Being a card guy, I am not exactly what you would consider knowledgeable when it comes to mentalism; neither do I do much of mentalism, maybe besides a simple book test or some equivoque here and there.

I have always wanted to test out Max Maven’s effect, “Disposable Colour” (I learned it from his Nothing DVD, but it can be found originally in his Red Book of Mentalism). For those who are not familiar with it, the effect is as clean as it can be—a crumpled paper ball is thrown into the audience for a random audience member to catch and come up on stage with the performer. The magician then asks him to name any colour—and let’s say the participant says “Blue”. The participant is instructed to unfold the crumpled paper ball in his hand, only to find that written on it is the word “BLUE”.

Clean? Amazing? That’s why I wanted to try it out. And I managed to do so recently at a children’s birthday party.

WHAT? Let me explain.

I was hired to do a show for a birthday party—20 kids, eight to twelve years old. Most of them were girls, with only a few older boys. I needed someone to come up for a sponge ball routine (the standard routines, don’t worry), so I thought to myself, “Why not use Disposable Colour to invite a kid up on stage?”

I threw the paper ball out – and what do you know, a boy caught it. He hurriedly ran up and stood beside me proudly.

“Hello, what’s your name?”
“Jayden.”
“Okay Jayden, say hello to the audience.”
“Hello…!”
“Alright, Jayden, let me ask you a question so that I can get to know you better. What’s your favourite colour?”
“Blue.”

I don’t know if the audience could see it, but as Eric Mead puts it, adrenaline shot out of my eyes that instant.

“Now there’s no way I could have known that, right? Have you ever told me what your favourite colour was?”
“No…”
“Okay, Jayden, you are still holding on to the paper ball I threw out just now. I want you to open it and… there’s something written on it…”
“What the…”
*audience erupts in astonished gasps*

I took a bow, and here’s where I decided to take my chance and go in for a second miracle. I stole a spongeball from my pocket and continued.

“Jayden, wasn’t that amazing? You can keep that piece of paper as a souvenir… Now let me ask you a question. Do you have a second favourite colour?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, what’s the colour?”
“Red.”

No adrenaline shot out this time—it was all used up just now. Instead, my heart stopped.

“Jayden, I want you to stand here and stare at the audience. Now you said red just now, correct?”
“Yeah. Red.”
“Good. I will try to produce a little red ball from behind your ear…”

I reach over and from his ear… I produce a red spongeball.

*audience erupts into spontaneous applause and kids rush up to squeeze the ball*

Talk about a strong opener for a kid’s show. Beat that.

Moral of the story? Taking chances in magic can pay off, BIG time. Just make sure you have an out, or else!

I had the distinct pleasure of attending Steve Cohen’s Chamber Magic, at the Waldorf Astoria, New York City, and it was a therapeutic experience; I was transported back to age nine, when I saw my first magic show. I laughed, I was amazed, I was fooled several times, and I felt like a layman. I didn’t realize how much I missed this feeling, because I haven’t felt this euphoric about a magic show in a long time (I get this feeling a lot in the presence of Juan Tamariz).

Cohen’s Chamber Magic is in its tenth year, and is that rare example of formal close-up magic offered regularly to the public. Steve’s show is absolutely phenomenal—it’s everything a great magic show should be: entertaining, enlightening, autobiographical, surprising, and it boasts all the advantages of close-up over other genres of magic: all fifty participants felt like they experienced magic in very close proximity, and nearly everyone was involved at some point.

I also had the distinct pleasure of seeing growth in this show, because I saw it four years ago. It was a good show then, and some of the material is the same. But years later, (five shows a week, every week), Steve has achieved virtuosic proficiency with his material, and a level of comfort that only comes through thousands of shows. His script was polished, and his wit off the cuff was seamless. Clearly he has heard every line, and has a response or a tactic for everything.

