On another note, in addition to my son being interested in being a part of my act, a friend of mine from many years ago recently expressed interested in being and assistant. She has some background in magic (Mostly things I taught her years ago.) and some training as an actress. Currently I mostly do close-up magic, with a stage show in development.

I'm looking for smaller, close-up type effects that would benefit from an assistant, as well as what sort of stage type effects I should investigate that would be easy when just starting out.

I'm fairly diverse in what I perform from balloons, to kids magic, to card work, to misc. close-up, to some mentalism. So anything goes as far as ideas.

Thanks,
Ostler

Hi Ostler. I perform everything from small Birthday shows, that usually last about 30 minutes up to large stage shows. I have several girls assisting me that all are around 20 years old. The majority of the time I'll do the Birthday shows alone, but if it's going to be in a busy public place or lots of kids I will hire one of the girls to help out. It really helps sometimes to have one there with me in order for the show to run smoother between effects, that way I don't have to stop to get the next trick, my assistant brings me the next trick and takes away the one I just performed, and packs it away. That way by the end of the show we're pretty much packed and ready to leave. Having an assistant along also works well for crowd control in case kids try to check out the props. The stuff I do at kid's parties is fairly small, things like a crystal silk cylinder, coloring book, change bag, hippity hop rabbits, and a duck pan I use to produce a gift for the birthday kid. I usually have 8 to 10 tricks in my half hour show, needless to say it's fairly fast paced.
I hope this kind of helps, Bob.