The Adequate Blog

Magicians like to pack as much magic as possible into an act. It’s as if there is a “trick per hour” ratio we want to maintain.

One thing I’ve noticed as I keep going in my show is that the number of tricks I’m doing is diminishing, but I’m taking more time to build up the sense of “theatre” around each trick that I do.

You’ll also find that by slowing down the actual trick, you’ll make them more effective.

So many magicians throw aside “old” magic tricks because, in our world, they’re overexposed. By this I mean that magicians see other magicians doing magic tricks and once they’ve seen it 3 times, it’s “overexposed”.

In this case, make a list of tricks you love that you don’t do.

Now, pick one trick, and try applying the effect to a material other than the one the trick was applied to.  Taking an effect and using a different type of material than the “traditional” material can breathe new life into an old, “overexposed” trick.

Close-up magic is the biggest selling type of magic today. Books, tricks, videos - almost 80% of them concentrate on close-up magic.

Let me tell you something: I don’t like close-up magic.

I’ll give y’all a sec to let that sink in.

Magic is a visual art. Close-up magic is about little pictures. And far too many people try to do close-up magic in a situation where big pictures are needed.

(Close-up magic also consists, frequently, of the same six tricks redone over and over and put into ziplock bags but that’s another rant.)

My thoughts - pick up one, just one, trick you can do for a big group. There’s plenty of them out there (in books no less!) which you can do with everyday stuff and with very little prep.

And start looking for the Big Picture.

… last month I debuted a new trick at the local Society of American Magicians chapter (59 - Portland) as part of their Entertaining Card Trick Competition.  Shockingly… I won.

… so what did you do?

For many years I’ve been enamored of a bit known as the ‘card sword’ - a randomly selected card is noted by the audience, the magician loses the card in the deck, pulls out a sword, hurls the cards into the air and spears the selected one on the end of a blade to the general amazement and accolades of all.

It’s a big visual trick - makes a pretty picture - and would work pretty darn well in a faire setting.

So… like many fledgeling magicians, I figured the best way to do this trick was to buy someone’s version of it. I would like to mention right now how bloody expensive and / or impractical most card swords are. I mean seriously. The most common ’sword’ is really more of a big three sided spike made out of chromed tin which, when you look at it, is no more a sword than your average dust mop.

But, like a number of other “Holy Grail” tricks, I kept it filed away in the back of my head for a long, long, long, long time. Until last month.  This is where I need to bring in another piece of information.

I am in posession of a remarkably well-made foam mallet.

Said mallet is a holdover from my LARPing days in college - it’s about 3 foot long, with a big, double-ended ‘head’. It looks totally outlandish.  It is also completely ‘in scale’ with me, where the commerically available (and less than $300) card sword props were not.  The fact that it’s a cartoonish-looking hammer helps a lot.

So…a card was selected, lost in the deck, a strip of double-sided tape was openly applied to the face of the hammer. The cards were carefully… placed… on the flat side… of the mallet… the hammer was held out at arm’s length.  A gentle tossing motion, like flipping a pancacke… and

WHAM!

Cards. Go. Everywhere.

It was beautiful.

It also helped that the selected card was stuck to the face of the hammer at the end.  As soon as there is video or photos, I’ll post those.

Now, some theory to go along with the now-described practice.

• Magic is a visual art - this needed to be all about the pictures. Most of the things I do are a combination of sight gags and funny behavior on my part, but I wanted this to have some pretty moments. The point where the mallet strikes the cards, knocking them scattered everywhere is a very striking* visual.
• The opportunity for dramatic tension is immense. Just bringing the hammer out causes the audience to pause in that “Oh dear lord what is is about to do” way that works so well with my show.
• My dialogue** with the audience through all this is very self-aware, and it’s clear that my character isn’t certain what is about to happen… so this trick has “The Tobias Nature”.
• It’s amazing and very gratifying how much mileage a man with a deck of cards balanced on the end of a rediculous looking cartoony mallet can get out of a single, knowing grin at the audience.  Add a slightly deranged chuckle and it makes all the effort worthwhile.
• As with all my stuff, the physical motions have to couple with words and yes, acting. Putting words and acting with the smacking the cards out of the air extended the bit from 3 minutes to 5. Not quite enough to completely replace the Mongolian Pop Knot in my repertory, but darn close… perhaps when I work the kinks out of the White Tiger bit…

So there you have it. Idea to creation to refinement. I did this bit twice on Sunday of Faire in the Grove and it was well-received, garnering me my biggest hat for that event.  At Valhalla, we shall see if I can pull it off at 5000 feet. And if I can get my custom, inexpensive, period-neutral playing cards made and ready by the end of the month…

* no pun intended. No, honestly.
** I hate the term “patter” when it comes to my own show. “Spiel” I can work with, but not “patter”.

A professional is a guy who can do it twice!

- Dizzy Gillespie, in an interview with Paul Halmill

I ran into this quote in a slim tome entitled Why Sinatra Matters (which is also a good read if you’re one of those young guys who doesn’t understand where there was so much hubbub about an the guy who sang “My Way”) and it stuck with me because it’s true.  Consistancy, or at least the ability to create quality results, is the key to being a professional performer.

… so how does this tie in with Magic? Well, Magic as a performing art is all about achieving the seeminly impossible through the manipulation of the environment in ways the audience isn’t aware of… most magicians I know of tend to focus on getting the mechanics right - your hand goes here, you turn this way, you look here, and bingo - magic.

The problem is that we focus on the mechanics to the point that the mechanics are all the audience sees. We also need to keep the magic itself fresh - I go back to my theatrical heritage for this - You have to present the magic as it it was the very first time this was happening to you, as well as to your audience. Otherwise you’re just moving your hands around.

