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"Magic" Mike Bailardo

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Transitioning From Amateur Magician to Professional Magician

By Shayne King

In my humble opinion as a working professional magician, the primary difference between an amateur magician and a professional magician is the audience.

An amateur magician tends to perform mainly for friends and family. As a result, he must be constantly learning new tricks so as not to repeat tricks that his audience has seen before. A professional magician on the other hand almost always has a fresh new audience to perform for. A pro tends to find 6 to 10 tricks that can flow together well to create a show and then rehearses them until he can do them in his sleep. A professional magician rarely adds new material to his show. It is the hours of practice when he was an amateur that make it possible for the pro to earn his living with magic.

The advice that I would give to you as an amateur magician who wants to make the transition to professional is this:

1. Find a mentor. A working pro who is willing to sit down with you and show you how to put a show together from your existing material.

2. If you have already gone ahead to put your own idea of a show together, then have your mentor come and watch as an audience member and take notes of your performance.

3. Keep the good stuff in and either throw out the bad stuff or work/rehearse until all the negative points your mentor has identified have been addressed to his satisfaction.

I asked a good friend and seasoned pro to come to my first show and give me some criticism. After the show he presented me with three full pages of notes, none of them were positive. My wife/assistant and I rehearsed the "modified" show three times a day for a month until we had addressed every one of the negative points in my friend's notes. I once more invited him to watch and criticize the show. After the show he came up to me, leaned forward so no one else could hear and said "your shoes were scuffed". I considered that statement to be very high praise indeed. Basically, he was saying that I had done the work on the performance aspect and now needed to pay attention to my self.

In this article I have just begun to address the things that you will need to do in order to make the transition to professional magician. Stay tuned for future articles that go into much more detail. In the meantime if you have any questions about becoming an amateur or professional magician please don't hesitate to contact me and I will try to provide you with a timely answer.

Shayne King, the King of Magic
http://www.thekingofmagic.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shayne_King