Every piece in his show is a closer: Think-a-Drink (in which any thought-of drink is poured from a magic tea kettle), a thought-of card routine, an involved Q and A piece, an astounding, hands-off rising cards in which the pack is isolated on all sides by glass (this would fool even the most discerning magician), Malini’s ice production (with a brick) and done surrounded, the finest Himber Ring routine I have ever seen, and Tamariz’s Total Coincidence. That Cohen is a proficient technician and a fine performer is clear to anyone show sees the show. But only a magician can fully appreciate his knack for selecting strong, memorable magic. Good material selection is, perhaps, as important as any other skill in magic. Steve has exquisite taste.

New York City has no Magic Castle, and we East Coast magicians are insecure about this. But we have a recurring close-up magic show that has run more than a decade, in one of the most prestigious venues in the world. Worthy of seeing and worthy of study, Chamber Magic was simply delightful.

There’s an age old cliché that has been bothering me recently: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. It’s bothering me because it’s wrong, especially when I hear it applied to magicians and the opening of their act.

An example: at the International Convention recently, a friend and I made a pact; if within the first minute, we thought the act was rubbish, we’d leave. Ten seconds in, I was convinced that it was time to leave. The act’s introduction left me cold and it didn’t show any sign of improving.

But then, just as we were edging forward to leave our seats, something happened. I laughed. I laughed again, and again. It was one of the best acts I saw during the entire convention. This act was good, but their introduction wasn’t.

This happens all the time in magic so I wanted to point out that it is possible to save your introduction if you bomb within the first few minutes. You have to work way harder later in your act, but it is possible to turn your audience around after as poor introduction (whether it’s your fault or not). The key, I think, is to not stop looking at your introduction as your first minute with the group, but as your first performance and you’ll always be focused to give a great performance every single time.

I’ve seen a lot of magic performed over these past few months and there’s one word that keeps popping into my head and I’ve never heard magicians talk about it before. That word is relevance.

Magicians will always tell you that a magic performance must be entertaining and that it must be fooling (and I wholeheartedly agree with them), but in my mind, unless it’s relevant neither of those things really matter.

Here are some questions that I think every magician needs to ask themselves:

- Are you relevant for the audience and venue that you are performing for?

- Are your presentations relevant and up to date or are you still using patter from twenty years ago?

- Are your tricks relevant to your audience? This is the only way you’ll make them care about the tricks that you’re performing.

- Are your props relevant to your personality, age, performance style and the environment that you’re performing in?

In my mind, however technically good you are, or however funny your presentations are, you’ve already lost the battle if you can’t answer yes to all four of those questions.

Our great friend (and star of CoinRUNEque) Rune Klan appears on the cover of the November 2009 MAGIC Magazine:

The article was penned by Vanishing Inc. cofounder Joshua Jay and providers a great insight to this interesting Danish celebrity and close-up magician. We’re proud to have one of our best friends and biggest supporters features so prominently in the magic press!

For those looking for a little more of Rune’s amazing magic, we’re actively working on Rune’s book, set for a 2010 release.

It’s rather unconventional for someone to do this in their debut blog (I mean Clog) post on an international magic website like Vanishing Inc., but I am going to be revealing a rather horrific and embarrassing performance I had recently.

Three words: Failed Russian Roulette.

Imagine this setting – you’ve been invited to a beautiful hotel ballroom, filled with one hundred 16-year olds excited to be at their graduation dinner and dance. They know there’s going to be a magician performing for them on stage for a quick 10 to 15 minutes during the night.

I was that magician, and I messed it up. Big time.

Against Ken Weber’s sagely advice (read Maximum Entertainment), I brought my home-made DIY Russian Roulette prop. I had not performed it in a long time, but I considered the fact that the last time I performed it, it got great reactions. What could go wrong?

Everything went fine until there were only two cups left standing, one with a sharp nail underneath it. I asked my volunteer to “imagine that they were psychic, or maybe even Superman with X-ray vision, and that he is now able to see through the cups and see where the nail is”. I asked him to concentrate and try his best, and hoped for the best.

With that knowledge in mind, I asked him to put his hand over one of the cups. He did so, placing his hand over the one with the nail.

Perfect.

I recapped by confirming that I had asked him to visualise where the nail was, and thus he chose that cup. I asked him to keep his hand there, and I used my own hand to smash the other cup (which is safe). The audience gasped rather loudly, which made me look up and wonder why. Was it really that shocking that I has crushed a styrofoam cup with my bare hands?

