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Where Magicians Improve Their Craft

Category: Show Craft

ShowCraft in Action: Part 10e

February 3, 2023 /

After a break (working on Mind of a Magician #12 among other projects), Here we go:

NO Poker

[Segue from 10d: OUT OF THIS WORLD] “And if we trust that this particular group is meaningful. And here for some interesting reason; that begs the question ‘What am I doing here’?”

“Any good heist needs someone to pull it off. A planner. A puppet master. Someone who can see the big picture while keeping in mind every minute detail. And not to toot my own horn here, but tonight that role will be played by me.”

“The skills someone needs to plan the perfect heist are not that distinct from the skills one needs to become an effective magician. A type A attention to detail and a type B ability to think out of the box. A careful understanding of human behaviors. And most importantly, the pointedness to control exactly what you need to happen. Down to the second.”

EVAN invites three audience members onto the stage

“In fact, I’d love to give you an example by playing a bit of a game. If you three would join me on stage at the table, I can show you how exacting a magician can be.

They come to the table, EVAN takes out a deck of cards and they play a round of poker. EVAN deals off 20 cards and begins shuffling the packet.

“Being a magician is actually quite simple. All you need to do is think of every possibility that can ever happen, and then convince the people in the same room to choose the possibility that looks most impossible. “

“Right now, if I were to deal out some hands of poker, giving myself a good hand might not be that impressive. I’ve been shuffling the cards, and maybe – I dunno – I could do something sneaky while I was dealing.”

“But these three seem much more trustworthy than me, so-

EVAN addresses someone in the first row

“- should player one, two, or three deal for us?”

Response. [offsets] EVAN hands the deck off to the named person.

“You got it! Person X will deal us all a hand of poker – 5 cards clockwise around the circle if you don’t mind. [to audience] Here’s where a magician’s skill set thrives. We present a challenging situation – like a poker game where the magician doesn’t even get to deal – and produce an impossible outcome.

EVAN asks the participants to show their cards and reveal their hands. They show various hands but nothing impressive. EVAN turns his cards around revealing a royal flush.

Thank you. But it doesn’t stop there, because there’s a problem. Magician’s take challenging circumstances and create something impossible. As strange as it sounds, that’s actually less difficult than what a thief can do. A real mastermind behind a perfect heist takes complete normal circumstances and does something unlikely. The catch 22 is that the wildly unlikely outcome is actually more difficult to predict and control than a magician’s impossibility. So let’s keep going with the deck of cards.

EVAN stands up and takes out a notebook, which he uses to make a prediction during the next segment.

“Magic has a problem. Well, it has many problems, but that’s a whole different show. The problem for the moment is that it’s too predictable. There’s no excitement or risk or possibility of defeat. Magician’s always win.”

“So I’d like to try something more challenging. I’m going to try to lose.”

EVAN writes the word “LOSE” in big letters on a pad of paper.

“We’ll play a number game, well, really it’s more of a decision game. You all [gesture to players] will make a series of decisions using your cards…

NOTE- This structure is driving me crazy, so in the spirit of moving forward with the draft, I’m going to move forward past it and fill in the details later. Here are the basic plot points:

  • EVAN gets a royal flush with someone else dealing
  • Something about setting up the idea of “winning and losing”
  • Write the word LOSE or the number 3507 [plain sight prediction]
  • All players choose one card at a time to create a multi-digit number that will all get added together
    • Is it more impressive here for me to be controlling a very specific outcome or for it to be hands off and somehow still aligns at the end?
  • At the end, the numbers are all added together, and they make 3507.
  • The plain sight prediction is turned either from word to number or vice versa.

Phew! Now I don’t have to think about this one for now.

ShowCraft In Action: Part 9a

March 17, 2022 /

EDIT: This section became wildly long, so I split it into two parts. This (part a) is “Act I” and part b will cover Act II and III.

SETLIST CONTINUED: A Conversation With The Audience

Here’s a bit of an experiment. Normally at this point (with so much concept work laid out), I’d usually start in on the script. I’m comfortable with longform writing so it feels natural for me to start filling in the blank spaces with the full “story” of the show.

