Not too long ago, a magician I was hanging out with said he didn’t think that younger people understood or knew what the shell game is. I disagree; I think young people know what the three shell game is, and my reasoning is that every ballpark in the USA plays a version of it on the jumbotron. Here’s the shell game at a Cincinnati Reds game:
It’s a simple concept of a game, and younger people definitely know what it is, or it wouldn’t be played in stadiums! This is one of the things that I like about it, it IS RELATABLE because people have played it before!
I wrapped up twelve days of performing my Vintage Organ at a state fair. This is very different than performing magic. The booker didn’t want a show, but something more ambient, like a stilt walker. You have interactions with people, but you’re there to create a vibe, not do a show.
When I started doing the Vintage Organ, my costume (outdoors) had me wearing sunglasses. That was intentional; it was so that I could look around and not look bored or distracted.
The sunglasses do their job of making it harder to tell how mentally engaged you are. However, the drawback is that people don’t want to engage you as eagerly as if they could see your eyes. You lose how you initially connect with people. If I took my sunglasses off and just wore my normal glasses, the percentage of people who would approach me versus me calling out to them was higher.
Whenever I see stage magicians or jugglers wear sunglasses, I always wonder why they’re wearing them. They are cutting off how humans initially connect with each other…eye contact!
Yesterday I wrote about Puddles Pity Party, who was the opener for “Weird Al” Yankovic, and today I’m writing about “Weird Al”. He’s an example of giving 110% onstage! He’s 66 years old, and you couldn’t tell it by how he performed; he’s got more energy than some magicians I’ve seen in their 20s.
The show was interesting as there was a lot of prerecorded video that played for decent chunks of time. The videos were fun and/or funny and used to cover up costume changes. I remember the first time I saw David Copperfield, he showed a video of one of the big tricks from a TV special right before his closing trick (flying), which I’m assuming was for a similar reason to Weird Al.
Like Puddles Pity Party, the main video screen at the back of the stage was used to enhance what was onstage, and it did a great job of that. He played clips of videos he was parodying at one point. I think that was an excellent use of the screen for comedic effect.
For me a HUGE takeaway was that everyone looked like they were having an amazing time onstage and that energy carried out to the audience.
In the show, there were two musicians behind Weird Al who were frequently on camera. They looked like they were having a better time than the audience. I think I figured out what carried the fun further out into the audience: they weren’t smiling with their lips, they were smiling with their mouths. What I mean by that is they were doing smiles with their mouths open a bit.
The next day, for all of my shows, I started smiling with my mouth, and it made a huge difference! I’ve written in the past about smiling onstage, however sometimes a reminder is great!
Go out there and put your heart into your art and smile!
Last week while I was in Ohio, I saw Weird Al’s show and the opener was Puddles Pity Party. I’ll write about Weird Al tomorrow, this post is going to be about Puddles. I’m going to start by saying, he was amazing, and if you get a chance to see him, do it!
His show is what a variety act (magician/juggler/etc) should look like for an arena show (about 10,000 people). He did a show that was all singing; he didn’t speak. In the show, there were gags and audience volunteers. His structure was great: a song or two, then a song that, at the end, went right into him bringing someone up from the audience who did something during a song. Then that patter repeated.
It was interesting that after his song, he had a graphic and recorded tune when he went into the audience. The audience didn’t applaud at the end of the song as he went into the audience. I really liked that approach; it kept the energy up. It wasn’t like a thing ended, but it was an extension of the previous thing. That’s kinda like my current Nest of Envelopes routine.
The use of projection was great in this venue, there was a screen at the back of the stage and two on the sides. The two sides had video projection of him, and the one at the back had graphics/recorded video that played. The graphics or recorded video did a great job of enhancing the mood of the song he was singing.
I highly recommend this show to see what a club style magic show might look like in an arena!
