Kids Entertainer Podcast Episode #16: Easy Magic Tricks for Kids Entertainers

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Annabelle Hutchinson
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1 Kids Entertainer Podcast Episode #16: Easy Magic Tricks for Kids Entertainers In this podcast, Colette Kelly talks with Jeremy Le Poidevin of Practical Magic. Together they delve into how to run a successful magic convention and magic shop, where kids entertainers who want to start doing magic can learn easy magic tricks, and what makes a true-blue kids entertainer. You can listen to the entire podcast here. Colette: I am absolutely delighted to have with us today Jeremy Le Poidevin. Jeremy is the owner of A Practical Magic, a magic shop that has been running for 20 years now. But not only does Jeremy run a fantastic magic shop; he is also the organiser of a hugely successful children s entertainers convention here in the UK called Trix in the Stix. Welcome to the Kids Entertainer podcast, Jeremy. Jeremy: Thank you very much, Colette, and hello everybody. Colette: It s wonderful to have you here, Jeremy. I got hold of you a mere couple of weeks since the last Trix maybe two or three weeks? Jeremy: It s exactly two weeks. Colette: Two weeks, fantastic. How good is that for timing? I was very honored to be able to be there again this year. It was fantastic. Jeremy, I know that tickets have gone on sale a week ago? Jeremy: They went five days ago. There were 240 tickets available. They sold out in two hours. Colette: Wow. I know that Trix is hugely popular and that children s entertainers line up they line up to get into the next event. So Jeremy, what makes your convention so successful? What is your secret? Jeremy: I think there are quite a few things that work in its favor. Most magic conventions now I say this for those who have never been into one, there could be entertainers out there who have not been specifically magically orientated most conventions are a mixture of lectures and dealers. Sometimes they will throw in workshops as well, but that is the usual pattern. Dealers are open during the day, while there are lectures going on on specific areas.

2 When we were planning Trix in the Stix we ve just had the third one we wanted to try and do something a little different. The event actually starts on a Monday, late afternoon to early evening, and all day Tuesday. Tuesday is the day which is given over, as it were, to instruction. We have some things called power presentations, which are very short 15-minute talks, rather like TED talks which are so popular on the Internet. A very specific topic is explored in some depth very meaty. So we have power presentations, we have some lectures, we have dealers that is what happens on Tuesday. But in addition to that, on Monday, we have a series of events which are purely light-hearted. There is no attempt at instruction at all. To begin with, John Kimmons, the person who works very closely with us and who is an outstanding children s entertainer, he and I do what is called a live Fireside Chat in which we discuss in a rather irreverent way topics that will be of interest to children s entertainers. I want to make it clear that Trix in the Stix is a convention purely aimed at children s entertainers. Then following that, we have a cabaret, and that is not specifically geared towards children s entertainers. It is simply a cabaret for entertainment. That goes on for about an hour and a half. After that, we have a rather anarchic show called the Breakaway Wand Show, where more or less anything goes. It s just a collection of sketches. The whole idea of Monday is to get people in a party mood so that they can socialize, have fun, have a laugh. It s a meeting of like minds, which is as important as any of the lectures that we put on. Colette: That is such a good description of what exactly goes on there. As a conventiongoer, it is so much fun being able to just connect with people in the same industry, to share stories, to share insights, to socialize with other children s entertainers out there and to hear what works for them. I would urge any children s entertainer, regardless of what it is you do, whether it s magic disco or if you re a games leader, a face painter, or a balloon twister, to go to conventions. There is just so much you get out of these. Jeremy: I would agree entirely. Let s just take the example of somebody who is a face painter. To add another string to your bow and include a little bit of magic it gives you an edge over your competitors. If you are a balloon twister (we certainly cater to those at the convention), it would also be great to be able to add some magic. It does not have to be complicated. People have this impression that magic always uses huge amounts of sleight of hand and is very, very difficult to do it isn t. Particularly magic for children.

