The Magic of Jen Kramer recently passed its groundbreaking 500th performance at the Westgate Cabaret at Westgate Las Vegas, and it happened the day before its star’s 30th birthday. We caught up with the city’s only current headlining female magician to both celebrate the milestone and find out how her show has evolved.

How has your show changed and grown since you started at Westgate?

I like to think of the show as a continually evolving thing, and while I’m proud of what I’ve created so far, I want to keep beating my own best, keep improving. It’s amazing how a tiny change in the way you say something can make a real difference in the audience reaction. Sometimes I’ll add an entirely new routine, so there are some parts that are totally new from when it first opened, but there have been lots of smaller tweaks as well. It’s been an exciting process and a fun, creative challenge.

Audience interaction is such a big part of your performance, and you were forced to adapt during the pandemic with social distancing and other restrictions. Did you learn anything from that process?

When the show was on pause, I did a lot of work making adaptations to the show so it would work well in the new normal, coming up with different variations and ways to accomplish routines. We wanted to be prepared so that no matter what, we could give the audience a fantastic experience. Audience participation is so important to me because it means every single show we do is a little different. The audience makes the show what it is. They say limitations inspire creativity and it’s true. It definitely pushed me.

After all, solving problems and getting over obstacles is really what magicians do.

That’s something I love about magic, working through different challenges and figuring out the best way to do something. There are many different ways of accomplishing a routine and so many factors go into it.

Now that you’ve reached this incredible milestone, how does it feel looking back on what you’ve accomplished in Las Vegas so far?

There are so many things going through my mind. There are the memories made with the audience and the awesome team I get the privilege to work with at Westgate. Ultimately for me, magic is all about connecting with people, that genuine human connection, and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do this thing I love so much and get to connect with people through magic.

And you get to connect with a lot of different kinds of people during and after the show.

It’s not just a kids’ show, it’s perfectly appropriate for kids and adults, and to me it’s just great to see families at the show. It really does remind me of the first magic shows I saw and what that meant to me when I was a kid, developing an interest in magic. I’ll see (multiple) generations coming together, and sometimes I’ll get to gather after the show and talk magic with a group of young aspiring magicians. That’s just so much fun and so rewarding.

Westgate Las Vegas, westgatelasvegas.com

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