Judging the Singapore Street Festival Magic Competition!

Judging the Singapore Street Festival Magic Competition

This is the second time I judged the Singapore Street Festival Magic Competition. The competition is getting stronger and stronger, with many new impressive acts and performers.

I was overwhelmed by the amazing talents that we have in Singapore. Many of them had achieved a level higher than I had ever achieve. I was amazed at all the creativity and hard work they put into this competition. 

I had the opportunity to share the judging panel with Mark Parker, a renowned illusion designer who had worked with some of the biggest names in magic. Mark designed the piano illusion performed by Lu Chen during China's new year countdown TV programme which was broadcasted live around the world. Mark shared with me some interesting behind-the-scene photos during rehearsals of Lu Chen's illusion.

 Judging the competition was tough, as many of the acts were impressive. It's very hard to say who is better than who. In my opinion, they were all winners!

I have never competed in a magic competition my whole life. I guess I haven't had enough courage to face the pressure thus I have very high respect to all the competitors!

In the end the scores were tallied and Cassidy, Wai Hoe & Deng Jun came in top three.

Second runner up was Wai Hoe

Deng Jun came in as 1st runner up

And Cassidy was the champion!

In the competition, I got to see all the hard work and dedications the contestants had put in. As a performer myself, I understand how much work is involved behind the scenes that allows for a good show on stage. Everybody did their best out of passion and I can see it from their work.

In my mind, all who took part were champions! They all accomplished something that I couldn't.

Thank you everybody at the Singapore Street Festival for this amazing experience!

With Love,

   - Kiki Tay

Kiki Tay's Lights, Lasers & Magic!

This has been an act that I've been dying to try out for the longest time, and what better place to debut it than my *SCAPE Magic Carnival April's "ALL-STAR" show! 

But time had been my greatest enemy. Putting focus on producing the show took very much of my time and energy away from developing the whole idea to exactly what I had in mind. 

A large part of this dream act requires hours of planning on paper and not to mention tens to hundreds of hours worth of soldering, sawing and drilling. Instead of leaving it out totally, I took the leap and went ahead with a much scaled-down version of this act. 

Filling the entire theatre with magical "Stars"! (The dark areas were filled with "stars" also, but it doesn't really show up well in photos ) :-(

 I have this really weird obsession with LEDs and everything that glows! Everywhere I go, wherever there are shops or signs with bright flashing LED lights, it will draw me in like an insect being drawn into an insect zapper...  Check out some of my other LED obsessions here

Lasers and Lights! :-)

But something happened during *SCAPE Magic Carnival "ALL-STAR" Show. It has nothing to do with the act, it went on well :-) But me wanting to capture the act on video, I had 2 hi-def cameras set up to record it, one main camera and another one as back up. But somehow, both cameras FAILED during this act. One of the camera ran out of tape >.< and the other had memory card problems. And to add to the problem, the effects and lightings made it very difficult to capture good photos on still cameras.

In my attempt to re-capture this act on video, we went back to the theatre the very next morning, set up the entire stage exactly as the night before, and performed the entire act all over again. Just for the camera. But the result wasn't as I expected... The camera really couldn't capture the "essence" of it. Or at least, I'm not capable of figuring out the settings to make it work >.<

Here is another picture of the magical "stars"

This was taken from SRJC's Musical, which I directed about a year ago...

Anyway, one of the purpose of this post is to thank the people who was with me, who woke up early in the morning the next day after an intensively busy and stressful night, to help me set up the entire stage again. A sincere thank you to Xiangzhi, Norvin, Tianle, Kendron, Catherine & Jack!

Thank you!! From the bottom of my heart!

With love,

- Kiki Tay

*SCAPE MAGIC CARNIVAL February!

*SCAPE MAGIC CARNIVAL FEBRUARY

was a blast! Thank you everyone who came to support! Here are some photos from the show!

Jazz Ang!

A violin act gone wrong!

Jack Froze!

JY Norvin!

Thank you everybody who made it happen!

Look out for a BRAND NEW SHOW on 13th March!!