3 It s usually much more geared to the presentation rather than difficulty. So if you are a balloon twister or a face painter, I think sprinkling a little magic into your act would add an awful lot to it. Colette: I can certainly vouch for that. I ve added magic. I do like a 20-minute magic show it s part of what I offer. And it s exactly that, I m no skilled magician when it comes to sleight of hand and all of these things. I think the key behind this is the aim is not to become a super talented magician. The aim is to entertain children by using various methods, and magic is certainly one of them. Now Jeremy, that brings me very neatly onto the other part of what it is that you do with tongue in cheek I m saying the other 50 weeks in the year, because I know Trix doesn t just take a couple of weeks to organise the Practical Magic, the magic shop that you ve been running for 20 years now. Tell us a little bit more about that. Who are the people you service with that? What does that look like? Jeremy: When we started 20 years ago, we actually bought a business called Practical Magic. It was a very rundown, funny little business. We did not have a background in magic, my wife Cheryl and myself. I was actually a teacher and my wife was a school librarian. I was interested in magic have been since I was young but I ve never been to a convention, I did not know a lot about what was going on. But at the age of 40, I decided that I wanted to do something different. It was either to continue in teaching but maybe in a more administrative capacity, or to leave and do something entirely different. This funny little business, Practical Magic, came on the market just at the time we were thinking of leaving. We decided to take a huge leap and to start running our own business, something that neither of us has ever done before. It was a general dealership. In other words, it wasn t specifically geared to children s entertainers. We sold all sorts of magical apparatus. We sold mentalism tricks, close-up, as well as children s. But I think my heart particularly was in the children s market. Something else had happened just a few years before we came in. The colossus of the magic world, Supreme Magic, who were known the world over for the quality of their children s products particularly, disappeared off the face of the earth. Magicians were looking for good-quality children s props. I think we saw a niche in the market at that point and we decided that we would major on that.

4 However, it took us quite a few years before we decided to stop stocking virtually anything else and go over completely to children s magic, which is more or less what we do now. We still serve the magic community with things like silks and sponge balls because children s entertainers use those as well. But if you look at our website, you will see that principally we sell to the children s entertainer. Colette: I certainly used you as a regular supplier for the bits and pieces that were out, those silks I use, the magic coloring book. I must be honest, Jeremy. Your service is amazing. You get in touch, you get the things out very quickly, very neatly packaged, and very reasonably priced. Jeremy: You know, children s entertainers are just like children, and I don t mean that in any disparaging sense at all. But if as a child, you are promised a toy, you wanted it in your hands in seconds flat. You don t want to wait for three months until you get it. Children s entertainers are no different, or perhaps magicians in general. Once they decide they want a particular product or prop, it is their toy. And the faster you get it into their hands, the happier they would be. I used to purchase magic before I was a dealer. The faster you can get it into their hands, the happier they would be and the more likely they would return to you. And so we try to build up a very good service, getting stuff quickly and sending all around the world. Colette: Wow, you ve just opened up something probably I didn t know about myself. You re exactly right. It is exactly that when you got a new thing, you re excited about it, you want to do it in this weekend s parties. It s certainly a great business model, certainly a great way of running a business and making sure your customers return. I personally use magic in my act, but for our listeners out there like face painters, people who don t use magic just yet, they get to your website, Practical-Magic.com we ll put a link to your website in the show notes, Jeremy and they go, Okay, I need to add some magic to my act. Where do they begin? What do they look at? Jeremy: The first thing I would suggest that they do is to look at the home page. They will find a section called Video Demos. We started doing these about eight years ago. There must be 200, 5300 on the site. These are performances but not explanations I want to stress that. They are performances using most of our products. So you can look on our site and go, I like that, or I don t think that presentation would be appropriate for the group that I m

5 going to be working with. You can actually see the prop in action and get some sense of how it would work in your show. The reason why there are no explanations, which obviously would be helpful to people, is that websites are open to anybody. The secrecy which surrounds magic is important, so that the secrets that we all use are not disseminated to all. In other words, exposure. So you won t find explanations on our site but you will find demonstrations. Having looked at a particular video on our site, you then might think, That s what I want. You can then click on the product. There s a link under the video. It will take you straight to the product. You can read about it, and it will probably give you the dimensions, the price, all sorts of things. Colette: That s fantastic. I m actually on your website as we re speaking and I m looking at all sorts of things. And I see Jeremy that you are very often in the videos. Jeremy: (Laughs) I m probably in about 50 percent of them. I ve mentioned earlier that we work very closely with an outstanding English entertainer called John Kimmons, who used to work for the Supreme Magic company. This interview is getting quite circular because here we are referencing the Supreme Magic company again. John used to work for them as a demonstrator and he is an outstanding demonstrator. He s also working as a children s entertainer, whereas I concentrate on actually running the business rather than going out and performing. However, I did have a background as I ve mentioned. For 20 years I was a teacher, which obviously gave me quite some insight into the mentality of children, which is usefui. John and I tend to split between us the demonstration of various products. Sometimes if we re lucky, we manage to borrow our neighbors children and they will stand in as the audience. Sometimes we just pretend there is an audience, but we do try to give a sense of a performance when we do these demonstrations. Colette: I absolutely love that because it makes it so personal. And I ve looked at the videos. They re highly entertaining. They really are. I know you, Jeremy, and I know John. There s that element of connection between yourself and your customer and also that element of knowing how children react. Children are predictable, they react to certain things, and I think you optimize very well on that, certainly with your teaching background and John s background as a performer. I think that makes a really winning combination.