… how does this tie in with Faire? That should be pretty obvious by now - we focus on the improvisational nature of the Renaissance Faire environment, but at the same time we need to be able to produce consistant results - the audience is entertained and they want to come back and see more. It’s very easy to go on “auto-pilot” with some gigs and bits of business, or to just fire-hose things  out at the crowd because if you’re standing still, your audience changes every 30 seconds. Experimentation is good, but remember that you want keep your batting average about .300 in this arena - Find the bits that work, polish them and use them wisely.

… because the professional is the guy who can do it twice.

Wow. I’m surpised I hadn’t mentioned this. I’ve been cast as Sheriff Justin Forcer in Steve Taylor’s Golden Garter Melodrama , performing the week of April 15 at the Majestic Theater in Vancouver, Washington!

This is going to be a lot of fun - the entire show features the Magical Melodrama (Or is a Dead Magician An Abra-Cadaver?) and, after a brief intermission, a full on variety show!

If you’re in the area, why not spend a little of your tax refund and come out and see it?

One of the basic tenets of my act is that The Audience Is In On The Scam. At Faire, that comes through in my beseeching the audience to cheer as it raises the energy level of the show and makes the management think I’m entertaining. “In short, it’s a great big scam!”

Working “Street”, I don’t have five minutes to get an already gathered crowd into the act. The show is perhaps ten minutes total - so I need to get people’s attention and fast.

Hawking in the traditional way, the way I do at Faires, won’t work in an urban environment. For one thing, people have their “City Ears” on  and instinctively filter out  shouty noises*.  So, the goal is to draw enough eyeballs to make people pause, and build an “edge” - a row of spectators to give other passers-by the cue that maybe something interesting is happening here.

Last year at daVinci Days, I stumbled upon a way to get people’s attention that didn’t involve shouting**.  It involves the Sword Swallowing Bit, as immortalized in my Demo Reel.

Rather than shouting “Come on, clap!” I stared “swallowing” the sword slowly and deliberately, waited until I could see one or two people watching out of the corner of my eye, and ent into the traditional “applause” position. When they start clapping, I pull the gimmicked sword out (clearly rolled up) and thank them. This results in laughter.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking - but now watch the other people who stop!”  I don’t shout this, I say it at a conversational tone because it keeps the joke within this circle of people.  So my current “audience” becomes part of the scam to draw more people in.

Within 5 minutes I had a crowd of 20 people gathered, building the crowd with a simple sight gag

Having to rethink my strategy for working a “Street” show spills over into the rest of my act - an act which is similar, yet very different from my Faire show.

… and I’ll go into that tomorrow…

* You think I’m kidding? Have you ever tried to get a friend’s attention when you’re all of three yards behind them downtown?

** Yeah I know. Something I do that doesn’t involve shouting. Unheard of!

Organic magic should be the opposite of a magic show trick. Rather than “behold the wonders I can achieve!” it should be about how the magician interacts with his environment.

As I mentioned yesterday, a magician has to eat and drink  and may not have the funds to purchase said food and drink (the way all the customers have to).

So… I’m working on material which will allow me to obtain sustenance from the things you find all over the place at a Faire - rocks, leaves and the like.  Not in the “geek magic” mode of actually eating rocks and leaves, but being able to transform those inedible items into something easily recognized as food, and then, well, eating it. Unselfconciously. Because that’s the way the world works for him.

I’m not going to go into specifics as this is still “in development”, but consider: if you could do real magic, why go around to Faires and perform? Remember my rambling on that a while ago?

Sometimes something comes out of my mouth and then, what starts as a joke evolves.

When I was setting up for the chain escape bit, I randomly set it up by offering my audience a chance to choose between two feats:

One -  a demonstration of poetic, lyrical, one might even say pastoral sleight of hand using a simple piece of silk

The other - Three feet of chain which puts me in considerable discomfort, and if I do it wrong could break both my wrists.

… Now I’ve already established my audience consists of bloodthirsty heathens - at this point I cut off the hooting and hollering with “Now don’t get ahead of me!”

In short, I offer them a choice, between Art or Pain.

… I’ll bet you can guess what gets chosen.  So far, in the  years I’ve been doing this bit, “Art” has never won.   Of course, I counted on that when I came up with the bit. There’s something really neat about having 100+ people all shout “PAIN!” at the top of their lungs.

Well, the big secret is that when I first started asking the question… I didn’t really have “Art” prepared. Since “Art” never wins, I didn’t think it was necessary.

After the Incident at Angel’s Camp (eight inches of snow, uphill, both ways) I started messing around with silk magic.  Two years after I asked the question the first time… I have “Art”.

… just in case.

There’s an ongoing debate / discussion / heated argument among magicians as to whether it’s better to script out your show word for word or work from a loose outline.

Seriously. People get into fights over this. Partially because we tend to rely (unfortunately) on other people’s words when we start out in magic - we call that “Patter” - and it’s included with every trick that’s sold. Usually these words fit the person who wrote them perfectly.

Sadly, that person probably isn’t you. So we tend to flail about a bit while doing our stuff.

My own process involves creating a very rough outline of what I want to say when I do my stuff, and then honing and toning the words over the course of the shows in which I perform that particular bit.  To steal from Commedia Del’Arte, I create magic lazzi, in which I know roughly what I want to say when I do a bit, and then tailor it on the fly to the circumstances (show going too long? too short? audience dead? parade coming through?).

So I have an outline punctuated by lazzi - The opening, the ring bit, the sword bit, rope bits, and so on to the Big Stupid Finale and passing the hat. Even the hat line changes depending on the circumstances.

For Faire, since the environment is so variable, having a stock of lazzi works very well. I’d recommend it for any stage show (or long, complex street bit).  It comes in really hand when your “riff gun” misfires in mid-improvisation.