talkmagic.co.uk

My younger daughter was 8 in October last year. Her birthday coincided with a 'Children's Halloween Magic Show' at the local hall. Not sure I want to reveal the name of the performer - but I've seen his name as an award winner recently.

The age suitability was advertised as 5-12 yr old, and prizes would be given to all those in fancy dress. I would have thought that should give a good indication of the type of show to be performed.

The first half was pretty good. The tricks were all fairly stock effects, including the magic colouring book, various spongeball tricks, a nice extension of healed-n-sealed with vanishing coke-bottles and the kids lapped it up. Then came the interval.

It all went downhill from there. To be fair, he did say that the second half would be more halloweeny in feel - but I wasn't expecting the kid-unfriendly stuff I would see.

The first trick after the interval was a large syringe in the arm from which he pulled a load of blood which he then emptied into a goblet and drank.... the next one was a candle through the arm - followed by the needle-through-the-arm - complete with skin and kensington gore...

He followed this by attempting a wrist guillotine but picked a mum from the audience who was still stunned by what she had seen and who refused to take part once she realised that her 4 and 7 year-old would be seeing her mums hand sliced with a large shiny blade....

The magician involved has had quite a lot of press locally and he seemed very competent, but this single show has put me off him totally.

Has anyone else ever had similar experiences with age-suitability? This was prompted by the review of Jerry Sadowitz I just read elsewhere on talkmagic.....

-C

as a seasoned kiddy fiddler ooor eer misses
an age range from 5-12 is a big age gap and i would asume he had expected the 10- 12's to be near adults which is a big mistake.
when i was working my first half was all classic kids stuff most of which you previously mentioned and the second half was closeup and table magic with audience members kids and adults on camera fed to a projector so everyone could see.

if your going to do a haloween show for kids you need to think who you can theme your kids tricks rahter than go for gore for the sake of it.

Good heavens!

That was an incredibly inappropriate set of effects to use for kids. A lot of that stuff I wouldn't consider good for 12 year olds, let alone the age range listed.

While I don't perform for children, I'd be thinking about stuff like floating ghosts and broomsticks, cups and balls with little balls like pumpkins, or perhaps skulls, but the sort of thing there sounds closer to Simon Drake!

Indeed - I was ready for spongeball-pumpkins and vanishing pictures of ghosts... so my chin dropped when he produced this 12inch needle and got a kid in the audience to check it was sharp...

Interestingly - loads of the kids that we took with my daughter liked all the magic "except the stuff with the blood". Its difficult to know how much reaction was received from parents - but the kids were definite in what they liked and what they weren't keen on.

Mind you - as a result, I taught my daughter a couple of card tricks using a peek... but could I get her to understand that holding the half-deck up to your nose to 'peek' was not the idea.......? Could I hell. 8 yr olds don't do subtle. Mind you - it still fooled her chums, which is the point I suppose

-C

Phew. Just discovered that the person I saw is *not* the person who won the award....

I have to say I was surprised given my own evidence.

Of course this is all irrelevant - as I've not revealed his (for it was a he) name, and will not.

-C

Of course I agree that you shouldn't do magic for children that could be very upsetting, but there may have been ways of performing some of those tricks that would have worked with children. Also who in the audience were the most upset, the children or the parents?

You only have to listen to any playground to hear the most disgusting conversations.

Not having seen the show we can't judge. My judgement would have been no needles, but pretending cutting off an arm would be ok. The distinction being that children must be discouraged from playing with needles but they are unlikely to try severing a limb.

My only comment here is don't upset them, but don't pamper them too much either. Children need to be challenged both physically and mentally. Harry Potter is full of frightening scenes and few people complain about that

Lets not go the way of some councils who are removing activities from childrens playgrounds as they don't want to be sued.

EDIT: Whilst writing this reply I just watched an advert with two children in the back of a car boasting about various injuries they have received - hornet stings, scars from shark attacks, one pretending he has lost a leg and finishing with one banging his head and his pretend glass eye falling out. Very funny and typical of what children talk about and do.

Well at least he didn't do the linking razor-blades And then tell the kids to go home and get daddies out of the bathroom cabinet and have a go themselves