I looked over to see my volunteer’s hand over a crushed cup as well. He had, unfortunately, slammed his hand down too on the cup he had picked. The one, with the nail.

First thing I thought of – why wasn’t there a nail sticking out of the back of his hand? I quickly lifted his hand to see that under the styrofoam pieces was a nail being pushed away and was now slanted sideways – a surprising feature of my poorly-made prop (the nail was embedded in cork coasters, which gave way under the force and allowed the nail to slant away).

His hand had a cut across half his palm, and I didn’t see any serious bleeding. Nevertheless, the audience went into a state of confusion. Some thought the nail had disappeared and wondered if the trick has taken an unexpected turn. Those who were closer to the stage knew something had gone terribly wrong. I quickly made sure he was okay, and sent him back to his seat. I quickly showed the audience that he had successfully picked the cup with the nail, but had unfortunately slammed his hand down when he wasn’t supposed to. I gave a quick (and weak) thank you amidst confused and scattered applause.

The purpose of this story-telling session is not just for my story to be added to the vast amount of “failed performance” stories out there amongst magicians. I think this experience can show and teach everyone a few important lessons:

1. Always be sure of your script and patter before you perform on stage, especially when performing dangerous tricks. Some magicians are strong advocates of scripting word for word, while some feel it’s too restricting; but I feel that no matter what you prefer, there is one single thing both sides can agree on – be sure of what you are about to say before you take the stage, ESPECIALLY when it comes to important instructions. Scripted jokes, to me, defeats the purpose of humour in magic, but instructions – be sure to have them down cold. Being sure of what you say on stage also ensures that your volunteer fully understands what they are about to do. It was my fault that I didn’t ask him NOT to crush the cup, and it was possible that I didn’t make it clear enough that the nail was under his hand, waiting for human flesh to enter its cold, white, styrofoam lair.

2. Be gracious (and brave) enough to stay on even after such a horrible performance. After I came down from the stage, I quickly packed my bags and rushed off without speaking to anyone else (probably because I was embarrassed at the host still saying things like “Thank you Harapan for that performance, he is indeed a true master!”) on stage. In retrospect, I should have at least stayed to find that guy who injured himself, check to make sure he’s okay, and make it clear to him (and his friends sitting at the table) that what they just saw wasn’t supposed to happen, and that he wasn’t supposed to crush the cup at that time. I think it prevents the victim from spreading false stories to his peers, like “That idiot of a magic guy… stabbed my hand with a nail… remember how he told me to push it down? He had an evil glint in his eye!”. It’s also a nice gesture that shows your professionalism and how you can remain calm in the face of adversity.

3. This is something I didn’t mention – but always be sure of when you’ll be performing during the event. I’ve performed for a number of times in different situations over 3 to 4 years, and I still make mistakes when making sure everything is in place for me. Before I went up on stage, I realised that they were EATING while other performers (e.g. singers) were on stage singing. I quickly pulled the organiser aside and asked if they would be eating when I performed my death defying (or not-so-injury-defying) Russian Roulette later. She confirmed my nightmare, and I have myself a good old palm-in-the-face. Later, you could literally feel it was a low energy crowd if you were standing on stage, some were looking at me intently, half were looking at me while chomping on their third course, some were just more interested in the chicken than the guy on stage. So, you can imagine how the injury completely drained out any of the remaining energy left in the audience.

4. This is similar to the first point, but be 101% sure of what you’re about to do. My Russian Roulette routine was created on my own, including thinking of the method, building my own props and structuring the steps I had to take – and I made the terrible decision to tweak my routine at the last minute (I’m referring to the Superman x-ray vision presentation), and I clearly didn’t practise hard enough to make sure I had that down cold. That led to poor instructions given to the volunteer, which led to a real test of his Superman abilities by injuring himself with a nail.

