Performing a magic show is when you will either make or break yourself as a magician. What the audience doesn't realise is the amount of preparation involved in planning the show. This series of articles will go through the process I use for creating the best possible routine for each different demographic.

After reading the first article of the series, you should have an idea of the demographic you will be performing to. Now it is time to plan your routine.

The first section of this article will concentrate on Children's Parties, which can easily be adapted to stage performances.

When planning a show for children, it is important to remember that children have very short attention spans and will most likely initially prefer to be outside playing with their friends on a bouncy-castle! For this reason, I start my show by warming them up (the typical shouting of abracadabra, I can't hear you...) then doing a quick, very visual trick with no audience participation. The idea of this is to amaze them without having to interrupt the little flow you have by asking for a helper – depending on the kids and their age, they may not be willing to help at this point anyway.

Once you have proved yourself, hopefully the children will now want to see more and get more involved. My second trick is typically still reasonably short but involves a nice story. After this point, I try to use as much audience-participation as possible (but not when unnecessary) and reward them with clapping, balloons and branded merchandise! This is done for two reasons – possibly the most important is that the parents will hear clapping and see their kids on stage, and when the kids return with their balloon and trick with my phone-number on it, the parents will instantly know how to get me for their child's party! The other reason is that the children enjoy being up on stage and it keeps the show varied – you will never have two identical assistants helping you – there will be the quiet ones who you have to encourage and the noisy ones who you have to control, all without making them look bad! It also helps their attention-span as most kids will want to be good to be picked by you.

On this note, one technique that teachers and magicians often use is only reward the good children by bringing them up on stage. Tell them that you will only pick the children behaving well, not the ones stabbing each other with the balloon sword you have just made!

During the middle of the show, you will want to vary the length of the tricks to keep them interested. Colourful, noisy, flashy tricks do help here. Finally, winding up the show should involve a few tricks, each getting bigger, better and more entertaining as that will be the lasting impression.

This final section will concentrate on performing to adults.

Planning your routine is very similar to planning a routine for children except that you can (usually) rely on the adults having a longer attention-span. You'll probably want to start with a quick visual trick to get them interested, but from there on it is a lot more flexible. Audience participation isn't as essential but it is important to have some participation – you certainly don't want to stand in front of them, talk at them, do your tricks and walk away! The performance should be two-way, get them involved, and as mentioned in the previous article, adapt the performance according to their personalities.

Using relevant tricks is important in this case as they should suit the surroundings – using props that could be found on the table helps enormously – a stage illusion in front of a table isn't the most practical!

If you are stuck for quality tricks, then you may want to take a look at http://www.magichat.co.uk for some free magic tricks – although I would recommend you delay your performance until you are happy with the your new routine.

Edward Jellard has been performing professional magic for many years. His repertoire includes stage magic, children's entertaining and close-up table hopping.

For plenty of free magic tricks, please visit http://www.magichat.co.uk.

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