Hello all! I have had an account here for a few months but I keep forgetting to do a proper introduction post here. I am a technical theater major who has recently fallen in love with the art of magic and have been eagerly reading anything and everything I can on the subject! I am fascinated by the history of magic, especially the golden age since the magician who inspired me has a show set in that style. I have been working on a few tricks that the same magician taught me as well as teaching myself from books and some websites. As much as I enjoy baffling my family with some small stuff I am interested in the long run of maybe applying my theatre, special effects and set building background to my magic and be able to eventually design and perform my own original big stage illusions! Maybe eventually, we'll see. In the meanwhile I am just enjoying the process of learning as much as I can on the history and the community and reading through the different forums on this site and working on perfecting the tricks I already know how to do. Right now my biggest struggle is figuring out how to present magic tricks to people as something other then "Hey look at this cool thing I can do" as I have been hesitant to show anything to friends and family members who don't already know about my recent interest in magic. I would love some feedback from more experienced magicians if this was a problem for you when you first started out, and if it wasn't, what were some other problems you had when first starting out and how did you overcome them? (Aside from the always necessary practice practice and more practice)

Welcome, Victoria. I majored in theater myself. I'm not very experienced yet so I can't give you much advice. For now, "Hey look at this cool thing I can do" is probably fine.

Welcome Victoria,

"Would you like to see some Magic?" has worked for me."hey, check this out." works for some.

You don't have to be pro. yet. Just be friendly and interested in entertaining them. If you have practiced that should be enough to get you started towards amazement. Word of caution, if they compliment you or seem impressed, this is not the time to be humble. Don't say "I could have doe better or I forgot to...." Just say thank you, I'm glad you liked it. If they saw Magic, they are suspending their dis-belief. It is you job to help them do that.

Best of Luck (and hard work).

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-Mary Mowder