There is a slight happy ending though, for those who are reaching for their tissues (I know this story is a tear jerker, I know). I had prepared myself to produce a glass bottle of water from the sleeve of my suit as a finale – it was meant to be poured into the final uncrushed styrofoam cup as a “celebration” of my volunteer’s success (this is taught in MAGIC: The Complete Course). Since there wasn’t much to celebrate about and all the cups were gone, I decided that I didn’t have much to lose and produced the bottle anyway, saying that “since his hand is fine, I think it calls for a celebration”. I thanked them and gave a quick bow, and luckily, I went down the stage with them applauding. Not a standing ovation, but somewhat polite applause that I can live with – at least for that hell of a performance.

I don’t know if you’ve learnt anything from reading all of this, but I hope it has somewhat deterred you from these dangerous tricks. As Ken Weber said, proceed with caution, and if you try, you can DEFINITELY find compelling material that doesn’t put anyone in harm’s way. However, more importantly, if you are an amateur magician who is about to embark on your first gig, make damn sure you know what you’re doing and be prepared to make some horrible mistakes. Everyone does from time to time- it’s a matter of how you save yourself at the spur of the moment and how you learn from that experience to improve your next performance.

And yes, go buy Maximum Entertainment.

Imagine if you had the opportunity to perform for ten thousand people in a massive theatre. What would you perform? Given the size of the audience, you would more than likely perform something absolutely amazing in order to look your best. I know I would.

Good news: due to technology such as YouTube, for the first time ever the average magician can now achieve these audience numbers with very little effort. Within the next few minutes, I could upload a video and be seen by ten thousand people with very little effort. It’s the equivalent of gaining the perfect gig just for the effort of recording a quick video clip.

That’s a good thing, right? Well, it should be.

The problem is that most magicians aren’t treating this as the same opportunity that they would if they were performing in a massive theatre, or on TV, even though the size of the audience is the same. Instead, they’re just performing boring card tricks that they haven’t even perfected yet. For the most part (and magicians like Marco Tempest, who have really embraced YouTube, are the exception), the quality of the material just doesn’t match the size of the audience.

Audiences, and our way of accessing them, has changed, yet unfortunately most magicians haven’t. If you’re going to go to the trouble of uploading a performance to YouTube, please remember the number of people that may see it. Remember that you’re on show and most importantly, remember that it’s an amazing opportunity. Embrace the fact that you’re possibly performing for hundreds of thousands of people and please show that magic can be amazing.

There’s one thing you need to know about your audience. Most magicians forget it, but it’s the one thing you need to know about them that will elevate your performance into an experience that your audience members will always remember:

The people in your audience are just as interesting as you.

When watching other magicians, it’s always clear which magicians realise this. They’re the ones that don’t just talk at the audience. Instead, they interact with their audience members and make them part of the performance.

Many magicians think that the best audience interaction is to have someone perform a mundane task like pick a card or examine an object. It isn’t: the the real goal should be to genuinely interact with audience members and then find ways to personalise your performances with jokes, patter and presentations that are specific to them.

Talking to your audience is far more important than having them hold onto a coin, pick a card or examine a piece of rope. I like to think of it like this: interaction (talking to your audience) is far more memorable than action (picking a card).

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and hold it for a couple of seconds. Now exhale.

You didn’t close your eyes, did you? Of course not. Maybe you thought it was a silly request or, more likely, wanted to keep reading.

Why would I ask you to do such a strange thing while reading a blog post? Well, I’ve always wondered why some shows went better than others and I believe I’ve cracked it. Okay, maybe not entirely but I think it all starts at the beginning. You’re more prepared, mentally and physically, for certain shows BEFORE they start. The audience can tell when you’re having a good time and enjoying the show. So you’ve got to be ready to do just that, enjoy yourself.

The best way to do that is to warm up. You must get in the right mindset by clearing your mind of any negative things (even little things!) that happened during your day. Forget about that guy that flipped you off in traffic, the deadline you missed—forget about everything, if possible. I’ve found that not only does this relax you but it also reduces any nervousness before a show.

Want to try it? Here are some quick ideas to get you started. There are many ways to get your mind and body prepared for a performance but I believe these three simple techniques are easy enough and will work for anyone:
1. Breathing
2. Stretching
3. Vocal exercises

A simple breathing exercise is to take a deep breath in through your nose. Hold it for five seconds, and exhale through your mouth. Variations involve taking a breath and then exhaling in short continuous breaths. That’s it.

