I don’t know whether it is a coincidence, but over the last 6 months or so I have had conversations with a number of magicians who have been bemoaning the fact that the number of shows they are doing these days is less than they have had in previous years.
Often these magicians seem surprised at the downturn and have attempted to either come to terms with the new reality, or have wanted to understand what is causing the reduction in bookings in order to try and arrest the decline.
One aspect of performing that can be, in my opinion, very instrumental to success, is your credibility with the audience.
Famous TV magicians can sell out large venues because they have already been seen many times on the box and have established in advance with the viewers that they are good at what they do. Their credibility and standing is therefore not in question and the audience are simply hoping that the performer will live up to the reputation that has been created by these television appearances.
When you are involved in magic on a regular basis, either as a performer or even as an informed observer, it becomes increasingly difficult for magic effects to recreate in your mind that stunning feeling of total wonder that it can cause in the uninitiated.
If you think back to when you were a child, perhaps, and you experienced magic for the first time, those feelings of awe, amazement and the thrill of witnessing the impossible, would have really excited you. But as with any experience, the more you have it the more likely it is that you will become gradually immune to the effects of the situation, and so it is with magic.
Last month for the first time I attended The Event, which is a day of mentalism run by Joshua Jay, Andi Gladwin and Luke Jermay as a forerunner to The Session convention which takes place over the following two days.
Although I have always incorporated some elements of mentalism in my shows, and indeed have devised quite a lot of this type of material, it’s not an area of entertainment that I major on, and so I thought it would be interesting to get involved with a day dedicated just to this branch of our art.
I often feel that January is a slightly strange time of year. After all the frenzied build up to Christmas and the New Year in which most of us are caught up in a flurry of activity, both magical and family orientated, suddenly in January all we are faced with in the short term are wet, cold, dark winter days!
But January can also be a time of reflection on the year just gone and perhaps of planning for the new year ahead. Do you ever stop and look back and try to make any sort of critical assessment of the previous year? And do you then look ahead into the coming 12 months and plan how to continue any successes and put right any deficiencies?
The pace of change in modern day living is often cited as being almost too fast. No sooner have we got used to computer software working in a particular way, for instance, than the developers ‘improve’ it and suddenly we have to learn it all over again. Car design, home electronic goods, even the way we actually shop and go about our daily lives, all these things seem to be endlessly altering and changing.
So given all this, why is it that the magic that some performers have in their act, seems frozen in time? Why is it that when the media want an image to illustrate magic or magicians, they will still often revert to pictures of rabbits in hats and tail coated magicians holding canes? Why do some magic dealers still sell effects which have not been current in plot or theme for decades?
Where do you get your magical stimulus from these days? Is it from tricks you’ve purchased, books (printed ones or E-Books) that you’ve read, stuff you’ve found on YouTube or come across on TV, or is it from going to your local magic club or attending magic conventions?
I suspect that whatever the answer is, if you have been involved in magic for a fairly long time (at least 10 years or more), then the way you seek out things to pique your magical interest may well have changed.
Einstein said, “Insanity is doing exactly the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result!” Actually, he didn’t really say that, but for some reason it is attributed to him. I suppose whoever did express the idea originally thought it would carry more weight if it appeared to come from a genius such as Einstein.
This does, however, throw up two interesting thoughts. The first is whether the saying itself is actually true, and the second is whether statements or ideas carry more or less weight and validity, depending on who expresses them.
Continue reading “Advertising – The Importance Of Who Says What And How Often They Say It”
If you aspire to being a bit creative with the magic that you do and you want to make your performances different from your competitors, it requires that you come up with ways to devise plots, or presentations, and maybe even methods, that will break away from the norm.
There are lots of ways to start the creative process (my E-Book A Simple Guide To Creativity offers you lots of suggestions), but the underlying requirement is that you need to have a good imagination. Without at least some ability to daydream, you are likely to remain stuck with what has gone before, because inspiration may not just happen automatically when you need it to.
Continue reading “Magic Imagination – The Key To Creativity”
It seems to me that having an ability to assess your audience can be a very helpful attribute. By this I mean that when you are interacting with them, it pays you to try and judge, from the way they react to what you say and do, where they are in terms of their intellect and range of interest.
For instance, when I take my lecture round to various magic clubs, as I do every year, the blend of knowledge, experience and understanding can vary hugely from one society to the next.
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