Day 2: When We Are Judged

Performance at Piazza Castello in Torino: I wish I could claim credit for building this crowd, but they were pretty much already there. (Photo Credit of all black & white photos: Mattia Flip)

I wasn't running lines.

I wasn't rehearsing moves.

I was just breathing.

I wasn't doing anything special or new for FISM. I performed the exact same show that I've been performing for 10 years now with the exact same material. In magician parlance, they were tricks for "workers" -- tricks that pretty much any intermediate magician could do.

Everything should be muscle memory.

The art would be in the performance.

Then the judges sat down in the front of the audience, and I started my show.

HOLD UP. The audience? They were already there?

FISM advertised the street shows like they had done in Mondovi. But in Turin, there were also magicians coming in early either purposefully seeking out the street shows or stumbling into them as they spent their first day or so checking out Turin.

The competitors were split between two pitches: Piazza Castello and Piazza Carignano. Every 30 minutes, a show would start. When the show was over at 25 minutes, the judges (and a third of the audience) would walk over to the other piazza and watch the next show. So from 10:30am to 7:00pm (minus a lunch break), you could catch a street show every half hour.

That meant there was already a small audience when you started your show. The edge was already there. Building from a seed is much easier than building from nothing, so, despite the shortcomings of the pitch and the not-so-optimal time slots, we were all able to perform our shows (which isn't always true on the street).

So how'd I do?

In front of the largest audience I've ever performed for, I did my little street show. As soon as the judges sat down, I looked at my already-gathered crowd, took a deep breath, and... I think... I hit a home run. My hands were a little shaky from the nerves, but this was a show I've done hundreds of times.

What I did well: I was present, timing was right, comedy was on-point.

What I could have done better: I built on top of the already-gathered audience, and the audience grew even bigger. But because my edge was already there, I didn't shape them as much as I normally would. That meant the audience was further away from me than I typically like.

And the results?

I got into the finals!

25 of us showed up in Turin for the pre-finals.

12 of us made it into the first ever FISM street performing finals.