But in an effort to dig into what my ShowCraft process truly entails, I thought I’d try something that’s been kicking around in my mind: thinking through the Setlist as though it were a conversation with the audience. Almost like an interview where the individual pieces respond to the natural next questions of the audience.

Our art is inherently audience-focused. We need people and their brains for magic to exist, so it behooves us to think through what they’re (probably) thinking throughout our show. If ShowCraft is intentionally choosing what to perform when, part of what can inform that decision is what questions and thoughts are in our audience’s minds. Using the Setlist from the last ShowCraft post, I’m going to flesh out the message of each trick, possibly do some re-organizing, and hopefully find the conversational thread that begins to unite disparate parts of the show.’

SHOW WALKTHROUGH

Welcome/Intro: Audience members enter a museum/gallery/warehouse feeling space. If it leans more ‘gallery,’ they can roam around, look at art on the walls featuring card imagery. If it’s more ‘warehouse,’ it feels minimalist – even empty – perhaps the space is filled with soundscape/music to set the mood? The mood is curious and excited, with the predominant question being “What’s about to happen?” At showtime, the lights go down to a full blackout, and after a few moments augmented by sound effects, flashlights begin to turn on, spotlighting a deck of cards and the magician.

Hotel 52: Adapted to an art heist, sets up the 52 cards as unique, priceless art works. Lean on dramatized story to get in medias res opening feeling. One card is selected, revealed at the top of the deck. Rest of the deck crumpled up. Box revealed to be destroyable/made of paint/etc. Effect sets up obviously that the show is about heists/theft, and the first questions are probably a response to me; Who am I? Why am I doing this show? What interests me about the topic?

Ring, Watch, Wallet: Possible elements to include: 1) Story about being stuck in Paris at the almost empty Louvre, thinking “I could steal that;” 2) Only ever considered (and my skills only qualify me for) a handful of jobs: Librarian, Magician, International Art Thief; 3) We so often define ourselves by our jobs to the point where it becomes the first thing we ask a person about (set up for a moment of transformation later on where the focus should really be not on what we do when someone is giving us money, but what we’d be doing when no one pays us for it at all); 4) Being a good magician requires skills inversely proportional to being a good person. This section needs to not only introduce me, but immediately establish trust because the nature of the material is such that twists/mistrust is rampant, and especially if I want to play with that towards the end for a “twist” of some kind, I need the audience on my side right away. This effect should be funny, somewhat self-deprecating, and relatable (use storytelling technique to find the relatable moments). Possible objects to include as part of the effect: Money (Material Value, Wealth), License (Identity), Watch (Time), Business Card (Identity – Becomes Calling Card Later?). Sort of a Thief vs. Magician presentation? Both… “creative problem solvers.” ***Set up the premise of the show at this point: That I think a smart magician could pull of the Perfect Heist*** This leads to a bunch of questions that need to be tackled in a targeted way: Why Magicians? What skills do they have? What would you steal? How would you do it? What would it look like? Generally, I want to save the “Demonstration” for Act III as a finale. Promise to show them exactly what it looks like (though they won’t be able to see it if everything works correctly).

Out Of This World: Refocus all the attention by putting the audience on display a bit. There are a lot of disparate questions happening which is good for interest but bad for controlling the show. Fauxcess of this piece is that audience can do things without always understanding how (Magician’s aren’t special/unique in doing things people don’t understand); I have information and they (apparently) don’t and I’m going to ask them to make decisions. But information is constantly being translated and communicated (SETUP FOR AKA LATER… Maybe incorporate “Pointing”), we just need to be aware of subtext. Flow of the effect should start conversational; maybe with a back and forth about jobs as a callback. As it goes along, I should react positively but subtly because I have the information they’re doing well and I should actively try to give them less information. “Don’t try to solve it, just trust that the information is already making its way to your brain.” Revelation should include the idea of this being the perfect audience (affirmation) for the show and once again tease the ending somehow. Questions will probably focus on “How did we do that?” At this point. I want to refocus that question (Because there’s not enough time to understand “How” of it all as it’s too broad) into “How did you make the ‘right’ decision?” Ask who felt unsure vs who felt sure of their choice. Bring up different representatives and have them hold onto that feeling at the moment of decision making. Afterthought: Set this routine up as being “out of my control” because all the decisions will be made by you and while most magicians wouldn’t give up that much control early on, this isn’t exactly a magic show.

