Hire a Magician for Your NYC Office Opening Party

You’ve been to this party. A company takes a new floor in Midtown or a storefront off Flatiron, the invite says 6 to 9, and it’s fine. There’s a bar. There’s a guy passing tiny skewers. Everyone stands with the people they walked in with, and by 7:45 half of them are on the sidewalk ordering a car.

If you’re the one planning it, consider a magician. Specifically the kind who walks around and performs for small groups of standing guests, right in the middle of the party.

An opening is a weird party to plan

Nobody arrives at the same time. Nobody sits down. There’s no point in the night when the whole room turns and faces one direction, and you wouldn’t want one, because the whole idea is that people are moving and talking. So the entertainment has to go to your guests where they are standing.

That’s what interactive close-up magic is. One magician moving from group to group, three or four minutes for whoever’s clustered near the bar, then on to the next five people. He works with what he carries in his pockets, so there’s no stage to build, no microphone to test, and nothing to plug in.

The best part is what it does for whoever shows up late. Your 8:40 guest missed the toast and the good passed apps and walks in feeling like she got there for the end of something. Ten minutes later there’s a magician at her elbow doing the same piece he did at 6:30. She gets a real moment out of the night instead of a lukewarm mini crab cake.

Your guest list barely knows each other

Clients. The landlord. Someone from the brokerage. Your team from the other office. The neighbors you want on your side. Maybe a reporter. They have the address in common and that’s about it, and you’re standing there hoping they mingle.

Magic gives strangers something to react to at the same time. Someone’s ring vanishes, three people scream, and those three are talking to each other instead of checking their phones. They’ll film it too, which helps at a party whose entire point is telling people the space exists.

Our New York roster is full of magicians who work offices, galleries, showrooms, and restaurants around Manhattan and Brooklyn, so this is familiar territory for them.

If you’re doing speeches or tours

Ask us about a short group magic show right before the remarks. It gives everyone a reason to be in one room at the same time, which makes the speech part go a lot better than shouting over a crowd spread across three rooms.

Openings usually involve walking people through the space too. If you station a magician near whatever you want them to see, guests have a reason to stand in that spot for a few minutes instead of glancing in and moving on.

What to send us

Send us the date, the address, your start and end times, and roughly how many people you expect. We’ll come back with the magicians who are free that night and what each one costs.

The one thing we ask of you is that the music stays at a level where six people standing in a circle can hear each other.

You can see who you would be working with on our New York roster, and when you have a date for your opening, tell us about the night. We will take it from there.