6 Jeremy: That s very nice to hear. I was going to just say that there was one other thing on the website you will find which comes back to the service that we try to offer. When you send out a magic trick, the person who receives it might decide that they want to present it in quite a different way. We have a section on the site, also on the home page, called Tips & Hints. These are ideas, suggestions, alternatives, routines suggested by our customers concerning Practical Magic props. So they will say, This is how I do this particular trick. We put those on the site so that people can look at them and decide if they would like to do it in a different way. It s simply a service that we offer, which is there for all our customers. Colette: Again, I m on your website clicking through as you were talking and this is really helpful. I ve been buying from you, Jeremy, and I ve got a show that I perform and everything, and I ve never taken the time to actually go through all the various things that you were putting out there for your customers. So thank you. I m certainly going to be having a look through here and I urge anyone who s even got the slightest inkling if you re already doing magic work, toying with adding something like that to go through what Jeremy puts on here. It s very extensive. It s certainly a great service and it s very, very helpful indeed. Jeremy: It was built up over the years. If you watch carefully, you can see me ageing gracefully or disgracefully, whichever way you want to look at it. Colette: It s a wonderful service to the children s entertainers community, Jeremy, so thank you on behalf of everybody. We really appreciate that. What a wonderful catalogue of routines and props and alternatives for working children s entertainers. The other thing I know you also do, Jeremy, is not just merely props and routines. I do believe there are some training DVDs and resources available? Jeremy: Yes, we started doing these again about eight or nine years ago. Magic DVD is a great way of learning because you can obviously go much further in a DVD. You can teach the methods that are being used or examine in more detail the exact way the thing should be presented. We started to offer a whole range of different DVDs. Just to give you an idea, we recorded one with a friend of ours called Pat Fallon, which is called Magic for Older Children. Older children can be a slightly more difficult audience. They tend to think that they know it, and certainly you don t want to be presenting fairy stories to them.

7 We also produced with an outstanding English entertainer called Terry Herbert, who I m sure many will have heard of, a DVD called Magic for Under 5s again, a highly difficult age range to deal with. Terry dealt with it outstandingly well. We also produced one which may be of interest to quite a few of the listeners here called So You Want to Entertain Children with Magic. The idea behind that DVD was to take you from the position of knowing nothing whatsoever about doing magic and learning the sort of things that you need to know. In other words, what are the age ranges you want to aim at, what sort of personality are you going to be, are you going to dress up, are you going to look like a traditional magician, what sort of name are you going to give yourself, how are you actually going to advertise what you do, where are you going to advertise, do you do a follow-up to the shows that you do, what tricks should you do? All of those are covered in the DVD. I think over the years we have put out about 10 different titles. Some of them are quite specific in their area. Some of them are like the one I ve just mentioned, So You Want to Entertain Children with Magic, which obviously has a very broad appeal, particularly to those who are in one of the allied areas of children s entertainment that we ve mentioned before, like balloon twisting or face painting. Colette: Wow, that is really such a useful resource for somebody that may not have that part in their act and wanted to reach over into another area of entertaining. And that is very thorough, very specific in all the various aspects that you need to consider to be able to make that crossover. That is very helpful indeed. Jeremy: Just to add to that, we actually recorded a DVD with probably America s most well-known children s entertainer, David Kaye, otherwise known as Silly Billy. He was over in the country and we took the opportunity, John and myself, to use his talent. There was a wealth of material that he brought and a wealth of ideas that he added to the things that John and I wanted to express. Colette: Wow, that is fantastic. Really, really so helpful. This brings me again to where we started, to Trix putting a lot of information and help out for children s entertainers other than creating a platform for people to connect and share stories. I wanted to explore a little bit with you how you put your program together choosing people to come and lecture, the power presentations that you present. What is your aim with that? What is your goal and how do you work that back to be able to have your final program?

