A day in the life of a magician in Sydney

Hi I’m Liam Power, and here you are on my website. A very common question I get at gigs is, what’s it like being a professional magician in Sydney?

For me the best bit about being a magician is seeing the look of amazement on my audience’s face but the second best part is the variety. Each day is different, each gig is different and that keeps it fresh and exciting.

Being a magician in Sydney ensures you get hired for a wide variety of events. Over the last month I’ve performed on stage at large scale corporate events, private parties for milestone birthdays such as a 50th, I’ve added that magic touch to a wedding by performing roving magic at the reception, I’ve MC’d an awards night and performed for huge crowds at a music festival.

This variety not only keeps the day to day interesting but it allows me to travel all over Sydney as well as Australia.

One of the biggest daily tasks I do is preparation. Before each engagement there is a lot of behind the scenes preparation that goes unseen. The first step is finding out everything I can about the event, what type of event is it, how many people will there be, is the crowd seated or standing, what age group is the crowd, is there a stage what is the clients vision for the event, do they want the magic to be a feature of the night or is it there to highlight or enhance a certain part of the event? Once I know this information I can tailor specific packages to the clients event. This ensures each client gets to see the magic in its best light, and ensures they get the best possible performance.

Once a client decides to book me for an engagement I then start structuring the show. Since no two scenarios are the same no two shows are the same. The content of the show will depend on several factors such as but not limited to,

How many guests there will be

The location of the venue

The layout of the room

The AV available

Does the audience speak English

Does the client want any custom magic and if they do creating and rehearsing that

Creating the audio playlist to accompany the show

This means I potentially put many hours of work into the show behind the scenes before I get to performing

Practicing and rehearsing is another huge part in the daily life of a magician. As you can imagine magic takes a lot of practice, especially when learning a new technique. For me practice is normally done in intensive chunks when trying to learn a new technique or “slight”

Rehearsing is different from practice because it involves rehearsing a whole trick or segment for a show or even a whole show. During a rehearsal you have everything set up as if it was a life performance down to wearing what you would on the day. As you can imagine this takes up a lot of time.

Keeping up to date with the latest developments and techniques in magic is another common task

Magic is an ever evolving art and new techniques and products to help achieve great magic come onto the scene all the time. I have to stay up to date with the latest and the best to ensure my audience gets to see the best possible show.

Being a full time magician in Sydney essentially means I’m running a small business. This means my day to day also includes many “non magic” tasks. Being a full time magician is very similar to running a small business and therefore daily tasks include

Updating and maintaining my website

Marketing and client acquisition

Responding to enquiries

General accounting and bookkeeping

Booking in any travel related to gigs

There are even more tasks that go on in the daily life of a magician in sydney such as designing and 3d printing bespoke props but that’s for another post.