So let's back up to 2020. Life was pretty normal for everyone I'd like to think. I believe we all can say life looks a lot different now then it did pre Covid. In March we were busy prepping for our new show to go in on April 1st at the theatre we had been performing at in Myrtle Beach for the last 5 1/2 years. And then things started to get weird. The news was constantly talking about everyone getting sick with this new deadly virus and we all started to get a little nervous. The theatre got more hand sanitizer stations, we quit doing meet and greets, and the rumors started to spread about taking a week or so off for shows. We had no idea what was in store. But I do remember that last night we performed on that stage. It was March 16th and we had just finished our routine in the big variety show. We walked off with all the dancers behind us and Brandon turned to me and said "Hannah I think that was it. I think we just performed on that stage for the last time." Why he said that, I honestly don't know. The theatre hadn't announced anything yet. There was no reason for him to know, but he did.
The next night we had off but the day after that we should have had a Pure Magic. We stayed up super late redoing the whole show to be without audience participation because we knew there was no way we could do any with the way things were going. Our show was at 4. We found out at 11 they were cancelling it. We were the first show at the theatre to be pulled because of Covid, then they cancelled the show for that night and closed until further notice. We thought surely it would be just a little while.
Everyone was let go. We lost our insurance. The whole nine yards. But of course we weren't the only entertainers to suddenly have the floor snatched from underneath us with shows shutting down. We were some of the lucky few because we had unemployment from working at the theatre.
March ended, then came April. Towards the end of the month we started to go a little stir crazy. We went from 4-10 shows a week to absolutely nothing and never leaving the house. We finally reached a breaking point and some things from our marriage that we kept shoving aside while constantly working rose to the surface. It wasn't something we could bounce back from either. We had to make a decision if it was worth it to keep going and we dug in deep. Some roots are hard to get going if you never give anything time to grow so we put our marriage first.
We started recovering and couldn't look back. And that meant giving up some things that were comfortable to us and had been our lives for a long time. If we're honest, we thought the theatre would make some changes when things finally did reopen again and we always assumed they wouldn't continue our show as it was just an extra show while they still had two other main shows. But we knew we would cross that bridge when we came to it. In the meantime we just chose to heal.
We traveled. A lot. We dated. We got to know each other more over that one summer than we ever had in the 10 years together. We worked harder than we ever had to put ourselves and our marriage first. We were so broken from how we had been living our lives. Always trying to seem like we had it all together, always putting the show first, and never making time for us.
I know Covid hurt so many people but I've also seen where it has done good. I've seen people start new businesses, take crazy chances, do things they said they would never do. We did that too. And I don't regret a single second of it.
We shocked everyone when we announced in September that we wouldn't return to the theatre. We were in Universal Orlando Resort when we got the email that the theatre would be reopening soon and we had a lot to think about. We weighed our options and chose what was best for us. Even without the steady paycheck, 401Ks, insurance, and all that we were happy. The amount of stress and strain that came from it wasn't worth it. I was even having chest pains at 26 due to the stress of the work.
We actually upset a lot of people but we just kept our heads down and went underground. We signed a contract to work a fair in Florida for that following February and didn't really do much until then. And we loved it.
We did have some Facebook friends reach out actually back in late March or early April right at the start of Covid to ask if we wanted to hear all about how they opened their magic theatre. Of course we said yes and ended up spending almost 6 hours on a Zoom meeting with them and heard all about how they did it. This did happen before the big blow up in our marriage but still it changed everything.
Once we had healed some and settled in a little bit, we started entertaining the idea more. Brandon has always wanted his own magic theatre and right then during shut down when we had nothing better to do we started planning what this could look like. By the time the theatre we had been working at was getting ready to open and calling everyone back in we were already 6 months into our 2 year noncompete we had signed when joining. We had every intention of opening the theatre in Myrtle Beach and didn't want to start the contract over again so that was another factor for us not wanting to return.
We felt peace with our decision and kept pushing forward. We traveled a lot in 2021 as well but with doing shows. It was fun being on the road again. We lived out our best Disney and Harry Potter lives as we kept getting work in Florida and visited the theme parks over and over. We had never had the opportunity to really travel with only having part of the month of January off.
We sold our home, moved into a tiny little garage apartment, took random jobs (nannying, baker, barista), to save up as much money as we could, cashed out our 401Ks and played the waiting game.
We looked for spaces every now and then around town but knew we had to wait until closer to the end of the year to sign a lease for a building. Our 2 year noncompete would be up on March 16th of the next year so we couldn't say a word until then. It was a lot of walking on eggshells as we tried to find the right place for the theatre. We still were doing everything we could behind the scenes and kept in constant contact with our business mentor. We were gonna do this and it was gonna be Myrtle Beach.
Fast forward to December of 2021, we had been going back and forth with a landlady for months now but we really loved a space we found. In January it was time to sign the lease. But it didn't feel right. In a leasing agreement both parties should budge a little. And this lady never budged. She kept asking for more money and more things. We got more uneasy and Brandon reached out to his best friend who owns two businesses and asked if they could talk numbers.
And it wasn't good news. As most of you know there are shortages of everything even still today which meant timelines were all over the place and with this option, our only option, it wouldn't work. We had searched high and low for the right building for months on end and this was our last option. And this lady was going to make us go bankrupt before we could even open. We were devastated and we cried a lot.
