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I have never been a fan of Penn and Teller. I respect their ability to create a
niche in show business as “The Bad Boys of Magic” but they are a caricature of magicians and their persona is more satire and
ridicule than it is any actual magic. They are a cruel joke on magic and
in my opinion just a notch above The Masked
Magician. But, again, if some people enjoy that type of entertainment then so be it.
At several places Penn acknowledges that show business is nothing compared to
"real" jobs. He would much rather spend hours working on a movie
set or perfect a routine for his live show, than sit at a desk, answering to a
boss he can't stand. He tells the story of meeting Jonas
Salk, developer
of the polio vaccine. "I just kept looking him in the eyes and trying to
imagine what it felt like to help save that many lives. Doing card tricks for a living is stupid no matter who you're talking to, but
look Jonas Salk in the eyes, and it seems everyone else is doing stupid card tricks for a
living."
Why do so many in the general public say that they hate
magic? It’s probably because they've seen poor magic or an
arrogant, boorish magician, or both at the same time. Wayne Kawamoto lists five
commonly made mistakes made by magicians and notes that it is not always just
beginners who make them.
1. Arrogance and Acting Smarter Than the
Audience
No one likes a performer, or even a person, who thinks he or
she is smarter than everybody else and tries to demonstrate it. Magic is not an
opportunity for a magician to show off or demonstrate how clever or intelligent
he or she is.
When magic is performed in a manner that says “ha ha,
I know the secret and you don’t,” it’s been turned into a
puzzle and the audience is only encouraged to try and discover the secret.
Also, many magicians don’t understand that what works for Amazing
Jonathan is not necessarily what they should be copying and doing in their
shows.
The Amazing Jonathan is an acerbic performer who humiliates
his audience and assistants for comic effect. You can see some of his work
here. I don’t know of any science performers who deliberately set out to
offend their audiences but there are plenty who inadvertently come across
poorly by showing off how clever they are.
The most important trait for anyone on stage to have is likability and no-one likes a smarty. The best way to get audiences to like
you on stage is to act as you normally would in real life. Be nice. Be
generous. Be polite.
2. Humiliating or Embarrassing Volunteers
When audience members come up to assist, they are going out
of their way to help the magician. It’s imperative to treat volunteers
with respect and not go for the easy jokes that get laughs and belittles and
embarrasses volunteers. Sure, there are lots of bald, fat, ethnic, gender and
more jokes that one can utter, but for entertainment of a higher level, these
can be left behind.
I think the secret to using volunteers is to know exactly
why they are being used and then to send them back a hero. There is no more
effective way to lose the sympathy of an audience than to treat a member of
that audience poorly.
3. Inadequate Preparation
Magic is not simply a matter of visiting a magic shop, purchasing
a trick or two, taking them out of the package, reading the instructions and
then performing them. Entertaining and baffling magic takes time to develop and
practice, and routines need to be engaging, dramatic or funny, whatever works
best for a magician’s personality or character.
An old saying in magic goes like this: an amateur practices
until they get it right, a professional practices until they get it right every
time.
You have to give yourself enough time to 1. write the show,
2. get the props together, 3. rehearse the demos, 4. and then work out how to
perform them.
Just because, as a beginner, doesn’t mean that you can
get away with preparing poorly. In fact because it isn’t what you do on a
regular basis you will need to prepare for it that much more.
I would suggest, as an absolute minimum, you’ll need
to set aside between ten and twenty times the length of the performance for the
preparation. A ten minute presentation needs between and hour and a half and
three hours to prepare. An presentation that lasts for an hour would require
the best part of a working week.
4. Not Properly Structuring a Show
Tricks in sequence should be varied. One card trick where a
spectator selects a card and the magician finds it may be entertaining, but five
such tricks in a row are probably too much. Mix up the effects.
Wayne gives
excellent advice here that I’d like to take further. Structure goes
beyond mixing up your demos. Structure is essential in any performance and
structure comes from knowing exactly what you are trying to do. Every show
should have an ultimate ambition; you should be able to say in a single
sentence what the whole point of the show is. Once you've identified this
end point you can then decide where to start and how to get from the start to
the end.
If you have identified a clear reason why you are performing
your show you won’t end up performing the equivalent of five card tricks
in a row because you won’t just be performing card tricks you will be
taking your audience on a journey that will require a good selection of
exciting demos.
5. Wearing a Character Costume
Many beginning magicians may feel or know that their magic
is inadequate and will consider wearing a costume – a clown suit, wizard
outfit or more – to seemingly make up for this. After all, the logic
seems to go, if one doesn't feel that they are optimal at magic, at least
they’re dressed up as a character.
However, this is faulty thinking. And unfortunately, some
entertainers in costume are a sign of awful magic. Some professionals such as
Ed Alonzo, Sylvester the Jester, Rudy Coby and Bev Bergeron do make great use
of a costume and use it to enhance their character.
A costume should only be worn to reinforce the character
that an entertainer is portraying, which, in turn, supports the theme of the
magic effects. If an entertainer is dressed as a wizard, for example,
what’s he doing with a deck of cards? Should he not be casting
spells or causing things to float and such?
This is great advice. Do you really need that lab coat?
Perhaps if you are going to do something messy you should wear it but do you
need to wear it at the start of the show or after the messy section has
finished? And what about that clown suit? If you have been to clown school and
perform a science show that includes real clowning then you might need it but
otherwise why are you wearing it? And as for that comedy mad-scientist wig,
those thick-rimmed glasses and the tie-died lab coat… I’ll let Wayne have the last word
on that:
Bottom line, the path to good magic is to build solid magic
and presentation skills and perform in an entertaining manner. Save the money
and forget the cheap costume. Work on the magic instead and in the long run,
become a far better entertainer.
Dennis Phillips
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