Acting as a Street Performer in Bethlehem

[ArmanMagic]

Hey guys,

So my church is putting on a Day in Bethlehem for the Christmas season and I was asked to do magic as a street performer in that time period. They already told me no card magic. So I was wondering what advice you could give me for the type of effects that I could perform. Since it's in Bethlehem maybe magic with coins since we are using toy gold coins in this event. I'm also considering magic with ropes. So if you could give me some advice that'd be great!

Arman

 

[bentley]

Cups and balls
Coins (Miser's Dream would be good)
Rope
Watermark (Not with cards but names or dates)
Heck even borrowed objects like phones (sure it doesn't go with the time period but good comedy with that)

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

Watch Penn & Teller's Magic and Mystery Tour. You can probably find it on . It shows done more period magic.

Cups and balls, coins, maybe thumb tip, etc. old magic.

 

[William Draven]

Well they didn't have playing cards back in that time period so that's understandable. I'm not sure if Tarot had caught on yet though. Then again it's a church event so best to avoid that all together.

Cups and balls, and linking rings are two of the oldest tricks known to our guild. Both of these effects date back to the time of the Egyptians and before. The cups and balls gives you quite a bit of flexibility in what you can do, and for how long, AND you can even begin working with a chop cup.

Most of the magic back in those days was either street hustlers doing confidence games to con you out of money, or priests doing magic to con you into believing they had powers granted to them by their deity. So going the street guy route would be easy enough.

Oh and rope magic! Great stuff that is, and would work for this time period. Maybe do some silk magic too. I'm just thinking out loud. You can get some good silk and rope magic out of Mark Wilson's course in magic.

 

[The123ad.]

Spongeballs ??
Or do some impromptu mentalism. Simple stuff like serial number divination , some sort of prediction involving nail writers etc.

 

[ArmanMagic]

The thing with cups and balls is that I would have to kneel down because I'm supposed to be walking around and I won't have a table so I don't think asking the spectator to kneel down would be good. Watermark would be fun but how do i force numbers or dates?