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Meet Magical Katrina Kroetch

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Magical Katrina Kroetch.

Magical Katrina, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My story starts very similarly to most young 20-something girls that move to Los Angeles. I didn’t originally want to be a female magician in Los Angeles. I wanted to do acting.

I wanted to be an actress when I was a little girl…not just any actress I wanted to be Judy Garland because I was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. I loved musicals, and musicals often had lots of magic in them. I did a lot of community theater, internships at theater companies, musicals and summer workshops. I did all the acting stuff that everyone who has moved to LA has done. But while I was 18, I went a little off the usual path and I attended clown school. While there I didn’t just learn about comedy -I met jugglers, clowns, circus performers and one of my classmates was a Spiderman at children’s parties. He connected me with a party event agent.

The agency taught me some simple magic tricks, some face painting and balloon animals and gave me princess costumes. They actually didn’t give me a very good education. It was a sink-or-swim type of job. But I was very good at improvising and making things up so even though it was challenging and new to me I was able to learn pretty fast and pretend my way through what I didn’t know.

That party princess job was my gateway drug into magic. I soon realized how much I enjoyed performing magic at birthday parties and it became my favorite part of my gigs as a princess at children’s parties in Los Angeles. I started studying magic on my own and developing my own children’s show with princess themes and quickly began offering longer and longer shows and phasing out my face painting and balloon twisting.

Soon I dropped the princess themes in my magic show all together, stopped working for those companies and went out on my own to be a magician in Los Angeles. I started doing magic as myself. To this day I think I’m one of the only female magicians in Los Angeles that actually performs as myself and doesn’t hide behind being a princess or Disney character to do magic shows. I perform like the boys do – as myself. Doing magic. I think there is something really inspiring and special for little girls to see a strong female magician that is her own person, is grounded in reality, is relatable, and isn’t a fictional character. Something they can grow up and aspire to be.

Whenever I do a magic show, I try to do the magic show that 6-year-old me would have wanted to see.

I started getting a lot of calls to do magic for birthday parties and teach magic lessons for little girls and boys and that became a very successful business. Now I do virtual magic lessons and have many students from all over the country -which is super cool.

I worked very hard on doing close up magic. I took every magic class that The Magic Castle in Hollywood offered (and some of them more than once). I started performing magic for adults at corporate events and weddings on weekends. I really love card magic. It’s my favorite. I do a lot of magic for weddings and magic for corporate events and I try to have at least one card trick in each show. I think my feminine touch and my storytelling background helps with my unique romantic themed magic tricks for wedding magic. I think that is why I’m one of the top-rated wedding magicians on Gigmasters.com and Gigsalad.com

When I moved to Hollywood, I was doing the whole acting thing and audition circuit, I got an agent and would do commercial casting calls but I always got more joy from performing magic. I quickly realized that magic gave me a feeling of creative expression and freedom that acting never gave me. I really love writing my magical scripts and creating new routines and ideas. Those are things I never got to do when acting.

As an actor you’re sort of a “puppet” for other people’s ideas and that wasn’t as appealing to me as being a magician in Los Angeles. In magic I get to be whatever I want instead of commercial auditions where I’d be another “red head #2” ion the call sheet. In acting I felt like a sheep but in magic I get to be whatever I wanted as long as I put in the hard work to do it and create a magic routine, I’m proud of.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have a special place in my heart for acting and I use those skills all the time. I use my Second City improv training, Groundlings character classes, standup comedy and script writing knowledge all for magic. I think that having those theatrical elements and skills really helps give my show more meaning and entertainment value.

Before the pandemic I traveled the world performing magic and have performed in Mumbai, India for a fancy wedding, Munich, Germany for a German magic show. I also volunteered performing magic in Africa with Magicians Without Borders.

The most recent and exciting thing I’m looking forward to is being on Season 7 of the Network Television Show; Penn and Teller: Fool Us on CW Network. The episode I’m in comes out this Summer.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It wasn’t always easy to be a full time female magician in Los Angeles, but I was always able to survive and make it work without having to take another job.

Before the pandemic I traveled the world performing magic and have performed in Mumbai, India for a fancy wedding, Munich, Germany for a German magic show. I also volunteered performing magic in Africa with Magicians Without Borders.

The most recent and exciting thing I’m looking forward to is being on Season 7 of the Network Television Show; Penn and Teller: Fool Us on CW Network. My episode I’m in comes out later this Summer.

