We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Connie Boyd a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Connie, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience should be my middle name! I’ve built a successful entertainment career, only to be knocked flat to start again from scratch – FIVE times. I must really love my work, because I cannot give up, I don’t know how, but after every setback, I’ve always pulled up my socks and bulldozed forward.
My first love was dance, and at age seventeen I won a full scholarship to train with the National Ballet of Canada. But my dreams of becoming a ballerina were crushed when I developed severe tendonitis in my ankles. Devastated, I answered a casting call for a Canadian one-ring circus, TIVOLI, and by some confusing miracle I was hired as a partner to a Polish acrobat, He and I trained every day for two months as I learned the perch pole – a twenty-five foot pole that I climbed and pressed a handstand atop of, as he balanced it on his head.
TIVOLI was a world-class circus, and despite being just eighteen years old and way out of my league, I was subsequently offered a job in a circus in Mexico. I developed my own solo, single trapeze act and started to assist the talented juggler I’d met in the Canadian circus.
Our juggling and trapeze duo toured the United States, Canada and Japan in circuses, on cruise ships and in nightclubs. Then in 1986, at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, in front of thousands of spectators, a piece of rigging snapped as I flew hands free upwards to my trapeze, swinging from an iron-jaw (mouthpiece). I fell dramatically, and shattered bones in both my feet. My body recovered, but my confidence and sense of safety did not. I would need to reinvent myself a third time.
In 1987, our juggling act was booked into “SPLASH” at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas and it was there that I fell in love with magic. I was enchanted by the show’s headliner, magician and puppeteer, Barclay Shaw. He noticed me watching, rapt, from the wings every night and said to me, “You should be a magician.”
I knew nothing about magic, but on a promise from Barclay’s manager to book me, I naively jumped into the deep end. With zero magic skills or knowledge, I invested my savings to creating a stage magic act. I had a very rough start, but I listened, I studied, and I trained. Recalling my brilliant teachers that I studied with at the National Ballet School in Canada I approached stage and illusion magic consultant, Don Wayne, who was David Copperfield’s magic consultant at the time. Don Wayne became my great mentor and lifelong friend.
I debuted my first magic performance in the “SPLASH” showroom in a Christmas show in December 1987 in Las Vegas. My background as a dancer, my coordination as a juggler, my musicality and my skills as an aerialist benefited me a lot. My acts were like no other and difficult to copy, as I floated high above the stage, or escaped a straitjacket while hanging upside down. I had great success, I was often the only female in the room, headlining in the venue or show.
Magic was a fabulous fit that used every skill and talent I had and forced me to learn more. I managed casts and crew, I learned how to budget, project and promote the shows. I negotiated visas for the team which included my male assistants, the traveling doves and a starring duck!
In 2000, I pivoted from the U.S. and moved the shows abroad. I began accepting long term contracts with a cruise company as an inter-port/fly-on fly-off artist with two different evening magic shows. I was traveling the world, flying to exotic locations, I was performing regularly and I was living on the Italian Riviera in my off time, it was wonderful. But it was not to last.
In 2016, I was in Savona, Italy for an important VIP cruise, rushing to rehearsals, but stopped to help the costume designer with her heavy suitcases. I tripped over the suitcase and broke my femur. It was a dramatic break and required a full hip replacement. My illusion and stage performance career, as I’d known it, ended abruptly. For the fourth time, I would have to reinvent myself.
I had previously worked as the magic consultant for a new vessel built for a show called “Magical Moments.” Impressed, the cruise lines Entertainment Director hired me as a magic production show producer, and I jumped at the chance. Up through 2020, I produced magic shows starring female magicians for global audiences. My shows, “The Beauty of Magic”, “Illusions”, “Chicks with Tricks”, and “ILLUSIONISTA” were hugely successful with international audiences and management during those years.
Then came COVID-19. When the pandemic lockdown started in March 2020, I was in Genova, Italy working with a Ukrainian magician on a new magic act that we had created specifically for her. At the same time, I had magicians in shows on ships in South America and the Caribbean. It was a challenge to get them repatriated to their homes during Italy’s lockdown. My magic shows remained stagnant on various, floating “ghost ships” in the Mediterranean. I managed to fly back to North America before all the borders closed. The future looked bleak. I suspected that my career would be forever changed as a result. Sadly, my prediction proved to be true. I would have to reinvent myself for the fifth time.
During the global lockdowns, I created a project dedicated and focused on women in magic. I am an expert on the topic, having lived the experience for decades. I realized that many of the seasoned female magicians were being overlooked and forgotten. That lack of awareness led me to think, “what if there was a place documenting these women, providing a resource for future magicians, historians, general magic lovers and niche market buffs?”
In June 2020, I created a YouTube Channel, “Magical Women with Connie Boyd” where I posted recorded interviews and sequel talks, editing them myself and sharing the stories of some of the most experienced, best women magicians in the world. It was an unprecedented opportunity and I had a captive audience with talent isolated at home. The results were terrific. To date the channel has over 300 uploads and is part of the YouTube Partners program.
In 2020, I also began writing monthly Magical Women articles about contemporary female magicians in multiple genres of magic for VANISH International Magic Magazine, where I am currently a Senior Associate Editor Advisor. Working with Publisher and Editor Paul Romhany has been a terrific fit.
Through the Magical Women projects and the research for my own lectures, I became fascinated with the history of women in magic. I discovered that many of the women magicians were omitted or written out of magic’s historic timeline, and I have worked with magic historians to correct that. I never dreamed that I would become a recognized authority, but now I am writing a book on women in magic and have recently signed a publishing deal.
Each of the diverse entertainment careers I have experienced has directed me in unusual ways to the next. You’ve read my story, was it resilience or was it motivated by a massive fear of failure? Was it blind determination to succeed or fate and luck? Could it be a combination of all of those elements? I’ll let you be the judge!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’ve been a dancer, a circus juggler and aerialist, an award winning magician, a magic show consultant, director and producer. Currently, I’m a mentor, a documentarian and historian with a focus on the niche market of female magicians. In 2022, in recognition of my work, I was awarded a Fellowship by the Academy of Magical Arts.
The Magical Women project offers a free resource to learn more about women in magic with hundreds of interviews, and performance videos on its YouTube Channel.
The just-released Magical Women playing card deck provides artful graphics of custom Aces, Joker and four distinctive Queens representing notable historic female magicians. The limited-edition decks are available on the Magical Women website.
I am thrilled to share I have a publishing contract for a first-of-its-kind book about women in magic to be released in 2026.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
It’s pretty simple;
(1) Treat people as you would like to be treated. Be kind, be respectful, truly listen to people who are gifting you their time and experiences. If you are respectful and value people’s time, most people react to sincerity and are willing to help you.
(2 ) Be prepared and “do the work” so that you can make the most of each opportunity. Being a true professional, earning a solid reputation for reliability and integrity, working well with others and following through on all the business details will make you stand out.
(3) Cultivate a team of mentors, professionals and friends to bounce ideas off, and to have support in place when you need it in all aspects of show business. You don’t have to remake the wheel! Teamwork is everything.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
While there has been progress on advancement of diversity and inclusivity within the magic community, and although there are more talented female magicians on the radar than ever before, in reality, the number of women represented and booked in magic conventions, competitions and shows continues to be very low, and that is disheartening.
While there have been great strides forward in the entertainment sector, support and representation in the magic field lags far behind. We must do better!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://themagicalwomen.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themagicalwomen/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/magicalwomen1
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/magical-women
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MagicalWomenWithConnieBoyd
Image Credits
Richard Faverty
Michael Messing
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
