Being a professional magician or entertainer is very demanding in the modern world. With TV, Internet –especially You Tube and all the media available, modern people are so used to see quality entertainment, that if you cannot perform and do something very special and unique, your chances to become recognized in the media and among agents are becoming smaller all the time.
Establishing a new career doing magic, music or other performing arts anywhere in the world seems to have changed when Internet become a zillion dollar business some ten years ago. With immediate access to all the top artists by visiting their Myspace or You Tube media sites, who wants to go to a concert or to see a magician perform, when you have choice of the best performers and their greatest shows available by the click of a mouse?
Having said that, I feel the demand for live performances is growing again all the time. It is quite different to see something from TV or a computer screen, than to actually feel and be present at a live
show. If we see a magic show on You Tube, we can easily think it’s a camera trick. Furthermore a TV cannot possibly convey the atmosphere of a great show, it can only give a partial experience, while at the actual venue, we can receive with our whole body.
I had the chance to become a professional magician over fifteen years ago, when we had only TV and videos, Internet was very little known at that time. I live in Europe Finland – a small country, with only 5.5 million people, but also not so much competition by other professional magicians.
A magician is called “taikuri” in Finnish. The word taikuri has little different meaning and ring than the
English word “magician”, and not the same glamour, also a taikuri was very much considered a children’s entertainer at that time fifteen years ago, and I started my career by doing strong close up magic for mature audiences in restaurants and similar venues.
When I tried to get hired as a magician to a party or to a restaurant, I was often turned down because “we don’t have any children here”. Only after I performed to the restaurant owner and he saw what I did, he understood what my magic was all about. After that booking a gig was easy, but I had to be there physically and do my magic, there was no chance trying to convince them by telephone.
The word taikuri, really had somewhat bad ring to it in Finland at that time. But today its different here
and all magicians and taikuri’s are established as corporate performers, full scale entertainers and
respected quite differently.
So is it really more difficult to start a career as a magician or entertainer today?
I feel actually that the situation is much the same today as it was before and the chances to build a career as a magician or performer are still very good.
The beginning is always going to be a bit tougher, as you have to establish yourself and find a way to be known by the agents and bookers, but if you are good at what you do and you feel that performing in front of people is what you really want to do, then you have very good chances to succeed.
If you have performers blood running in your veins, go for it and make your dreams to reality, it is a
different, but a very fine way of living.
Kim Wist is a professional magician and one of the most successful performers in Finland:
Taikuri Kim Wist
