Ring exchanges are great events for a club – well actually two clubs, I guess. Basically, your members go do a free show for their club, and then they come and do one for you. What are the benefits? First, an opportunity to practice (and show off) for your club members. This is especially helpful for your amateur members who do not have as many performance opportunities.
They are a great opportunity to network with performers who aren’t too far away but whom you might not run into very often and exchange ideas. It certainly helps fill out the meeting list for a club with a very enjoyable night, and it exposes members to material that might be new to them.
In April, our club visited Ring 265 (the London Magicians Guild of London Ontario) so our May meeting was their turn to entertain us. Their MC was Peter Mennie who performed short bits between acts including a paper tear and restore, a prediction of selected performance order and of a color prediction of some colored word cards.
Andrew Olmstead did a great job with an older effect of cutting a piece of paper and having it heal itself, a card prediction effect, and rope cut and restore followed by a variation of Professor’s Nightmare. Great Stuff.
Sam General found a selected card reversed in the deck, One found by two jokers (joker cards, not our members), and effect were two circles drawn a card magically link, and a bit on shrinkflation (very topical).
Mark ‘the Remarkable’ Hogan predicted the winning numbers on a lottery ticket – and then gave me the ticket! How could it lose, he already predicted the number (it didn’t BTW, but thanks anyway). Mark then performed a great effect with four aces themed around wine.
Peter Skells, as a short notice fill-in, performed some more card effects with a prediction of a named card at a specific location in the deck, and another ‘found card’ effect, as well as a fun reversing card while being held by an assistant. Fantastic Peter.
We finished the night with a previous lecturer and friend of the ring Christopher Campbell (aka FenyxFyre). Chris is an escape artist who got out of handcuffs faster without a key than a volunteer could with the key. He opened a lock with a random key, the last of six after the helper failed five times, performed a very nice ‘flipper’ effect and ended with what only can be described as a ‘shocking’ effect – I’ll just say it included a ‘block-head effect with a large hook and an electric cattle prod. I helped him with this; I still feel woozy.
Great Night, Great Fun, and a great bunch of guys visiting from Ring 265.
Rene Chouinard