Magic through the Side Door by Chris McCauley
I’m going to tell you something shocking that you may not know. Houdini wanted to be a magician. But he couldn’t. That’s right: the greatest magician in history (reputedly) wanted to be a magician, but he wasn’t able to do it, at least not the way he wanted, and not right away.
The history of Houdini and his act is as follows: he began in vaudeville as the King of Cards. But there was a huge problem, which was that there were way too many card manipulators in operation then, and the pay was extremely bad. Anyone could get on stage with a deck of cards and do flourishes with them, and given vaudeville’s proclivity, (poor lighting and a large stage) this act was a little bit hard to even see. Bess and Houdini struggled in those early years and Houdini wanted a big stage show: but there was no way to accomplish that. Because Vaudeville was all the rage, producers wanted a tight 5-10 minute act, not a full evening stage show. There were huge evening stage shows back then, but the amount of capital required for such a show was insurmountable, it was an activity put on by the already affluent. This is not to say that Houdini didn’t perform any magic alongside his escapes, he did, but what I’m saying is he wasn’t able to do a full stage show of magic until much later in his career.
In 1895 he started his act, it was mostly cards, a few other items and the metamorphosis trunk act. Houdini noticed that there were bigger crowd reactions for the escape than his other effects. He added a handcuff escape as well. In 1899, while performing for Martin Beck, he was advised to ditch all the magic and only do escapes. Keep in mind, Houdini wanted to do a full stage magic show. Nevertheless, he took Martin’s advice, and then toured on the Orpheum Circuit and then in 1900 around Europe, using his skills to do publicity stunts along the way making him an international star. He kept doing escapes for twenty five years until he could finally have the full evening show he had always dreamed of. In 1925 he debuted Houdini’s Three Shows In One, at the Maryland Theater in Baltimore, MD. Even then, the first act was magic, the second act, debunking spiritualists, and the third act, escapes. Houdini had finally achieved his dream some 30 years after the day he started and had a full evening show.
Now, I know what you want. What you want is to have your full evening stage show, your TV program, and to be famous! That’s what we all want, that’s how we all imagine ourselves, our true self is the consummate performer on a huge stage with hundreds of adoring fans. But the truth is, every great magician I’ve known found their way by experimenting. They try strange things, play odd characters, and step into places no one expected magic to appear.
What I want to impress upon you in this writing is that even Houdini came in through the side door. The front door is very, very, rarely used in magic. Very few people simply start off with the goal of a stage show for adults, or a magic TV program and then simply do it. That’s just not how magic works in my experience. And to be perfectly honest, maybe that’s not how it should work.
You see, magic needs a lot of things to happen, and a lot of people to do them, and every person has a role to play. Maybe (and often) not the role they imagined and they find that they finally embrace the life that they never expected! Let’s use me as an example. I set out to do magic summer camps as a way to supplement my income until I could become a “real” magician, with my full evening stage show that I dreamed about (just like everyone else). This would just be a stepping stone to that goal. 20 years later, the camps have expanded to a full enterprise with more than 350 students each year at dozens of locations all around the D.C. area. I never expected that the business would get that big. But guess what? That’s what magic needed of me at the time. My income in doing that has surpassed some of the professional magicians I know personally!
I know you might be thinking that I’m mystical (or crazy) by thinking of magic as some sort of entity or real force in the universe. But that’s just shorthand. Let’s get down to brass tacks. There is a certain market for different venues and shows. You might not be right for a certain venue or market, or what you have to offer might not be right for it. Or, it could be that the market for that around you is too small. Or the venue isn’t right for the type of magic you do. It could be that you are great with children or terrible for adults. Or it could be there is great demand for one thing and no demand for something else. You could be great at a Bar Mitzvah and terrible at a pre-school.
You cannot control venues and markets, you can only control yourself, and in controlling yourself you have a certain amount of range in what you can be. So finding yourself, your market, your venue, and your talent is like a combination lock, and the combinations can be quite surprising.
One other thing to remember, nearly every venue is a side door! If you think about it, every possible venue for magic is strange. Let’s take a typical theatre. Imagine you invited people to the theatre and told them that instead of a full stage production with music, dancing, drama, and dozens of characters on the stage, instead we are going to do something different. Instead it’s going to be a one character show, that character is going to be a magician, and they are only going to display one skill: magic. How bizarre is that, really? It’s positively strange!
Every venue for magic is strange: A stage set up in a casino? A small arena inside a floating boat? A kid’s birthday party? A wedding? A corporate meeting? A séance in a haunted mansion? Nearly all of these are performing venues that seem like a side attraction, a side door if you will into entertainment.
What I’m telling you is that you need to embrace it. Don’t try the main door, find a side door. Get out there and experiment and you will be REALLY surprised at what you will find. I’m going to give you two more examples, one of which is very exciting to me. It’s strikingly similar to the Houdini example.
It is hard to lure people out of their homes in this day and age with the ability for people to buy alcohol at the store and to get streaming services and internet on their own devices. Many bars are suffering, but one model is thriving: the brewery. The brewery offers a unique high quality product. They are also pairing it with something else that gets people out of the house: good live entertainment. Since breweries are by necessity far bigger than bars, that gives them the opportunity to put in a stage. What we’re now seeing is a revival of vaudeville: local music, talent shows, open mic nights and magicians! Who would have thought that people would like to see magic at a brewery? That’s what’s happening all up and down the East Coast right now. And it isn’t just breweries. More restaurants and bars are putting up stages. I performed a full stage show for an hour at a Mexican restaurant. Places are putting in stages because that live entertainment brings people in!
In order to get into those side doors you also need to be just as strange as the venues that you wish to perform in. You need to experiment with your range as a performer to see what you can be good at. Do you have an act that will play well for a jovial boisterous and semi-inebriated crowd? If you do, then you might be the star of the brewery circuit. Do you like to be a Shakespearean character? You might end up a star of the Renaissance Fair circuit.
The more you play with your range as a performer, the more combinations you have to unlock a side door. Meadow Perry experimented with adding bubble effects to her magic show. Now she’s the bubble magician and is performing at the Magic Castle. Eric Knaus loved doing super silly comedy and now he’s Washington DC’s foremost magician for preschoolers doing hundreds of shows each year for that particular venue. Benjamin Corey tried doing magic at corporate meetings. He found that he was great at it and turned that into a whole successful business.
My favorite venue is just as strange: a one bedroom apartment full of twenty something professionals in Washington DC. These shows are for extremely intelligent people who want to be entertained, but want something live. They want to see the magic happen right before their eyes. It’s a mix of close up and parlor and I’ve done lots of these shows and I truly love them more than any other type of show I’ve ever done. Most of these people have never seen a magician live in person before and are blown away when they do. They are easy to do for me (just one bag is all I bring) and pay very well. They want a mix of comedy and jaw dropping mentalism. Who would have thought that this would be the perfect venue for me?
One of the other unique skills I have is learning to find a parking space in Washington DC. What most people don’t know is that it’s okay to park anywhere around a building in DC. You can usually find a side door. I’ve found mine. I hope you find yours too.
Chris McCauley
