Clown Magic Juggling Tutorial
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The key to building a crowd, is color, sound, and movement.
This type of work checks all the boxes.
Close up Magicians sometimes have a hard time competing with large acts like Break Dancers, Jugglers, and Circus Acts.
Clown Magic Juggling can put them back in the game.
The strength of Clown Magic Juggling, is it can be done close up, or for huge audiences, and seen from far away.
It can be done silent, to music, or spoken.
There’s no need for gimmicks so you’re clean throughout the routine Incase someone gets grabby ha.
This type of work really allows the performer’s character to shine.
The best thing about clown juggling is it breaks up the monotony of just using magic in a show. It makes your show bigger and more professional when you add another art-form like singing, dancing, mime, comedy, or in this case juggling.
Switching up art-forms, holds the attention of a would be distracted crowd and makes you look more experienced and polished.
In my routine I like to use small Footbags, but the operator can use just about any other object of similar or even larger size depending what tricks you’re doing.
Most performers, who do this type of work, use actual professional juggling balls called Multiples. These are juggling balls that are smaller for either children or for the juggler who uses multiple balls in his sequences, and the smaller size aids him in holding more in his hands while juggling. It aids us Magicians in pocket management and palming.
Note: Multiples are slightly larger then the footbags I use in the video, but I use them sometimes for better visibility in my street shows especially if I decide to do bigger shows. Fortunately they are still small enough to work from the pockets.
The small squeaking tennis ball I use, is found at most pet-stores, it’s considered a dog chew toy. They come in all sizes, I tend to use the 1 3/4” or 2”
I did a whole article on them and the footbags, you can learn about them there.
Here’s a small sample of some close up work.
Here’s some street footage of me doing some close up crowd build on the street.
Most performers who do this type of work, myself included, use it for bigger shows with larger crowds unlike what you see in the video, but this article today is going to be geared for the close up performer, to try and get them on board with this type of magic.
With that said, once again, it should be understood this type of work is usually done in circle shows, with larger balls, and more jumping and running around the pitch to serve bigger crowds.
Note: to use larger balls one may have to use a Pouch designed for stand up manipulation without a table. This may be needed only depending on the amount of props and their size. Most of the time in my circle shows I simply worked out of my outside coat pockets.
Of course to do Clown Magic Juggling, one must know how to do at least a three ball sequence. I would urge the reader to research and attempt at least three standard tricks with three balls, and don’t be afraid to drop them, it just makes you look more Clowny ha.
Before we jump into the tutorial.
But without further Ado, let’s take a look at some of the techniques I use in the tutorial video below.