The Variety Show Effect

Today’s post is about one of my favorite parts of New York—the abundance of small, low-stakes variety shows where I can hone material.

I think variety shows are totally underutilized by magicians, and today I’m going to talk about why I think they’re so important.

Let’s begin:

The average variety show spot for a magician, in my experience, is 10-12 minutes. For a magician, that’s nothing. But in the New York comedy scene, that’s an eternity. You can do a lot in 10-12 minutes.

Doing a “spot,” as it’s called, forces you to kill for every second you’re on stage. You just don’t have time to waste. That’s a good thing, right? Wouldn’t we all want to practice this?

You’d think so.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard verbatim from a lot of magicians that they “aren’t interested in doing spots, because they’re really interested in the longer arc of a full show.” I think that take is asinine. Find me a comedian honing their hour who isn’t interested in doing a spot. In fact, that hour is built from the bricks of hundreds, if not thousands, of spots.

Do you think Nikki Glaser’s Golden Globes monologue appeared out of nowhere? No, she trotted that thing around LA for months in front of real audiences before it appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and nearly flawless, on national television.

Netflix specials are built the same way. Mike Birbiglia has talked at length about how his hour-plus specials start as, you guessed it, ten minute sets that slowly morph together over the course of years.

Let’s take lessons from the best in the business—Nikki Glaser and Mike Birbiglia have a combined nine specials—long-form content is built from short spots.

It’s a Marathon

I think of practicing magic a bit like training for a race, in that there are different kinds of workouts that you do. Likewise, different kind of performances tune up your repertoire.

It’s essential to practice your full set as many times as possible. But only performing for 30+ minutes at a time makes it really hard to analyze your own work because there’s simply so much of it. You wouldn’t train for a marathon by running a bunch of marathons, and you shouldn’t train for your show by only doing your full show.

We’ve done Stand-Up Magic 70+ times in the past two years. We’re pretty strict on the set times—20 minutes. For a lot of magicians, that’s really short. We don’t care. Because in the New York variety scene, 20 minutes is already an eternity. Likewise, your act gets better when you can kill in 20 minutes. Yes, you’re piecing your act together, but doing variety style shows forces you to have standalone pieces that are really strong on their own.

Jason and I often hear the counterargument that magicians want their entire act to tie together at the end, which is only possible if they build it up throughout multiple tricks. Therefore, they’d prefer to do more than 20 minutes. I’ve even heard people say that they “can’t” go on stage for 20 minutes, because their set is 25 minutes.

My response? If The Tonight Show called and asked you to do five minutes, that’s what you’d do. So give us 20. Likewise, every time we book a comedian, they do 10-12. Sure, they’d do more if we asked them, but they understand the value of 10-12 minutes, and they treat that time seriously. That’s why we’ve rarely had comedians bomb on the show—they know their time is limited, and they put their best foot forward.

Additionally, your 10-20 minute set doesn’t have to have callbacks. This is something I would’ve strongly disagreed with a year ago. I used to be obsessed with making sure that every set I did was circular. It’s really great when you can pull it off. And I think that a full show absolutely needs to feel complete. But I don’t think a set needs a picture-perfect ending. Even one small callback within a short set can do a ton of work. The ending just has to be logical and strong, but it doesn’t have to be a callback.

Bonus Incentives

Here’s another reason to do a variety show: You’ll often kill.

Now, this isn’t guaranteed. But variety shows have been pretty safe bets for me, and I don’t think it’s coincidence. People don’t see magic much. So when you’re the one magician during a ninety minute show, people really pay attention, because it’s usually a good break from music, comedy, or improv.

Magic is unique—I’ve never seen someone book two magicians on the same variety show. So you get to stand on your own, and it’s really nice.

It’s not a guaranteed kill, of course. But you’re set up for success.

Hypotheticals

I don’t see many magicians doing variety shows in New York. It’s just not common for busy magicians who could make thousands of dollars in one night to trek somewhere for very little money, or for free.

And I do understand that.

However, I think magic struggles as an art because it’s so insulated. You might be making six figures as a corporate magician, but that also means that the public is never seeing your work. There is a fundamental difference between performing for an audience that might not have even known you were going to be there (corporate), and an audience that decided that seeing a show is how they wanted to spend their time (public). I legitimately think there’s more stakes in a public show precisely because of that dynamic.

And failing to hone your act in front of one of the most performance-literate audience in the world (New York City), is a disservice to your corporate audience.

My corporate shows are built on the back of my public shows—that’s how I know the tricks will work! Public shows are where I earn my money. Corporate shows are just where I collect it. This sentiment is based on a Chris Rock quote, which goes something along the lines of—as a comedian, you make your money during the day, and you collect it at night.

New York City would be such a cool place if A-list magicians also did spots in random places. You know how you can go to a comedy club and see a Netflix-level comedian randomly jump on a show? That doesn’t exist in magic. David Blaine doesn’t just show up on variety shows. But it would be so cool if that was the norm! Audiences would benefit. They would see more magic. They would develop taste, because they’d see more of it. And magic would be more accessible, because most shows in New York are more than $100 (except for Stand-Up Magic!).

I came to New York two years ago with no gigs and no prospects, and in two years, I performed 250 shows. More than half of them were public shows. As I broke down in this post, I still made a substantial portion of my income through corporate shows, but the reason I did well in those corporate shows was because I had so much stage time in other places.

I realize that your counterargument is: “Great, you were just starting out as a professional magician. So you needed to take every opportunity you could. But I’m a 20-year veteran of the corporate market. I have enough clients to make my living. I don’t need to go on a variety show.” To which I’d say—you’re completely missing the point.

The point of doing a variety show isn’t to make money or project status. It’s to hone your act in front of a discerning crowd so that when you get paid the big bucks, your show is better.

Likewise, no amount of fame or success should insulate you from doing spots. If comedians who sell out Madison Square Garden and have multiple Netflix specials still jump on a show for $30, then us magicians should too. If they’re not too good for it, neither are we.

I know that this shift is unlikely to happen. I don’t think that A-list magicians will start doing small shows. It’s a real bummer, because doing spots is, I think, the backbone of great performance art, and I see too many people doing watered down sets without ever stressing themselves.

But, the less people who do these spots, the more I’ll stand out, so I’m happy to take the positive perspective here. The “spot” is one of the best parts of living in New York, and I swear I’ll do them for the rest of my life.

You should too.