Since the pandemic started, I had all of my in person shows canceled in the beginning of March and that was really scary. I had been performing magic and variety arts at events for over 8 years full time and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.
Thankfully I acted fast and I created a Patreon (www.patreon.com/magicalkatrina) Where people could subscribe to my magic videos and support the magical art I was creating. That has been super helpful during this time. I also started offering virtual magic shows and those have been really taking off in the last few months. I entered into a virtual magic contest and won first place so now I can say I have an award winning virtual magic show. That really helped me advertise my virtual magic shows.

It’s kind of scary doing virtual magic because now I’m not just competing with local Los Angeles Magicians for the same magic shows, -now I’m competing with top magicians from all over the world. It’s an entirely different market and world for performing magic. But it is really exciting! I just had an article I wrote about performing virtual magic shows published in an international magazine for magicians called “The Linking Ring”. That was a massive honor. It’s a new world but I’m finding my way and I think that it is still possible to be a full-time magician during this time if you’re hungry enough to perform.

I think that even though I’m not always the most talented person (I feel imposter syndrome constantly). -I’m still a very hard worker. -When I was auditioning for the network magic show that I’m going to be on I had to jump through so many hoops and change up my act for months and months and I didn’t ever give up or take my eye off the prize. I put everything I could into it and that dream of doing magic on network TV became a reality because
I worked hard and pressed on even when it seemed like it wouldn’t happen. I made it happen. It wasn’t just luck. I believe success is 50 percent who you know and 50 percent hard work. -Both of which you can rig in your favor.

Please tell us about your work.
I’m one of the only a very few full-time female magicians in Los Angeles. I specialize in Wedding magic, corporate events, magic shows for companies, trade show magic, and close up magic.

Every now and then I’ll do a magic show at a birthday party in Los Angeles. To this day I think I’m one of the only female magicians in Los Angeles that actually performs as myself doing magic at children’s birthday parties. I don’t hide behind being a princess or Disney character to do magic shows. I perform like the boys do – as myself. Doing magic. I think there is something really inspiring and special for little girls to see a strong female magician that is her own person, is semi grounded in reality, is relatable, and isn’t a fictional princess or character. Something they can grow up and aspire to be.

Whenever I perform a magic show, I try to do the magic show that 6-year-old me would have wanted to see.

I think the world needs more female magicians, more female presidents, and more female president-magicians.

Nowadays I mainly do corporate magic or virtual magic shows for companies which I enjoy because it challenges me to create more complex magic acts. I really enjoy tailoring my magic tricks to different companies and events. I love coming up with new magic to fit a theme for a corporate magic show or close up wedding magic and making something special for each client’s magic needs. It helps me mix it up and be creative. I never get bored at my job.

I take the good with the bad during the pandemic and try to have a positive outlook. I love doing virtual magic shows in Los Angeles and all over America because I can do close up magic and stage magic in one single show and I can film myself and do it from anywhere so I have much more freedom in my job than ever before. It’s really lovely working from home.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was a little girl, I grew up watching Buffy the Vampire slayer and I looked up to all the strong female characters in that show. Especially Willow who was this super magical awesome lady. She made me want to be a witch. I remember for three Halloweens in a row from ages 5-8, I went as a witch. I wanted to do magic so bad. But growing up as a little girl you don’t really get encouraged to learn magic like the boys do. Nobody ever bought me a magic kit, none of my clothes even had pockets. I didn’t have anyone to look up to that was a magician I related to or could aspire to be. I didn’t want to grow up to put women in boxes and cut them up, and I didn’t want to be an assistant in a skimpy dress. There is no female David Copperfield or Lance Burton either. My magical role models were fictional witches. I am really fortunate and happy that since then I was able to discover my love of magic on my own as an adult through chance and go from there but it makes me sad to think how few role models’ little girls have in the industry. I hope I can someday be that role model for little girls who want to pursue a career in magic.

The most amazing recent experience I had that ties back to my childhood was performing on Penn and Teller: Fool Us which has Alyson Hannigan as the host. Alyson Hannigan played Willow in Buffy the Vampire slayer. This was such an amazing childhood dream come true to get to perform magic for one of my biggest childhood magical inspirations on Network TV. I think most magicians that come on the show are star struck by the judges Penn and Teller whom are magic icons, -but for me I was star struck by Alyson. It was such a huge honor to be on that show and 12-year-old me was doing backflips getting to meet her. I was so excited to get to do magic with my magic idol. I feel very lucky to have had that experience.

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Brett Carlson Photography
Prestige Video Production
Magicians Without Borders

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