14th January marked the official opening of Bayfront MRT station. Has a direct entry to Marina Bay Sands.
Meta Illusions was a part of the official opening, Jonathan and I were asked to perform our brand of Close Up Magic for the guest as well as the public. We did our Interactive Roving Magic for audiences inside The Shoppes (the Mall in MBS) as well as the MRT station itself.
This was a shot of me performing outside Gucci for a group of tourist from China. It is amazing to me how magic can transcend cultures. They truly enjoyed the magic. I should add that I performed some bits with features interaction in Chinese.
It was loads of fun performing for the tourist and shoppers in Marina Bay Sands. In the year 2010, I was the resident magician for the Skypark, and I think it is an honour for me to be on top of their list when it comes to Magic Entertainment. Meta Illusions is proud to be their preferred choice for Interactive Magic!
I noticed when I do my Close Up Theatre show, which is catered for intimate and private settings, I always find that the audience tend to react faster than in a setting in which the audience are of a dispersed demographic. But of course, even in a crowd of dispersed demographics, it is possible to get them to react in unison. (Check out the ending of The Street Theatre Video and you can see that despite coming from different walks of life, the audience react and respond in unison at the end of the show)
This is interesting to someone who studied psychology, like myself. It seems to me that magic has the ability to foster closer relations (something that I wrote about here), and thereafter the reactions and social referencing tend to be more pronounced and quicker. I think there is something special about watching a magic performance together, it’s like watching a movie together.
So academics aside, I am very pleased to have been invited to perform for good friends and relatives.
I had a lot of fun performing for them, and it really does bring a smile to my face that my magic brought a smile to theirs.
So if you have a celebration (Chinese New Year) and think that having an exclusive magic performance is a good way to celebrate it with your friends and family, do check us out at here!
When I was in the United States for exchange programme offered by National University of Singapore and Arizona State University, I witnessed wonderful magic in renaissance fairs and town fairs.
The magician would set up his table or case and would be able to gather a huge crowd for his act, and they typically look like this:
This is pretty remarkable, and it is a full show with a definitive beginning and an end. Wonderful, simply wonderful.
And since I was in the States, I managed to meet real Street Performers and interacted with them. I learnt how to gather a huge crowd, I learnt how to maintain a crowd and end with a bang. Also, I took the six months I had in the States to design, craft and test my very own Street show, which I now call, Street Theatre. It was very well received by the Americans =)
While it is true that in Singapore, we do not have a lot of magicians who do shows like this, most of them do “hit and run” magic in which they show one or two ‘tricks’ and then leave. I have a certain distaste for this type of performance because it tend to leave your audience feeling incomplete.
I had a conviction that what I had to offer was different and the things I learnt while I was in America would be valuable to the events industry in Singapore. I decided to do Street Theatre in the streets of Singapore. And the result? It turned out better than expected. I had tons of people stopping to watch my show.
On a separate engagement:
Street Theatre is a show, not a hit and run type of performance but a structured and well designed show to maximize buzz and add colour to your event. It caters very well to events like festival, trade shows, road shows and product launches in which buzz and exposure is important.
Check out our promo video for Street Theatre (in HD):
For more information on Street Theatre or a consultation on the best form of magic for you event, check out our website at www.metaillusions.com