8 Jeremy: That s not the easiest of questions to answer. I think we have a very clear idea of the atmosphere that we want to create at Trix. I mentioned earlier that it s a sort of a party atmosphere. I suppose we look for people who we think would add to that atmosphere. That s the first thing. The second thing is that we present at each convention four power presentations. Two of those are loosely what I would call trick-orientated, which I think is self-explanatory. The other two are what I would call theory. We had one this year about whether it s a good idea to start a blog. It s not trick-orientated; you re talking about the theory of children s entertainment in this particular aspect. Again, we are looking to find four short interesting topics. We look for some of the best practitioners to present those, and those who know their subject inside out. And I have to say, Colette, you did one of these power presentations which was hugely popular yourself. Colette: Thank you very much, Jeremy. Jeremy: That s perhaps the nearest that I can say. We have some exceptional talents and very well-known entertainers within the magic community coming to Trix in the Stix and we ll continue doing that. At the moment, 2016 is decided. You can look at our website and see who is attending that. We are working at the moment on 2017 because we do need to have a clear idea quite some way ahead as to who we want and make sure that they are available. Colette: Planning for 2017 already is quite surreal, but I can really understand that. Just going back to your power presentations, you spoke about the blog power presentation that Joanne McGowan gave. I m delighted to share with you, Jeremy, and all our listeners that I would actually be interviewing Joanne as well. So we will be bringing that to our audience we re international, we spread across the globe. Not everyone can get to Trix so we will be bringing that presentation and that knowledge to our audience. Jeremy: I m very glad to hear that because I think Joanne deserves a wider audience. She knows what she s talking about again with another very, very popular power presentation. Colette: Exactly. There s so much more to entertaining children than just standing in front of them when you ve got your party. We aim to cover all the bases, bring all those bits and pieces of information and knowledge and resources that s out there. There s

9 such a wealth of information that we want to share with everyone on this amazing journey. Jeremy: Yes, I think that s very important. When you start off in magic, and I think it s important to say this, you tend to feel that simply purchasing a few tricks makes you a children s entertainer. It doesn t. The props that you buy are simply vehicles. You ll read in a lot of books that it s your personality which is most important. And you might look at yourself and say, But I haven t got a very interesting personality. Well, everybody does. Everybody does have an interesting personality. The best advice that you can give to anybody is to be yourself and be somebody whom the children relate to. If you don t like children, don t come into this because you re never going to convince the children that you do like them. You d have to be an outstanding actor. Far better if you re the sort of person who enjoys working with children. That will shine in your shows. So remember that the props themselves are merely vehicles. You have got to be an entertainer first and a magician second. If you go into it saying that you re going to wow people with your magic, that s probably not the right approach. If you say, I m going out to entertain, and I happen to be using balloons and face painting and magic, that is the right approach. Colette: That is such a useful and valuable piece of information, Jeremy. I ve gone through a number of online courses, DVDs, books, and everything like that, learning and adding to what I do. And that is the sort of thread that runs throughout everything. It is so important because kids can just pick up on that. It s what is your motivation. Jeremy: Children are incredibly perceptive. We tend to think that because they are miniadults, they haven t got the perception that adults have. Oh yes, they have. Children see through you instantly, and I can say that as a 20-year career teacher just as I can say that as a children s entertainer or a dealer in children s entertainment. Children will pick up on things incredibly quickly. Whereas an adult might restrain what they wish to say, children are under no such restrictions and they will tell you exactly what they think. Colette: Oh yes, very much so, and I m sure our listeners have experience of that. So have I. They re very, very, very honest. But it s also ultimately rewarding because not only are they honest when they see through you, but they re also honest with their appreciation and their entertainment. When they are enjoying it, they let you know. There s no secrets there.

10 Jeremy, I think there is no higher place we can end other than this very, very useful and valuable advice and piece of information. It s not about what you do; it s not about what you choose to entertain with. It s the how you do it. It s the connection you have with the audience and your wanting to be there with those children, making them laugh and making sure they re having the greatest time ever. Jeremy: I agree absolutely. I don t think there is a better advice that one could give an aspiring children s entertainer other than that. Colette: Thank you so much, Jeremy. Jeremy: Thank you.

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