I do not want to make light of this, but one of the things that has occupied me over the last eighteen months is a little game that I have playing with myself. It is a little thought experiment where I try to discover a job title that has been more impacted by Covid than “Close Up Hospitality Magician”.
It is a hard game to play successfully, although there have been some winning suggestions. I will not spoil the game but let you try and play yourself. Answers on an email to magic@thebowlerhattedmagician.com will be warmly read and harshly judged.
Performing on a stage has been tricky enough. With the theatres closed, there was no chance for audiences at all to enjoy such entertainment. However, even as the restrictions lift, there are all sorts of pitfalls to negotiate.
I was lucky enough to visit the opening of a new West End Magic Show in London last week. Wonderville is a variety show featuring different types of magicians all doing twenty minutes of material each and wowing the audience in their own unique way. What was really interesting to watch was the completely unrestrained joy that each of them had for being on a stage again and being able to perform for actual live people in front of them.
I do not begrudge them this feeling. The ability to see how a magical event can move an audience is the primary reason that I love performing something impossible. It is the reason that it is one of the longest enduring art forms of the world. You can see the reason why people love performing magic and why people love watching it. Live.
But even on stage, your first job as a magician is to connect with your audience and as soon as volunteers were invited onto the stage to take part in tricks, the masks come out and distance had to be maintained.
These two barriers are intensified when you are not a magician on the stage, but in your living room, or wedding venue. If you can not smile at someone, then I feel you have nothing. This is what has caused me the most misery over the last eighteen months. Not just in a performance sense, but generally just nodding to people in the street. No smiles means no connection.
However, although caution should still be uppermost in our minds, that glimmer you can see in the corner of your eye is the light at the end of the tunnel. You can view my instagram page to see what solutions I have been employing to keep both myself and my audiences safe, but the future looks slightly more rosy.
Therefore I was very happy to attend my first post Covid wedding this weekend. Everyone was aching to smile and laugh and connect with family and friends as an act of true love was celebrated amongst them. I was truly flattered to be asked to join them and I live in hope that the worst is behind us and that the connection that magic can bring will be back to enrich all our lives for a long time to come.
Date: August 23, 2021