What are the challenges of tour life? And how do you keep a slick, sell out show on the road, year in, year out? Award winning magician Oliver Tabor shares his invaluable insights from his years of experience touring magic shows. From budgeting to transport and advice for first timers, here’s Oliver’s tips for planning a successful magic tour.
1 Team work makes the dream work
From my experience of being in a show with multiple acts and crew, my best advice is to make sure you have a great team, as they will be the people you’ll be sharing a lot of time with.
Having a great team in place is crucial, not just for the show itself, but the support of a solid team – consisting of cast and crew, who you can completely trust to help, guide and support the show.
2 Be ready for curtain up
Make sure that your show is ready to go! You won’t necessarily have the opportunity to rehearse much once you’re on tour.
As for running in new material, again it’s unlikely that you’ll have time to get new ideas to a decent enough level to be part of a slick touring show: most of your time will be taken up promoting when it’s up and running.
3 Choose locations and venues wisely
Be realistic about where your show will play the best. Everyone dreams of performing in the biggest theatres in the country, however, you need to be sure that you can sell tickets for these big spaces: plus you’ll need to design a show that will play well to these big audiences. Our show is currently suited to 200-500 seat venues. I have a tour booker who sells the show to selected size venues and also chooses locations that aren’t too close to each other: you want to make sure that you’re not selling tickets to the same audience in two venues that are too close in proximity.
4 Plan your logistical details
The main challenge we faced initially was to downsize the show. The original show finale included a large Fabergé egg illusion that packs down into six large flight cases, which could only be transported in a 7.5-ton lorry. The costs to hire a lorry, pay for the fuel, and transport the team were not cost-effective. Plus, over time you realize that every theatre is different in size backstage; therefore, the show had to be redesigned to not only be easily loaded into a range of different venues and tailored to the theatre but also be transported in one vehicle with the whole team.
5 Transport
Another challenge can be the journey times to the venues; having multiple drivers amongst your team helps with the traveling.
6 Marketing, Press and Promotion
Marketing for any show can be a full-time job. It is the biggest, most expensive, and most time-consuming task you have. To save money you can either choose to do it all yourself or hire a marketing or PR company to do it for you.
If you opt to do your own marketing, a great way to reach regional audiences is via local Facebook groups; you can post details of your show on various local pages that accept details of events in the local area.
Since the show has been on tour, I’ve chosen to hire in help. PR agents have the contacts to get your press release and marketing information to the right people. This all comes down to your budget and how much you are willing to spend on your marketing. Obviously, the bigger your marketing budget, the further reach it will have. However, don’t think that you can ever stop plugging and promoting, even if you do hire a PR company, it’s the biggest job you have.
7 How to budget a tour
You really need to work out a suitable cost for each show, as you have many elements to pay for. This is before you’ve even stepped on stage for the first show, as it includes website design and hosting, poster and artwork design, marketing, travel, tour manager fee, accommodation, the list goes on. Then you have to work out what you’ll pay your cast and crew and hope you have enough money left over to buy yourself a drink.
8 How to stay consistent and high quality
This comes back to having a show that’s ready to go. It has to be slick, worked in and comfortable before setting on the road. The majority of the acts that I perform in the show have been honed over a few years and can be easily adapted to different sized venues.
9 Best advice for First-Time Touring Magicians?
Be adaptable, easy to work with, listen to your audiences and be a team player, especially with the crew and staff at each venue.
10 Travel and Accommodation
The best investment I’ve made recently is to purchase a splitter van. It seats six people and has enough room in the back of the van, behind the seats, to contain the whole show. Our show has at least four people, a cage of doves, a 50” TV and stand, two large flight cases, three suitcases, multiple tables, cables, and suit bags. Therefore the whole show, including the cast and crew, travel in one vehicle saving on transport costs. At the beginning of each year, I spend a day booking accommodation for the upcoming tour at hotels and Airbnb. You can get some great rooms and deals, but you have to search to find the best offers.
11 Balancing Tour Performances with Personal Life
Organising and running a tour is an all-consuming exercise. However, even though the tour is spread out over the majority of the year, it tends to be one or two nighters rather than 10 dates in a row. This gives me the time needed to not only concentrate on the promotion of the brand when not on the road, but look after my own endeavors: plus have the time to concentrate on my personal life. This has been mentioned before, but it is very important that you have a team that you get along with: they are your support network throughout the tour and you’ll be sharing a lot of time with them from working, traveling, eating meals together and spending any downtime with them.
12 Love what you do
Perhaps the most important thing of all to prepare yourself for touring is to love what you do, and I mean really love it! Touring can be a thankless exercise, especially as a producer, but it pays dividends in satisfaction.
We hope these insights are useful for anyone considering taking a show on the road. Touring with a magic show is no small feat, but with the right preparation, team and strategies, it can be an incredibly rewarding and unforgettable experience!