NO Poker: We know why the audience is here (Need a better resolution of this idea in the previous routine); and now we need to know why I’m here. Magician’s are attuned to reading the subtext of a situation. Gleaning extra information and working in the barely-perceptible periphery (call back to the idea of information already being in the brain, just not being processed). And above all, subtly manipulating situations for their own preferred outcomes. This routine is all about manipulation (so I need to take the sting out). Phase 1: win at a hand of cards quickly. Phase 2: Set up the win/lose dichotomy so that I’m attempting to “lose” (fun wording). This routine activates the audience’s critical analysis, so play with that and then come back to a more enjoyable (while still active) mindset to appease critics. By controlling a series of decisions to a T, I can prove my own self-imposed challenge of why I’m leading the show, and I can bring a sort of resolution to “were my choices in OOTW fair/my own?” The answer(s) potentially being: 1) if they feel the same, does it matter? 2) The choices were completely fair in OOTW, but in NO, they made the exact series of decisions I wanted them to. Big takeaway is that THIS IS THE KEY: those two situations felt the same [This show probably needs to use the interactive/conversational moments to check in with participants who should be checking in with themselves]. By this point, folks should be wondering where the line is between what they can control themselves and what is being manipulated by me; I need them to trust me again, so address that and bring them back onto my team. That might happen by shifting the topic towards actual Heists (this Act I has been more general skills), OR the kicker word reveal (rather than “LOSE” could potentially be something related to the scripting transition from control/attention/etc. to heists and the kicker moment is what propels us into Act II.

ShowCraft in Action: Part 3

December 1, 2021 /

THEME

I have the feeling this will be a multi-part discussion. Because “Theme” is one of those loaded words (like “Story” or “Art”) for which everyone carries their own meanings.

For the purposes of our process here, “Theme” simply refers to – in the broadest possible sense – what the show is about.

This could be a concrete Theme (like ‘Movies’ or ‘Games’ or ‘African Pygmy Hedgehogs’) or it could exist on the more metaphorical end of the spectrum (‘Coincidences’ or ‘Luck’ or ‘That Feeling of Not Having a Stair Underfoot When You Think There Should Be A Stair”).

A mistake I’ve made in the past is being too precious with individual steps at this point. As you will soon see – if you haven’t already internalized it – this process is all about ensuring that the different elements of a show all fit together. That the Theme informs the Material and vice versa. That your Goals inform your Frame and the other way around. Etc.

That is a very delicate balance that can’t be struck by simply fleshing out each piece and attempting to connect them. The process is about the recalibration of the different elements to bring them together seamlessly.

I’m a sucker for an obtuse analogy, so here’s a not-so-real-life example that I hope clarifies what I’m trying to say. Imagine you’re creating a jigsaw puzzle – not just fitting together pieces, but making one from scratch. You’ve decided – because of some unknown reason – to paint individual squares of material with sections of your image that overlap. The calibration process is the trimming of those images little by little to fit the design together perfectly in a unique shape.

Eh… sort of lost the thread of that one as I was going through it, so it’s probably less helpful than I would hope. Alas! Sometimes things we try don’t work out!

Anyways, the point of the last several paragraphs is that we’re not editing/trimming/re-working individual pieces now. We’re still in broad strokes mindsets. So keep it simple here.

Your Theme needn’t (and really can’t at this point) encapsulate everything your show is about. It’s only a starting point.

As you’ve probably gleaned from previous posts, my Theme to test out is “Heist.”

