Magicians and Performers Editing and Proofreading Services

A corporate booker has twenty minutes and three performers to choose between. They need to know what happens in the room, how long it lasts, what it needs from the venue, and whether their chief executive will be made to look foolish. What they usually receive is a page of adjectives and a promise of amazement — and no way to tell one performer from another.

We edit what magicians, mentalists, variety and speciality performers produce — act descriptions and booking information for agents, venues and corporate clients, technical and space requirements, terms and conditions for private and corporate work, marketing material and websites, festival and showcase applications, and correspondence with bookers and event organisers. Our editors work on descriptions that sell an act without giving it away.

The performance description for a booker is the document that gets the work, and its failure is a page that either says nothing or says too much. A magician has to be specific about the experience without being specific about the method. We work through these so the shape of the act is described as a sequence of what an audience sees and does, since a booker needs to picture the room and "astonishing illusions" gives them nothing to picture; so the format is fixed with the duration, the number of sets, the audience size it works for and the audience size it stops working for, because a close-up act for eighty in a noisy bar is a booking that fails for everybody; so participation is described precisely — who is brought in, how they are chosen, what they are asked to do and, crucially, what will never be done to them — as this is the booker's real fear and it is almost never addressed; so the requirements are stated as facts about the space, the sound and the sightlines rather than as a rider; so the tone is described in terms a client can match to their event, given that a comedy act at a memorial and a gentle act at a sales conference both end badly; so the material's suitability is stated for the audience in question, including language and content; so what the act is not is said, since a mentalist who does not claim genuine powers should say so before a client assumes otherwise; and so method is never explained, hinted at or apologised for. Descriptions written this way get rebooked.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including scripts, routines, methods and client information. We are editors rather than performers or agents, and we offer no view on material, method or performance. What we can do is describe the experience without exposing the working.