Sun of an Update

I'm finally relaxing after a long two weeks. I'm sunburnt from performing outside for seven hours yesterday at Allen Park and Lincoln Park's Relays for Life. The day saw two stage performances that both took some heavy modifications at the last minute. Each city seems to have a very different vibe and it was hard to plan ahead for what type of audience I was going to encounter.

Starting the month off was a performance on May 1st at the Riverview Relay where I performed for about twenty very interested adults and a few 16-18 year olds that tagged along. Earlier that week I had written a prediction under the supervision of employees of Rivergate Health Care center, just down the road from the Relay for Life. Right before the prediction was opened for the first time on stage, I had everyone in the audience write a number from 1 - 50 and put it in a hat. Our on stage audience member reached into the hat and pulled out one of the numbers at random. In my prediction was four of the six numbers to the Michigan Mega Millions lotto drawing, perfectly predicted. The fifth number, number 47, was held in the hands of the audience member. This was the fulfillment of a very old childhood dream and a great surge of excitement.

Allen Park's audience was all young children under the age of 12 and a few 16ish year olds that wanted to have a little fun. I had come prepared for a similar group as my Riverview show and had to change it very quickly as I saw that not one person watching resembled that last group. Also, I wasn't able to use the stage or a microphone and did the stage on the grass in front of the stage. After starting a little shaky and not being able to find the first kids card in an impressive fashion (I just pulled it out of the deck!) I got things going by ripping a kids dollar bill in half and putting it back together, having a girl hold her quarter tightly in her fist until it actually became bent, and bending silverware ala Uri Gellar.

I performed there for another couple hours including a long stop with a boyscout group until finally driving over to Lincoln Park's Council Point Park. I walked around a while looking very conspicuous in my dress pants, white dress shirt, and black vest. I then approached a woman with a few bored looking kids and asked if they wanted to see some magic. The older woman was not expecting anything that she saw as each trick made her yell louder and back up further away from the table! I started to walk away when some overly energetic teenagers asked me if I was a magician. I showed them some magic and spent the next hour playing the card game "B.S." with them in front of their tent.

I almost didn't perform my stage show at Lincoln Park. Where my first two shows were performed for an older group and a much younger group, this one was all pre-teens and teenagers listening to songs I've never heard of! However, some friends of mine showed up to the event and I would have felt horrible if I didn't show up for them. I turned back to the group, said "one seven", set down the seven of diamonds, and walked away.

The stage show was much shorter and felt like it was my most energetic performance to date. I closed out the performance by doing a voodoo styled effect where someone's thought of card folds up inside of the card box after folding up a business card that the spectator is focusing on.

Things are far from slowing down for me, however, as next week I am performing at the Taylor Relay for Life for at least two luncheons and probably some walk-around afterwards. Also, beginning the first Wednesday of June I will be teaching a magic class at the Lincoln Park Bandshell (www.LincolnParkRec.com), and on June 9th I will be performing for 24 hours at the Woodhaven Relay for Life to close out my participation in their events for 2010.

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Steve Wachner
www.TheUsedMagician.com