2 years of work felt like it had completely gone up in flames and we had no idea what to do. We couldn't open for summer now and the only guess was to try to open in time for Christmas but that was losing a whole summer again when we had already lost 2021. We knew we couldn't do it again, people would forget about us. Other magicians were already back to performing while we were waiting out our noncompete and it was awful just twiddling our thumbs.
So for about 3 days we just cried. Where would we go from here? We couldn't possibly start doing resort shows again after leaving a 1600 seat theatre. We didn't want to work for another theatre again. And we couldn't be without work all summer. To say we felt trapped is an understatement.
Then enter magician friend ex machina.
Tiffany wanted to help us find some summer work. So naturally the conversation turned to theme parks as those can be a good gig for illusionists in the summer time. Her very first suggestion was Busch Gardens, to which we replied with while we love Florida, we wouldn't want to move there. She corrected us there was actually a sister park to the one we were thinking of but in Virginia. Williamsburg, VA. Which we had never heard of... Once she started explaining that it was part of the original colonies and James City we realized of course we knew what the Williamsburg area was but never really knew the name and definitely hadn't visited before.
But then Brandon couldn't get it out of his head, we had only ever thought to do our show in Myrtle Beach and another town had honestly never presented itself to us. It couldn't be a coincidence. He started researching everything he possibly could about the town and in a matter of days fell in love. It fit the tourism numbers and demographic we needed, is a super safe community to raise a family, and most important of all there was NO entertainment here. There was a void and we planned to fill it.
We called back Tiffany and Brandon asked if she thought Williamsburg would be a good place to open our theatre and she couldn't have agreed more with our idea.
We always knew that if for some reason we left Myrtle Beach that we would choose a town where there was no other magic shows so we wouldn't step on any toes because we knew what that felt like when someone comes in and rides on your coattail to share in some of your hard work and success. Williamsburg had never had a professional magic show and we jumped at the chance to bring magic to this amazing little town.
So while we had been planning our magic theatre for 2 years, we had most of the details right, just not the town.
We booked a trip to visit Williamsburg for the first time Valentine's weekend. We already knew in our heads this was where we wanted to be before even arriving but we had to be sure with a fact finding mission. Brandon spoke with some big marketing people in Williamsburg and when he told them we were coming to possibly look at opening a magic show one person got so excited they started telling people we were coming before we even went to the town! But obviously, luckily it worked out.
On our trip we ate at a few local restaurants, scoured some locations for lease we had found online before hand (which none of them were accurate), did an escape room, walked around some parks with Luna and Colonial Williamsburg, it even snowed while we were here. We fell more in love with the town every second we were here but we couldn't find a building.
We were tossing up the idea of just moving here anyways, getting some part time jobs and opening the theatre when we found the right space. But on Valentine's night, our last night in town, Brandon tried one last time to find something. We remembered seeing that a church had a sign out where they just bought a new building which meant they had to move from somewhere and that sent him on another deep dive of the internet. He found their previous building, tracked down another tenant that seemed to have residence in the building and reached out the next morning. We were running out of time at this point because we were leaving that day and had a meeting with the Williamsburg Chamber of Commerce to talk about opening a business here as our last planned activity.
As luck would have it the landlady of the building is best friends with the contact Brandon found online. We found out the building is vacant and they are looking for someone to lease it.
We set up a time to walk through the building, prayed really hard in the parking lot, held our breath and walked inside. Let me clarify by saying obviously Brandon is the dreamer in this relationship, and I'm the realist. But with him being the dreamer, that also means he can envision and imagine things that I cannot. No matter how hard I try, until the project is almost done I can't see it. He stepped in and saw all the building could be, how it could become a theatre. I saw a lot of yellow walls and a lot of nothing. I could understand slightly where things could go because luckily the church clearly had an auditorium although the stage was off in the corner and entirely too small to even hold two illusions much less a whole illusion show.
After 30 minutes of walking through, taking photos, videos, and measurements Mrs. Beckie, the building owner finally turns to us and says "So what is it you wanted to do with this?" We laughed because we thought her friend told her so then we got watch her face as she processed "We want to open a magic theatre and do magic shows year round" She replied with "Well that's interesting" but wasn't turned off from the idea.
We exchanged contact information and everyone decided to think on it and we discussed through what it would look like rent wise, timeline, etc. All hypothetical of course.
And just as quickly as we had found it, we were back on the road to South Carolina. A five hour drive gave us a lot of time to think and discuss all the possibilities. We of course called Tiffany first thing to talk it over and then called another magician couple in Florida that already had a successful magic theatre of their own. We bounced off ideas, talked through all the pros and cons. And honestly we had a hard time coming up with cons. The biggest was leaving everyone and everything we knew and moving to a brand new town not knowing a soul and obviously risking every penny to our names but that seemed like an easy decision to make in the long run.
Our hearts knew, this was it. 5 hours later we pulled into the field in front of our tiny little garage apartment and we had our decision. This was it. We were doing this. And we only had 29 days to get it all together and break the news to everyone we loved. February 15th was the day our whole lives changed and we left a piece of our hearts back in Williamsburg. We knew we had to go back and get it.
