How do I choose a performer when I cannot judge the craft?
Stop trying to judge the performance and start judging the evidence: verifiable history with buyers like you, contactable references, and how they behave before you have paid them anything.
Matteo Cammisa
Founder, MAGIQ. Twenty years performing close-up and stage magic.
Almost every buyer approaches this the same way: watch three showreels and pick the one that felt best. It is the obvious method and it is close to worthless, because a showreel is thirty seconds of a performer's best moments across ten years, cut by them, scored to music. It tells you what they are capable of on their best night. It tells you nothing about the night you have booked.
The useful question is not whether they are good. It is whether they are reliable — and unlike talent, reliability leaves a trail.
Judge the evidence, not the performance
Four things are checkable by someone with no expertise in magic at all, and together they predict more than any showreel.
- Verifiable history. Real buyers, real venues, real dates. Not “performed internationally” — which company, where, when.
- Two contactable references, and actually contact them. The single most useful question: would you book them again for the same event? A hesitation is the answer.
- Current public liability insurance, produced without being chased. A performer who cannot find their certificate is telling you how the rest will go.
- Technical and timing requirements, sent before you ask. This is the strongest single predictor of a difficult booking, and almost nobody screens for it.
How a performer behaves before you have paid them anything is the closest available preview of how they will behave on the night.
Watch the right footage
If you are going to watch video, watch the wrong kind: a full uncut set with a real audience, not a reel. What you are looking for is not the trick. It is the audience — whether they are genuinely reacting or politely waiting, and what happens in the seconds after an effect ends.
Watch for the moment something goes wrong, because in a real set something always does. A guest talks over them, a volunteer does the unexpected, a phone goes off. The recovery is the craft, and it is the only part of the job you can actually assess without being a magician yourself.
Ask the four questions that matter
| Ask | What a good answer sounds like |
|---|---|
| What is the room doing while you perform? | They ask you before answering. Seated, standing, eating, listening to something else — the answer changes what they would even propose. |
| What do you need from the venue? | A specific list, offered without hesitation. Vagueness here becomes your problem at 6pm on the day. |
| What happens if the running order slips by forty minutes? | They have a plan and have used it. “That has never happened” means they have not worked enough events. |
| What are you not right for? | They name something. A performer who is right for everything has not thought about it. |
The last one is the most revealing and the least asked. Everyone in this category will tell you what they can do. The ones worth booking will tell you what they cannot.
The mistake underneath all the others
Most disappointing bookings were not bad performers. They were the wrong discipline in the wrong room — a card worker booked for a standing reception with no tables, a silent stage act booked for a noisy dinner, a comedy set booked for a room that needed something quieter.
So describe the room before you describe the act. How many people, seated or standing, what else is happening, what languages are in it, and what the evening is actually for. Anyone worth booking will ask you those things first.
Would you rather we did it?
Describe the event and we will apply this framework for you, with the reasoning written down and our fee quoted before any shortlist exists.