Stretching exercises are very personal and, since I am not a doctor, it’s best for you to look up any of the millions of stretching resources online and start slow. Keep in mind that stretching should not hurt so be careful.

A quick vocal warm-up that I learned in an improv class is to repeat this phrase, each time stressing a different word:
Whether the weather be cold, whether the weather be hot, we’ll be together whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.

If you use any of these techniques already, I’d love to hear about your experiences. If not, try them out!

Okay, we’re at the end but I’ve got a confession to make: This post was just a warm up. I’ve asked a few of my favorite professional magicians what they do to warm up and I’ll reveal their answers to you in my next post.

Hey Guys,
The internet magic world is on fire these days amidst the controversy between Shawn Farquhar and Russ Stevens’ acts. If you haven’t heard anything about it, head on over to iTricks for the latest dish. But we here at The Clog would never stoop so low as to discuss a hot topic simply to attract hits to our site. We’re above that.

But I would like to discuss Fawn Sharquhar and Suss Revens. They are two completely different people than Shawn and Russ, but are going through a remarkably similar bout of mudslinging. I will assume you are familiar with the allegations and facts before moving on, and have watched both of these gentlemen’s acts.

Just so there are no questions; I am unequivocally on Suss Reven’s side of this debate. And I must hand it to him for being such a class act throughout the debacle. I don’t know if I would have been so diplomatic in his shoes.

What it boils down to is that I just don’t understand what Fawn is trying to claim as his. Sure, his act is different than Suss’, but is it different enough to claim as his own? I don’t need a magic eight-ball to see that all signs point to “No.” And if you think this is a purely subjective opinion, let me take you through some simple arithmetic to arrive at the conclusion:

- Take Fawn’s act.
- Subtract all the elements that Suss had previously established in his own routine. The song. The stool. Producing the cards named in the lyrics, etc.
- What are you left with?

A mediocre-at-best Ambitious Card routine done in front of a camera (which sadly only magnifies the sloppy technique).

So again, what is Fawn trying to claim? Obviously not Suss’ elements, as he clearly had precedence. So does he want us to marvel at his Tilt or break-getting abilities? I hope not.

Even if we were to pretend that Fawn developed his act independently, Suss still has precedence. I would get laughed out of the room if I said, “Well, it’s obvious to show two cards as one, so I’m going to claim the Double Lift.” Suss was there first and his groundwork should be appreciated, plain and simple. Let’s face it, it’s easy to pick apart individual parts: “Suss wasn’t the first to use a stool,” “It’s an obvious song to use for a card act,” (EVERYTHING is obvious in hindsight, by the way; that’s what’s so great about seeing hinds), “Fawn didn’t use a card sword,” etc., but ANY original act can be picked apart if it’s broken down to small enough bits. If we started viewing every element in isolation from each other, there would be no such thing as originality. They say, “The sum is greater than its parts,” for a reason. We need to recognize the people who make sums. We need to recognize Suss Reven’s contributions.

And for those who claim, “But.. but… the moves are all different!”Let’s look at it another way: if Fawn came out and performed a manipulation act almost move for move with what Suss had performed – but WITHOUT the music, stool, etc. – no one would have blinked an eye (or is it “blunk” an eye?). I’m sure even Suss would admit that his moves were standard. Because that’s not the point. The point is how he put it all together and made the magic relevant. And that’s what Fawn appropriated.

If FISM is granting awards for this type of magic, I think I might enter in Blackpool 2012 doing a one-handed card trick, shouting, “I can’t do it any slower!” (in Spanish, of course). But to show the judges how original and creative I am, I won’t do Oil & Water. It will be an Ace Assembly. And it will be AWESOME!

The sad part about the whole thing is that Fawn’s act (with all of Suss’ elements intact) is actually pretty good. And all of this controversy could have been avoided if he had just been open from the beginning, acknowledging that it’s a cool adaptation of Suss’ act.

Because that’s what it is.

Tyler Wilson