Do anyone here experience nervousness while performing magic?

sometime when performing in front of a few people my hand will shake and people will laugh at me.

How do I solve this problem?

Maybe you can take a jib at yourself.
If you're nervous, emphasize the fact!

Be comforted with the fact that almost EVERYBODY had this problem... even the pros. Anybody who tell you that they are never nervous is either lying or has never perform in his life.

2 Ways:

- Perform more. So that you get used to it.
- Practice more. So that you will have less things to worry about.

Try to start off your routine with a strong effect that you are comfortable with. If you manage to hit them hard with your first trick, you'll get great reactions and you will feel more confident and less nervous.

If there are no effects you are really comfortable with, then you should just practice more.

When I first started out magic i felt nervous before the performance too. What I did was I make the "shaky hands" part of my performance. For example, when you do an ambitious card, when the card is rising to the top, just place your shaky hands on top of the deck. It'll look like your hand is doing something magical.

Do some warm up before you perform. Stretch your fingers and make sure they are not stiff. If you know a few flourishes you can do a few before going into the routine. Flourishes are a good way to warm up your fingers. You should feel less nervous after your warm up.

You should also perform more like axl said. After countless performance you will get used to it. You would have seen the worst hecklers and nothing will
make you nervous again.

As for my input for you....

10 years ago during my first performance, i have the same problem as you have. So what i did for my 2nd performance, i do a non- interactive magic. e.g. Talking Board (i think a lot of pple has forgotten this old old magic)

1) Don't do any magic which require too much skill but with strong effect. As you know that when u do skilled routine while you are nervous, you will easily cock up the routine. Strong effect is important for the first routine as the applause from the audience will gain 80% of your confident.

2) Non-interactive magic will be good. When you are nervous, you will tend to speak with shaky tone and that will spoilt your image from the start. Audience will lost the confident in you and the rest of your magic will not be convincing to them.

3) As what the rest has advised you, do the routine practice many many many times. The practice is not only on the particular items but for the whole show. Get used to the routine as much as possible and make it as part of you.

4) Be early during the show. If you are late or just in time, you will get triple the nervous. And also if you are early, you will have chance to look at the stage, close your eyes and imagine your self performing on the actual stage. Do this again and again. This will built your confident level.

Hope that this can give you a guide for your problem. All the best.

I have 2 suggestions:

1) Keep yourself warm, wear extra layers. Warm up your hands and fingers. If it is a stage performance, wear gloves or jackets which you can remove just prior to your performance.

2) When practicing, always imagine that there are real people watching you, not just where they are, but actually do "see" them.

Like what the rest have already said:

1) Practise to strangers more. Nervousness goes away with constant performances. Practise to countless number of friends before before this for paid performances.

2) Do self working effects as an opener. That will allow you to concentrate on the performance. One you get the first effect going, you will not be so nervous when doing subsequent effects.

It ok to 'shake' if you are new to perform magic. I remembered when I first performed to my classmates same thing happened. Even though I delivered the effect smoothly with clean sleights and they are amazed, but they still laughed at me because I shaked. However I feel that its ok, so subsequently I just continue to show them more effects (not on the same day), everytime they would tell me that I am shaking. As time went by they just tell me that I don't shake as much and eventually I no longer shake.

So my suggestion to this is like what many said, practice and perform more. Everyone start off from from the same point, we all used to shake. Eventually you will stop shaking too.

My suggestion to you is

when practice
- try to do it in front of the mirror see if whatever you are saying make sense or not. Are your sleights clean enough. Check if you shake. The very basic thing is you must not be shaking when performing to yourself in front of the mirror.

when perform
- do some simple and strong effect for a start so when you receive good reaction, or at least people doesn't say anything about it, you know that you are doing fine. Those are your confidence booster. Take note of your audience reaction all the time so that you know what are the stuff that works on people and what doesn't.

Good luck to you!

Getting comfortable with the audiences can help alleviate your nervousness, You can try it. Dun perform to them first. Break the ice by tslking to them, intro yourself, and come up with common topics. Once their guard are down, you can bring in your magic performances. This is how I have been doing for the past year.

CHeers

I do agree that talking to your audience, and having some rapport helps with the shaking.

Having said that I think more importantly you have to pick your opening act. It has to establish yourself as a worthy magician worth watching for one, and two, it helps you get some reaction to carry forward to other effects. You will in turn feel better about yourself and more confident to move forward.

I've seen many professionals open up their long routines with a simple CMH or a simple coin routine. It helps when you do something simple also because it helps you build up the climax a little later.

There is one more way that you can use. Anchoring yourself to achieve a confident state so that you could trigger off your confident state anytime. If you have studies about NLP, you would know how is it done. It is quite simple but takes practises. Trembling while performing could be due to the lack of confidence.

NLP/anchoring is overated in my opinion. Whatever works for you though.