So proud of my daughter!

She had her first paid kids show this week-end and she did an amazing job. Aby just turned 13 and she performed various effects for 45 minutes. She notice that crowd control is a little more difficult than in a stage setting even though their is not as many people. Their was around 30 pers in a basement of a house...

Effect that went extremely well are:

Fiber optic, Shoe business 2.0, TNT 2 and Invisible deck using the Bill Malone standing O plot (using the birthday boy).

She is now looking to watch or read anything to do with kids magic and entertainment.

Congratulations to your Daughter and to You!

Wish I'd started that young (and that well, LOL).

-Mary Mowder

Thanks Mary,

I really like your kind words. I am a little scared since we are going back to Canada (from the US) this summer in an area where their is very little magic...I will have to rely heavily on books and DVD for mentorship since I will be losing Mr. Denny and some other great mentors!

Thanks again!

Aby

Aby:

Congratulations on your first show. It sounds like it was a wonderful learning experience.

If you've been working with Denny, then you have had a great mentor. Let us know if you need some recommendations for great books to learn from. There are a lot of great choices depending on what direction you want to take your magic.

Best of luck.

Thanks Reality one.

Working with Denny was fantastic. I have all the Tarbells, Royal road and the Mark Wilson CCIM and these are great references for Aby. We also met some fantastic female magicians that said they would be avail to Aby if she has any questions. Kayla Drescher was very good with her at the last lecture we attended. We are going to Magi-Whirl in a few week and a friend of ours (Eric Henning) will try and introduce Aby to Ariann Black.

Thanks again for your support!

Steph

Steph:

Excellent start to a library. Tarbell could keep Aby occupied for several years. I tend to use my set as a reference, but would love to take the time to read them cover to cover. You might also consider getting a subscription to Genii. Magazine. It will give you access to all of the back issues. There is a ton of great material over the 70 years plus a lot of amazing history. There also have been some recent cover stories on July Eng and Katherine Mills. My favorite book for parlor type performances (as well as some fun close-up stuff) is Jim Steinmeyer's Conjuring.

Kayla is great. She and Lynetta Welch did a great lecture at Marc DeSouza's place. I think they had just lectured at Denny's a day or two before.

It sounds like Aby is on the right track!

Congrats Aby on your first paid show.
Sounds like your off to a great start.
I also wish I would have started that
early in life.
Todd

Congratulations to Aby! Sounds like a great first paid show. (Shoe business 2.0 still makes me smile, not going to lie!)

Also, have fun at Magi-Whirl!

Wow fiber optic! I did cut and restored w/sliding knot and brought the house down

This brings up the material chosen.

As a Woman, I understand, she wants to impress and establish her credentials but Kids shows (especially) are about connecting.

Fibre Optic is a high powered FAST paced routine that will go over for Adults and Kids too. It will impress for sure. After learning Fibre Optic, I doubt she will want to hear this but.... It essentially plays AT the crowd. If you interact too much the audience will loose the flow and "condition" of the rope.

With Kids shows you want something where interruption is less of a problem. Kids are happier with interactive routines (or appear to be more interactive).

Because I do a lot of densely packed routines like Ring and Rope, Flying Knots (a lot of rope tricks strung together in a fun way) and a card flourish routine, Linking Rings etc... I can tell you that it burns through the material quickly (and can become a crutch). Once you are in the habit of delivering the effects quickly and furiously it can be hard to slow down and interact. Kids today really need and want some give and take to feel they are an important part of the show. Generally, I only have the Birthday Kid come up and help, but I am often engaging them all from a seated position.

I totally applaud the discipline in learning FibreOptic and I know it is working but for Kids shows (by which I always mean Family Shows) there are better choices.

Save the Fibre Optics for Adult, Older Kids and Teen Shows (where you want to bring out the big guns).

A good interactive trick for 4 to @9 in a mixed group of Kids is John Fedco's "Beads of Prussia". If you get one that does not work well at first return it immediately. A good one is GREAT, a bad one will never be good.
I talk about the beads being separate and they are separate people but they share a bond of Friendship and Family so we will try to create a magical bond of friendship between the beads. She can use any patter that appeals to her (including mine).
Having fun with the beads being put in the tube is where they enjoy the interaction. I ask them to help me make a repeating pattern of the beads and invite them to tell me the next color. Moving end of the tube a little as an older Kid puts it in will get a laugh. Make sure to say they are wooden beads and not candy, and don't give a bead to a toddler without an older Kid watching out for them.

-Mary Mowder

By the way, the Rope routine I use for most Birthday Party shows is "Toss Trio" (my partner Tom's routine) It is knots produced or tied and taken off in various fashions and handed out to Kids (invisible or pretend knots in the kids hands) and tossed back onto the rope where they appear visibly on the Rope. It is simple and easy to do. The by play and interaction are paramount.
Does it impress other Magicians? NO. Do I have stronger Rope material? YES. Is Toss Trio the strongest Rope material I do for Kids parties (including the always present Adults in attendance)? YES!!!

-Mary Mowder

I'm gong to disagree a bit with @Mary Mowder, which is very rare because I have a lot of respect for Mary and typically agree with her advice. To the extent you are working with kids age 6 and up, I think that it is OK to have some strong material that has a faster pace and is less interactive. A good show should have texture. Some very interactive pieces, some story pieces, some funny pieces, some serious pieces, some gags and jokes and some pieces that are demonstration pieces. My cups and balls routine has always been a faster paced and stronger routine and it keeps the audience's interest and gets great reactions. I think Fiber Optics is visual enough and fast moving enough to keep attention and can provide a nice change of pace in a show.

Also, I do think that a younger magician needs to have some strong magic to show her chops to both the kids and the adults that have hired her. Now, if every effect in the show was like Fiber Optics, then I think you would have a problem.

Nonetheless, for me, Fiber Optics doesn't work. I've never found the right presentational hook for it. Instead, I perform Roberto Giobbi's Houdini's Rope Trick.

The key is to try different types of effects and different levels of interaction and pacing and see what works for you.

P.S. Beads of Prussia sounds like a great effect.

Reality one might be right about that.

I use Contact Juggling to establish credentials in my Stand-Up shows and some Card Flourishing to do the same for Close-Up work.

If Fiber Optics is how she does this, keep it for now. Once she has a reputation she can take my advice. Just make sure there is some interactive component to the show now.

-Mary Mowder

Thank you for all the great inputs and some new material to dig into. I will discuss this with Aby. I completely agree that interactions with the kids is very important and she does her best to include them in everything that she does. In fiber optics, she gets them to inspect the rope at the very beginning including some good funny lines and at the end, she calls 2 kids on stage in order to break the illusion. She makes it sounds like they are the ones doing the magic and restoring the ropes to their original sizes.

She is currently working on close-up magic for her first restaurant gig. Her current sets are as follow and she is trying to re-use some material:

Set 1 (storyline on perception)
Fiber optic
COAT (Cameron francis)
Invisible deck

Set 2
B&W surprise
B`Wave
Close Call

Many thanks once again.

Sounds like she has it right.

-Mary