We’re still at a place where artistic choices can be somewhat independent (as there aren’t too many individual elements to fit together). So my main reason for choosing Heist as a theme is because I like it! I enjoy heist movies because they’re exciting and real-life capers have a mystique around them. That enjoyment might feel flippant or irrelevant in a discussion of process, but as Tamariz is wont to say – the love for the subject matter comes through to the audience (Check out his discussions of the Seven Veils out of The Magic Rainbow).

With deeper consideration, I think Heists have more wide appeal than a lot of my esoteric interests – especially in the context of an evening/weekend performance that toes the line between theatrical and participatory.

To stretch out my awareness muscles to make sure that I’m keeping other elements of the process in mind, I’ll take a quick peek at my goals (Design immersive show, sustainable finances, documentation/leveraging of the show).

I certainly think this could have some fun immersive design potential, the concept is broad enough (while being exciting and fun) to keep an audience rolling through, and I’m excited by the possibilities for documentation and growth with a show like this.

Let’s see what happens!

RANDOM IDEAS

  • Of the variety of Heists, Art theft in particular has always interested me. Maybe the aesthetics of the “set” or space could be something between a sketchy warehouse where criminals meet to plan their caper and an art gallery.
    • If it ends up having an art gallery feel, I could see visual of playing card inspired art, or maybe cards displayed as art. Something to frame the cards as works of art so any metaphorical use of them throughout the show to represent artworks has some weight behind it.
  • How can I work an Entrapment-style laser grid into this?!
    • Smoke machine…
  • The giveaways/swag/sneaky gifts have Talk Trigger potential
  • If there’s an art gallery this could (eventually) have some sort of visual arts sales component as a financial upsell to folks who are interested
    • Like how coffeeshops have local art up on the walls for sale
    • What would “Magical Playing Card Art” be?
      • Hidden imagery that calls back to the Heist concept?

Where To Start 2 (AKA Where 2 Start)

September 22, 2021 /

The inertia of beginning creating a full show can be overpowering. There are so many decisions that need to get made that it can be confusing to figure out where to start. The good (and bad) news is that there is no wrong (and therefore right) place to begin.

Nonetheless, we need to find a starting point. A guiding star that can help focus future decisions. I’ll go much deeper into process and prompts as the series goes on, but – at its core – the driving force of your show has to come from you.

What is it that you need to share with others? What is it that you know to be true? What is your take on this crazy world of ours that your audience may not have thought of?

And, perhaps most importantly, why? Why does this show need to exist? And why now?

There are easy answers (I want to share my magic with blah blah blah…), and there are more difficult answers that speak to who you are as a person and what you believe. If you take the time to work towards one of those, it will make the rest of the process flow more smoothly.

So now I’m off to figure out what my recurring parlor show is. Why it’s important to me and what I can bring to that experience that’s not already out there.

Where To Start

September 20, 2021 /

Over the last 10 years, I’ve created a TON of full shows. That’s my thing. I’d much rather dive into a full evening where a world is built and explored rather than see a smattering of tricks-of-the-day.

I’ve learned so much about my personal process for show creation (lovingly but tentatively titled “Show Craft” in an upcoming book), but it has mostly been through trial and error. While other art forms have more codified lessons/rules/instruction about intentional design, that hasn’t been fully incorporated into a magician’s study (yet!).

I’m excited to take what I’ve learned and share it with the magic community to see if it resonates, but before the ideas can be put out there in good faith, they need to be looked at critically. The past 2 years in particular have been all about rapid prototyping shows and material; so now with working theories and plenty of ideas/examples under my belt, I want to give it all a little breathing room, step back, and think about it calmly.

Part of this self-examination will inevitably entail comparison to what’s currently out there (see the Book List in a previous post for a starting point of what I’m talking about). One of the best starting points I’ve come across, which is our point of reflection for the day, comes from Derren Brown.

This master showman talks about his stage shows in particular as “being trapped in a room with X thousand people” for a couple hours” and he asks himself what he can do with them that would be interesting. Perhaps not the most guided or directed “how-to” prompt, but valuable in its selflessness. Derren is thinking about the audience experience from the very beginning, and – more to my sensibilities – thinking about the experience as a whole from the outset.

What experience are you trying to create that’s different from just another magic show?

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