want me to walk around table to table. Because people are sitting down at the tables.

And I go table to table and I do all kinds of coin tricks and magic tricks, card tricks, rope tricks...

EMZ: I just want to get clear on walk around magic shows? How long will your booking last?

SY: It all depends on the event. If they have a function where there’s going to be some speaking and there’s a sit down dinner beginning with a cocktail hour... I walk around for the cocktail hour, that’s an hour, hour-and-a-half. That may be hour or two hour booking.

If there’s no speaker and they want me to go table to table, I may go two-three hours. I have worked up to five hours.

EMZ: Now, if there is a cocktail hour followed later by speeches, and the client wants you to stop during the speeches and continue later, you’re charging for the entire time you have to be at the event?

In other words you may be walking around for 90 minutes, but you have to stay for 2 hours because there’s a break for speeches in the middle. You’d charge for 2 hours in that case.

SY: Yes, absolutely. You do have to explain this to people. Whether or not I work straight through in that scenario, the man has to be there.

Editor's Note: This is standard practice when hiring entertainers of all types, but not something that newbie hosts are always aware of.

How to Find a Competent Magician

EMZ: Most of the people coming to this web site are not going to be local to the Philadelphia area. So how would you advise them in choosing a magician? Such as, how do they know they’re getting somebody who will give them a fabulous magic show?

SY: Well to choose a good magician, you usually try to get an interview from him or find out exactly what he’s doing. And most magicians, if a magician is going to be doing walk around...Well, this is how I do it.

If you’re walking around, I have a small table that I bring in, and either a suitcase or whatever. I lay the suitcase on top, with all the magic in it that I think I’m going to perform. And I normally come with more than one suitcase. Because a lot of times if I’m working for more than one hour, I don’t want to keep doing the same tricks over and over.

A lot of magicians just go there with stuff in their pocket and they walk in with stuff in their pocket and they do, maybe five or six tricks the whole night long.

EMZ: So you want to ask how many tricks they’re going to have for your magic show?

SY: How many people? And you want to find out how many tricks the magician normally has for a given magic show? How many is he going to do? Coin tricks? Card tricks? Vanishing stuff? What kind of illusions is he going to do? And that’s exactly what I do, whether it is walk around, or whether it’s a show itself, I have enough there to cover everything.

Myself, personally, I do know some people that just walk in with just four or five things in their pocket...cards , coins, piece of string. And that’s what they do-they just go in with what’s in their pocket.

I come in with two suitcases and a small, actually you have to see my table to understand what I’m talking about.

So what you’re saying is that you have the suitcases, you have the table, so you should expect somebody to have a lot of tricks. I would say, most magicians, if you’re going to get a good magician, they should be able to entertain your guests for two to three hours without doing the same trick.

EMZ: OK

SY: This is what you want to specify. That if the magician is going to come and do a magic show, he’s not going to do the same tricks over and over and over. If you want him to perform for three hours, then you want him to perform with three hours of different tricks.

SY: Most magicians do not do what I do (the interactive stuff). They walk in and in a half hour they’re in and they’re out. And they walk in with a little suitcase full of cards and tricks which the children don’t understand.

This is what the client has to specify when hiring.

I ask the client, did they ever have a magician before and what did they do for them? A couple of ball and rope tricks? If they had a clown, what did the clown do for them? Jump around? Sing a couple of songs?

But did the kids get a chance to help? When I do the magic show, I let the kids help me with all the magic.

And if I get a child that’s a mean devil? Somebody that’s constantly jumping up... I have a trick that blows their mind.

I get them up and I say, “Mary I’ve got a special trick for you.” And I give Mary this big magic wand.

I say, “This is a magic wand. You’re going to help me out.” Then I take a napkin and there is a little bitty magic wand inside.

“You must hold this in your mouth for me.”

Now I’ve got her mouth shut, you understand?

EMZ: Yes.

SY: Then I wave the magic wand and there’s one in this hand and I wave it again and there’s another one in this hand, then another one. I ask her to come up on the stage and sit on a chair. Then I put one wand under one arm, the one under the other arm, one between her legs, and the biggest one, the last one, I put underneath her chin.

And she’s looking at me with one in her mouth and she can’t move. She can’t do a thing to me now.

It’s generally about a quarter of the way through the show that I start doing this. Because she’s not quiet.

I say, “You’re going to sit there. You’re going to do the best magic trick that we’re going to do.”

She hears me, but she can’t say anything. I say, “Can you just wiggle your head a little if you understand me?”

“OK, first we’re going to do a few magic tricks. I need you to sit there, because you have to sit there to get these magic wands to really work for me.”

So I do the show and when there’s maybe five minutes left in the show, I announce, “It’s Mary’s turn to do the magic trick.”

“OK, Mary, how are you, comfortable?”

She shakes her head.

Well, we have to make you uncomfortable. You’ve done this trick so well, so far, you were fantastic.”

The kids already know what I’ve gotten into. I’ve got the grownups snickering because they know what I did.

I grab the magic wands out of her, one by one. Then I ask her, “how do you feel, are you alright?”

“Can you stand up? Are you good?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, give Mary a great big hand. Because she sat there so nice and quiet with all those magic wands.”

She gives me one of those dirty looks, like, what did you do to me?

I got her, you understand...

She’s quiet and her mother comes to me and says “that is so cute when you did that to her....I couldn’t figure out why you were doing that, but I started to realize at the end what you did “...

