COVID: Taking Magic Online
An essential trait of being an entertainer is to be able to adapt when in the face of adversity. A small example of this idea is when a trick goes wrong during a show. There are many ways one can recover from a fumble; one of which is by using humor to play it off. Every mentalist and magician faces small issues such as these throughout their careers. One of my magic teachers in Las Vegas had once told me that, “ You can tell how skilled a performer is not by how well he does a trick, but by how well he recovers when messing up.” The message here is that everyone will occasionally slip. It is how they recover which defines their skill.
In all, the one constant in the world of entertainment is that there isn’t one! Since jumping into magic full-time after I graduated university, I was well aware that I would be facing hardships at one point or another. I used to think that one of the biggest potential hurdles in my line of entertainment is a recessed economy. Though I was in grade school at the time of the 2008 recession, I was old enough to understand that many people were out of a job and that there was less money circulating. As a by-product, one of the first industries to be impacted was the entertainment industry. Shows happened, but at a lesser volume. I knew that this was a possibility as I ventured into the space as a full-time entertainer.
Little did I know that after my graduation in June of 2019, I was just a short distance away from a pandemic that virtually eliminated the live entertainment industry: the COVID 19 pandemic.
Image from my last live show at Mammoth Mountain Resort. The resort shut down the following morning.
When the pandemic hit, I was shocked to see my shows come to a complete halt. Trying to look at COVID optimistically, I viewed this as an opportunity to adapt the traditional way I perform to the virtual world. This, of course, meant that I would bring my shows to online platforms such as FaceTime, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. This transition had its own challenges such as needing to develop and perform material that played to a virtual audience. I eventually developed a show and started to market myself as a virtual entertainer.
Performing a Zoom mentalism show for Commonwealth Financial Network.
Overall, performing online mentalism and magic shows through the thick of COVID was a great experience since I now have another tool that I can pull out in the event I have/or want to do a show from another location.
COVID had taught me that any encountered obstacle, regardless of the size, will offer opportunities to grow in ways that may not have been thought of. I think that this glass-half-full mindset is a crucial one to have when facing any adversity in my personal or professional career.
