Are we just too smart to enjoy being amazed?

Are we just too shallow to admit that we can be touched by something we see?

Are we meeting people who reduce magical experiences to the statement – “It’s just a trick!” ?

Are a youth simply becoming desensitised to art because once they know that something can be done they devalue the artist you can actually do it ?

Saying you Know is not the same as Showing You Know – Showing You Know is not the same as Confidently Presenting what you Know – Being creatve, artistic, inspiring and a litle humble in Performing what you Know is another thing entirely.

Take this GENIUS of magic…

Innovators@Google presents: Marco Tempest from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.

SUPERB and INSPIRING as well as creative – if you say it’s ‘camera tricks’ then you miss the point totally and self-define as an uncreative hack…..

Alan

Learn The Secrets To Effects & Illusions That Will Turn YOU

Into A Magician For Your Friends & Family, Almost

Overnight!

Unfortunately this is a depressingly typical advertisement and it’s not because the product can ‘almost’ turn me in to a wonder worker overnight!

In the UK, as perhaps elsewhere, magic is not seen in the same way it was even twenty years ago. Today I was talking to Professor Tickles , a professional childrens entertainer in Cornwall, and we were lamenting the passing of an age.

The Prof. asked a profound question, he wondered how many professional magicians were actually making a full time living out of their magic alone.

A valid question.

Were he to have asked that question a when we both started performing we would have been fairly sure of the answer. Magic as an entertainment art form was ‘acceptable’ and enjoyed by audiences. David Nixon and latterly Paul Daniels brought commercial and thus agent interest in booking professional acts.

The erosion of the art, and the fact that magicians today are seen as coming a poor second to comedians, jugglers and other variety acts, is due I believe to three major factors..

1) The magicians themselves not keeping ‘in step’ with the interests and needs of the audience. Audiences believe they are more ‘sophisticated’ in this day and age and that brings with it a degree of cynicism and dislike of being fooled. It’s really interesting to note that Derren Brown is one of the very few (and perhaps only) magical performer who can sell out major theatres on a national tour. If you look at his act it is intelligent, sophisticated and engaging.

2) Traditional magicians who work at mastering their art (the Michael Vincents, Guy Hollingsworths of the world) are respected and applauded by magicians and enjoed by audiences when they are booked BUT are being undersold by the explosion of David Blaine, Street-Magic-Clones, who buy into the adverts like the one above. The general quality of performance drops and hence the public perception of magic and magicians falters. If you try selling yourself as a magician you are competing with the image that the potential  booker has of one of their ‘uncles’ or a ‘YouTube Magic Hack’ performing meaningless feats of trickery.

3) The ecomonic climate is such that an evening out may not include being ‘fooled’ by some mountebank or trickster offering emotionally neutral demonstrations of one-upmanship. There have always been hobbyists and of course the hobbyst becomes the semi-professional  rather than the part-time professional. I make the distinction here as the semi-professional possibly sees their magic as providing ‘pin money’ at best, or merely an opportunity to  ‘do some magic for an audience’ at worst. The part-time professional on the other hand possibly understands that being a ‘professional’ means that you are trying to earn a living or establish a business for yourself. So whereas the former will approach bookers and offer services for ‘beer, a meal and a whip round’ (with no thought of  this being a business ‘loss leader’) the latter recognises the value of their skill, effort and work so seeks a ‘fair’ wage for their performances.

I like many professional performers am finding ways to bring my skills to other markets, I always have done this. In the past it was because I wanted to have a varied approach to earning my living but in this day and age it is a requirement for survival. I feel lucky that I have had a regular (twice a month) cabaret residency for my mentalism act for the last eighteen months. This with the one-off or short run bookings and the summer season residencies amounts to half of my professional income. Would that it were more. The other half of my income is from using my performing skills and magical interests to create and deliver motivational seminars, presentational workshops and personal development coaching.

I think this is the ‘norm’ for many professional magicians, but would love to hear from readers about their thoughts and experiences.

For many amateur magicians ‘learning magic’ stops once they ‘know’ the secret of the trick. Professional performers will regularly come across someone in their audience who makes the claim that they ‘know how that is done!’.

But knowing ‘how’ doesn’t mean you can do it!

A magic effect is a finely crafted piece of theatre with a beginning a middle and an end. It can have meaning in and of itself, but there are few effects that do, or it can be given meaning by the context or the frame the magician places around the ‘trick’.

I feel that some of the ‘apathy’ and ‘indifference’ to magic that we experience in the UK is because there have been too many magicians who have relied upon the ‘magic’ and not considered the emotional frame they place around it.

So, for example, the magician places a coloured hanky in the spectators hand and after a few magical gestures it changes colour. Visually appealing but what does it ‘say’ other than ‘look how smart I am!’

Even when such an effect is presented with ‘cod’ explanation (pretending to tell the audience how it is done) the bitter aftertaste that can be left is one of “I’ve just been conned” rather than I’ve just been ‘entertained’ or ‘amused’.

‘Frame’, ‘meaning’ and ‘intention’ are all important in crafting a magic routine. Notice I said crafting as opposed to learning or performing! A crafts-person is an artist who takes time over the creation of their art!

Meaning can be as simple or as complex as you like, but it needs to be something more than ‘look I’m doing neat things’.

Magic, as opposed to Mentalism, is a visual art and as such can access a wealth of social and cultural metaphors from which to draw meaning. The key thing is to remember that the ‘viewer’ will construct their own internal meaning from the clues you give them. Understanding this is the key to presenting (emotionally) engaging magic.

Here’s a great example of a simple piece of magic most magicians know how to do, but placed in a frame in which there is ‘meaning’ and emotional relevance for the audience.

Ian Saville : The Socialist Magician   http://www.redmagic.co.uk

Alan