“Mary, don't walk away, you are going to help me with the very last trick. What am I holding in my hand?”

“It’s a box.”

“What color is it?”

“It’s black and yellow, two tones.”

I say “if its black and yellow on the outside” and I pull a drawer out, “what color is on the inside?”

“It’s black.”

I wave a magic wand over the top. I say,” Say a magic word. Any magic word. Please Anything.”

She say s a magic word and waves the magic wand. I pull the drawer open and candy comes bubbling out of that empty box.

I say, “Mary, you did the best trick out of the whole show. Now everybody gets to have candy. Give Mary a great big hand.”

You know what, I got Mary to help me, she’s quiet, and after that she’s happy. Believe it or not, usually the child comes over to me and says “thanks a lot for letting me do that trick.”

Dress, Costumes, and Set Up

EMZ: When people want to include a magic show in their entertainment, how do they find you-or somebody like you? How do they screen you?

SY: Actually when they ask if I do walk around I say yes, and then I walk in fully dressed in a tuxedo. That’s important.

I don’t come in with street clothes where I look different from everyone there.

If it’s black tie affair, I go with a tuxedo anyway. Or if a company asks me in, I come in a full tuxedo or tuxedo pants and nice color jacket.

Whether it’s blue, whether it’s yellow, whether it’s white, whether it’s silver or whether it’s gold or whatever. I’ve got a dozen different jackets I can wear plus the tuxedo itself which is black and white, plus I have different color shirts as well. And I have an “Uncle Sam” outfit that I wear occasionally on the Fourth of July when they specify that they’d like that.

EMZ: And have you ever had an event planner book you for a magic show and say to you, I want you to be dressed this way and had to rent a costume?

SY: Oh, yes. And when they say that I tell them that I don't have that particular costume, but if you want me to, I can rent it. But you have to pay for the rental. Because you’re asking for something that’s not in my...if you’re asking me to dress up as a gorilla, I would have to millions of types of costumes...

EMZ: Oh, no, no, no! Your position is absolutely reasonable!

Basically it’s a tuxedo, a tuxedo hat...I have a cane, I have a beautiful, beautiful cape, it’s black on the outside and purple on the inside.

When I come dressed in the cape, people just stare at me like, Wow!

EMZ: OK, So...

SY: I’m very big on appearance, because I used to be in ice skating competition with my first wife.

EMZ: Oh, I didn’t know that.

SY: Even if I go to a park, I’m dressed neatly with a vest. I wear tuxedo pants no matter where I go. Nice shirt. If its outside during hot days in July and August, and I’m outside or where there’s no air conditioning, it’s just tuxedo pants, a nice shirt, and a vest, but no jacket.

SY: And sound systems, I have my own sound systems. I have my own music, I have my own pop up tent, if I need a tent. So I’m really well equipped to go anywhere, anytime.

EMZ: How long does it take you to set up for a magic show?

SY: Well, if I’m doing a magic show in someone's home, say if its in center city or where ever, I tell them I need to get to the closest opening to where you want me to do the show. So if its in your basement, and I have some heavy things to take with me, and there’s no elevator, I’ll need someone to help me, because I will not carry them down myself.

That is very important.

If it’s in a place where I can roll it out of my van, and roll it to the site of the show, then I do not need to ask for help.

Depending on the area, it’s generally anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes to set things up for a sit-down magic show.

EMZ: For the walk around magic shows do you have as much?

SY: No, I come in with two suitcases, attache cases. I have two of those specially made to store my magic. I rarely go into the second one, but sometimes, depending on the crowd I may want to do things a little differently. For example, if people has seen a given trick, I’ll say, let me show you something you’ve never seen before.

I try to accommodate the people in more ways than one.

EMZ: Aside from what we’ve discussed, what do your clients need to provide for you to be able to properly perfoirm your magic show?

SY: Nothing. Nothing. The space is all I need.

EMZ: And how much space do you need to perform a magic show.?

SY: Walk around, I only need the space that I’m standing in. And when I’m doing shows, I need something where at least a three or four foot space.

EMZ: That’s all?

SY: Normally when I get there there is sufficient room.

EMZ: What kind other kinds of events have you entertained at?

SY: Oh, I perform magic shows at numerous, numerous events...Please Touch Museum, Schools, Colleges...

EMZ: Do you do conventions?

SY: Oh, yes, a lot of conventions. I’ve done the Mayor of Philadelphia who is governor now.

EMZ: Oh, you entertained Ed Rendell!

SY: I’ve performed magic shows at weddings, lots of weddings. I did one wedding and it spiralled off into several other weddings. People saw what I was doing and they wanted to have me at their event. Also, magic shows are a hit at corporate parties, employee appreciation, company picnics, holiday parties....I’ve done Renaissance events.

EMZ: A lot of people think of a magic show, like having a caricature artist, as just something for the kids. But adults really enjoy them, too. What proportion of your magic shows focus on children and what proportion focuses on adults?

SY: Oh, I have to say it’s about 50/50.Sometimes if I’m performing a magic show at an adult’s event and I know there’ll be some children there, I’ll take a few tricks that the children understand.

I do mostly birthday parties, christenings, and Communions. I do do a lot of private parties.

Other Interviews with magician Stephen Yowe about Magic and Harry Potter shows.

Magic Shows: an overview
Children's Magic Shows
Harry Potter shows

To contact and learn about Stephen Yowe.

From Magic Shows to Home.