A few days ago I had an idea for a magic routine, and in that routine there is a juggling element. I can juggle, but am not a juggler and needed to work out a sequence. Luckily, in the performer house that I’m at, there are two jugglers and a physical comedian there. Last night we had a little workshop on the routine!
I’m a huge fan of workshopping with other performers. It’s a way to get a lot of ideas quickly, or to get expertise that you don’t have. I can juggle, but I don’t know the best way to put together a juggling sequence.
Workshopping with performers who don’t just do magic brings in a lot of different thinking and ideas than just magicians.
Modern magic, especially close up magic has moved to very visual effects. Things that look like AI or if you’re old school, then trick photography. Magicians rarely look to the past, there are some amazing tricks that look like a modern AI fake magic trick.
One example is the Joseph Silk Gun. Another is the Jumbo Card Restoration Frame which was invented by Theo Bamberg in 1909. I’m sharing a greenroom with a magician who has one of these and it looks amazing!
A few days ago, I was doing a news spot to promote the state fair that I’m performing at. In this contract, I’m only doing my Vintage Organ, so no magic. One of the things that I did was go over what I planned to do with the person I’d be talking to on the show. He asked if he could play the organ and I said “yes”, then asked him if he wanted to just play a song or if he wanted to get a laugh. He said, “laugh”, so that’s what we went with. I’ll post a video of the media spot when I get it.
When you do TV, there’s a lot of waiting around. My call time was 8am, and we didn’t do the actual spot until 9:45am! One of the things that I did was start to play Name That Tune with songs on my organ. I did this about 10 mins before we were supposed to start. I didn’t want to force it in; I noticed everyone was standing around doing nothing. I asked how much time we had and was told about 10 mins, so I started the game.
Here’s the “behind the scenes” video that Fox and Friends posted:
Not only did this kill some time, but since I had been waiting for close to two hours, I wanted to do something to put some energy back into me! It worked well, and it was a fun news spot!
These news spots can be intimidating, especially national ones like this, but a little bit of planning and a little bit of goofing around make a huge difference!
Personally, I don’t like using my cellphone for magic tricks. It’s too easy for an audience to say something is an app or AI. The other reason is that so many magic specific apps get abandoned by their creators, and they just stop working.
Here’s a little magic trick that I came up with that uses a cell phone:
The video above was the test of the trick, I’ve tightened it up and removed all the double lifts from it.
Honestly Evaluating The Magic Trick
What I like about this is that it doesn’t use any magic apps, so I’m not relying on some magician in their basement in Alabama to keep it updated!
What I don’t like about it, is that the effect is fairly slow. Removing the double lifts speeds it up a lot and takes out a lot of unnecessary process.
One last thing, I found the trick is stronger when it’s repeated a second time!
When creating magic tricks, I think it’s important to evaluate what’s going one. Figure out what you like and don’t like and what makes it hit harder for the audience. Try things, take risks. .
In the summer, I frequently work with Jeremey the Juggler, who is a juggler, but also an origami master (I’m not sure if that’s an official title). One day he mentioned that he made an origami box that just happened to kinda do a magic trick.
There’s really not much to do the trick. A false transfer and use your arm to cover you loading the object on top of the box. Then use the box to do the second vanish.
It’s a quick, fun little sequence that appeals to magicians and origami people.
This summer, I’ve really been trying to speak Spanish more when performing close up magic for groups where that is their native language. I perform in California a lot, so I encounter groups that don’t really speak English frequently. I’ve been working on my Spanish for the last few years using Duolingo, and I can safely say that I’m not conversational; however, I can communicate!
When I approach a group, I can tell them why I’m talking to them, what I do, and I can tell them what I need them to do during the trick. In close up magic, I don’t really have any jokes in Spanish, I do have a couple in my stage show.
With things like Duolingo, or whatever, you really don’t have an excuse not to know a bit of a second language. Even when you don’t speak it well, it shows that you’re trying and I think audiences really appreciate that!
