The International Magic Weekend approaches...

JJ thanks Ryan Air who have agreed to fly him from the library project he is working on in Portugal to London and back for the International Magic weekend starting on Nov 25. For this trip they have charged him ony two euros more for his ticket than for the one for his bag.

The convention looks to be even more star studded than usual and will give him a chance of having an English breakfast with Mahka Tendo rather than a continental one he suffered last time.

Guy Hollingworth will present his one man show as seen at Edinburgh a few years ago, Dynamo will strutt his stuff and Antony Owen (last seen at MagicLive in Vegas) will do his lecture. These events all come highly recommended by Opus Magazine.

With new found technology Opus hopes to post up stuff almost as it happens but then you have all heard that one before haven't you.

Just watch this space...

The Sico Festival of Street Magic.

In early September, in the north central region of Portugal, the cultural office of a collection of local authorities put on a festival of street magic. This group of councils is known as Sico.

The Festival itself was organised by LMP Lda, the same production company that puts on shows and events all over Portugal and Spain and also produces television shows involving the celebrity magician Luis de Matos.

It was an ambitious programme that involved performances in sixty four different locations around the area. This meant that the performers had to do five shows a day for three days, each show in a different place!

Each of the local councils were offered a number of performances and they then decided where each performance would be located. This led to some very interesting locations including the side of an stunningly beautiful outdoor swimming pool and the steps of a church miles from anywhere.

I (JJ) was one of the five performers. I have already done many performances in other street festivals in Portugal and Spain but this one was different. The other performances have all been in sizeable cities such as Salamanca, Coimbra, Sintra, Lisbon and Zamora but here you were performing in much smaller towns and, in some cases, villages. While in the cities the passers by who stop and watch take it in their stride as another event in their area, in the villages of the Sico Festival it was often a unique event and, in many cases, the whole population turned up to see what was happening.

Couple this with the fact that at Sico you were the only performer in a show whereas in the other Festivals you shared the show with other magicians and only had a limited time to perform and you ended up with some very special experiences as a street performer.

Despite having to do five shows a day I ended up doing around forty to fifty minutes a show. The gasps of surprise at effects from people who have probably never ever seen anything like it before live was uplifting. None of the off hand comments such as "That's no bad" that I have experienced when churning out my close up efforts at another corporate do at the Brewery. Oh no. Here I got powerful reactions of surprise, laughter and happiness! I had a great (but exhausting) time.

Each of the artists had their own dedicated driver and assistant who, armed with the artist's own sat. nav. system with their show locations logged in, drove the performers from location to location. No one missed a single show (although there were some near misses!)

When planning the festival the politicians and local sponsors made estimates of the number of people who watch the events. They estimated wrong! Each show was photographed and records kept of the number of spectators. In the final report of the organisers to the bookers it will be recorded that over ten thousand people watched the shows. Not bad for a first time Festival and word is that the people who booked it are so delighted with the response that they want to extend the Festival past the two years that are already in the diary and increase the number of performers and shows in the future.