prepping and performance

The Burlesque gig went quit well. I was not performing magic but it was still good experience in performing as a whole. One thing I took away from the experience is that the audience responded very well to interaction something which is at the heart of good magic in my opinion. After all if the audience does not feel like they are part of proceedings then they may as well be watching from home. This doesn't mean that they have to be directly involved with an effect, they could be there to serve as witnesses to the events that are unfolding. So from now on I'll endeavour to try and make everyone involved as a group, and stress the importance of people being there maybe along the the lines of gesturing to the main participant and saying "You can all help him understand what's happened later on" etc.

This week I have managed to try out a lot of material 'in the wild'. Cartomancy performed very strong, my patter is a lot smoother now (whilst not a rehearsed constant set of lines of dialogue I keep a mental list of key points that need to be noted and in what order they need to be said. This allows me to tailor the way I get the points across as I see fitting for the environment I'm in). I broke one of the big rules and performed the effect three times at one table as an experiment. The effect relies on a Koran Force which means sometimes when a participant says "Stop" I hand them the card that is already face down, and other times I hand them the card that's in my hand or about to be dealt. THe over all effect is one where a playing card is revealed via a scratch card and matches the card dealt. This therefore means sometimes the card is seen first (face up after all) and THEN a scratch card is revealed, other times the scratch card is revealed first and then the playing card which is face down. I was curious as to whether a group of muggles would spot the inconstancy and seeing as I was amongst friends and not paying customers I decided to experiment. The results were suprising. No-one commented on how the two reveals were somtimnes in different order. As a result I know feel a lot happier about performing Cartomancy where there is a chance being pressured into giving a repeat performance.

I also worked on my Ambitious Card that night as well as a few forcing effects. I've decided that whilst my riffle force has yet to land me in trouble I need to learn a few more (I currently have 4 different forces that I can use but I think I can improve on them a lot with practise). I did however invent a new 'Lift' for the routine. Whilst using standard slights I have not come across this combination before so now I need muggles to experiment with.

So today I'm left at home with a very bad back but a desire to learn more effects. I foresee an afternoon of coin magic ahead to help me out of those situations where people yell "show us something without cards".