I met a new person today and got a number of the expected responses when I told them we’re entertainers. “That must really interesting.” “What makes you decide me to be a magician?” “Lockdown must have been quiet.”
Deciding to entertain people comes to us at all different parts of life, some realize early on, and some work years at a muggle job before discovering the show is where their heart lies. The common trait is that we all think quite differently from our muggle peers.
And therein lay the biggest problem over the last 2 years. ‘The Show’ is part of our personality, we NEED to go out and see/make others happy. When the government said you can’t have an audience, we understood why. But that didn’t make the days any easier, especially as dragged into weeks and months. Seeing talented friends forced into muggle work was heart-wrenching and so filling in the constant surveys about mental health from business groups and government agencies was tricky (often because there weren’t enough boxes for how we felt.
I lost 2 days to total despair when one grant told me “your industry is not affected by covid restrictions” My paperwork doubled when Centrelink told me “Hey, we’ve gone back to business means if your not earning you need a new job.”
The trouble is the show is fleeting, and people forgot how good it was to have entertainment at a party, assuming they felt that game. And Centrelink through no fault of their own didn’t have a box for we’re working but also trying to remind people that our industry exists.
The brilliant news is that we made it 12 months on and we’re out several days a week (as before Covid) and have new shows coming out on a schedule over the next few months. We’ve successfully made it through to being able to make people happy all the time.
There’s no business like show business, the best business I know…
So let the show go on!
A Life Made Whole 