Chris McGeever entertains some children with close-up magic at a wedding reception
If you perform magic/illusions in close proximity to your audience - and your audience for that trick/set of tricks is fairly small in number - you are a close-up magician! This is true regardless of how many tricks you know, whether you have magic simply as a hobby, or whether you are a professional close-up magician, in London (such as Chris McGeever) - or indeed anywhere else in the world.
Close-up magic is defined by the environment in which it is presented, rather than the content of the show itself. It can therefore use essentially any kinds of props. Popular items that close-up magicians use include playing cards and money. Anything which is familiar to the people being entertained can be employed to great effect; cards, rings, bottles and banknotes are particularly common props for a magician in London, for instance. Whilst Chris McGeever's act does make some use of these everyday objects, the close-up magic he performs encompasses a much broader variety of props. In addition, Chris blends his proficiency at mind-reading illusions within the performance. (A later blog post will cover the subject of mind-reading). His show is therefore more varied than a typical close-up magic set, whilst retaining the flexibility to adapt to audiences of any age or background.
Chris has entertained a very wide variety of groups of people with his close-up magic. These include a deaf couple and their friends (both deaf and with the ability to hear) at their wedding reception, a group of children/young people with life-limiting conditions at a hospice in South London, and a Scandinavian family of Romani descent, through the help of a translator.