When my daughter was about 12 years old she was part of a local young people drama group which was attached to the Northcott Theatre sited on the Exeter University campus. The group taught the kids the skills of both performing on a stage as well as the technical aspects of what went on behind the curtains.
Part of the main excitement for the youngsters was that they got to take part in the occasional production put on by the theatre itself, and my wife and I used to go along and watch Chrissie in her minor, yet to her hugely important, role in the productions.
One musical that she was involved in required her to come on from the wings at one point and do a short dance. She was very nervous about this and built it up in her mind to being a huge hurdle to get over.
After she had successfully done it, my wife and I were quick to congratulate her, but instead of being elated, she seemed a bit downhearted, which was puzzling. So we asked her what was wrong and she said, “Oh, it was such a disaster, I really messed it up.”
We couldn’t understand what she meant, but on probing a bit further, it turned out that when she had come onto the stage she had been told to put her right foot onto the stage first, and her terrible mistake was that she had used her left foot!
Of course, this had absolutely no affect on the outcome of the dance piece but because she knew what she had practised and been instructed to do, she was annoyed at herself for getting it wrong.
I relate this story because I think magicians are often equally upset about what they think are major gaffs, but which in reality usually pass by the audience completely unnoticed.
One of the magical mantras that is trotted out from time to time is that you should never tell the audience what’s going to happen in a trick in advance. I think the reason for this is because if you need to compensate for an error, provided the audience doesn’t know in advance what is supposed to happen, they are left none the wiser and assume that this is how the trick always pans out.
Fortunately, I don’t tend to make that many mistakes when performing, but on those occasions when I have, if I don’t comment on it or make an issue of what has happened, most of the spectators remain unaware that something’s gone wrong.
I remember doing one show where I ran through quite a lengthy card effect and at the conclusion, the card I displayed was not, as it should have been, the original selection, but a completely different one! However, I just showed it, smiled, said ‘thank you’ and put it away as if everything was normal. And the audience clapped!
I think the reason is that most of the spectators had forgotten what the selected card was anyway, because they didn’t personally choose it, and since magic can often be a bit confusing to follow, I’m sure most of them just assumed that the card was correct and they had mis-remembered it. So, right foot, left foot, correct card, wrong card, in the big scheme of things it often doesn’t matter.