So I wanna hear how ya'll jump into performing when you're at a party or get together. I usually don't perform unless someone asks me to, or if the party seems to not be going anywhere. What factors do ya'll take in to decide whether or not it's appropiate to perform, and hoq to begin without making people think your just trying to get attention.
Magic at Parties
- Thread starter Luke B.(6)
- Start date
I go around and talk to as many people as I can and I speed read them to see who will be the most engaging and once I've gathered enough information about the people there then I go back to the person who I see fit to perform to and something like "hey wanna see something cool?" I don't say I'm a magician and then I let the hype build among the people then introduce myself as a magician. Alternatively I just break out the invisible deck when someone asks to see something which usually does it for me.
Thats what I do a lot. I try to talk about the things they are interested in and kinda stuff they do, then when they ask me the same I always say "I do close up magic". then I go straight to invisible deck or PK touch
In general I don't often go to a party thinking I'm going to perform. It's always a possibility, of course, but I can do a half hour or more with absolutely nothing so I really just don't worry about it unless I have the urge to perform a specific routine or trick.
When I want to perform I usually just have to introduce myself as Jamie D. Grant calls it, by giving an impression ie: "I'm Christopher. I'm a Witchdoctor." This, of course, pretty much immediately leads to them asking about what I do, and that almost always leads to, "Can you show me something now?" Yes. Yes I can.
Telling people I study hypnosis yields similar results.
If I want to be more subtle about it, I just steer conversations to subjects that allow me to do "minor demonstrations" of strange phenomenon I've discovered. Like if someone brings up ghost stories, I've got routines for that. If someone mentions how close they are to someone who's there, I've got a routine for that. Pretty much, I just take the subject, pique their interest in the idea, then do a trick as a demonstration of the subject at hand. At that point I usually have a choice to either just leave it at that, or to leverage that into further performance.
Ideally I will never ask someone if they want me to perform. Almost always they ask me to do something and that's how I prefer it - it takes the pressure off of me, and also puts me in control of the situation - which for what I do is pretty essential.
Just never make the mistake of using magic as a substitute for having an actual personality.
When I want to perform I usually just have to introduce myself as Jamie D. Grant calls it, by giving an impression ie: "I'm Christopher. I'm a Witchdoctor." This, of course, pretty much immediately leads to them asking about what I do, and that almost always leads to, "Can you show me something now?" Yes. Yes I can.
Telling people I study hypnosis yields similar results.
If I want to be more subtle about it, I just steer conversations to subjects that allow me to do "minor demonstrations" of strange phenomenon I've discovered. Like if someone brings up ghost stories, I've got routines for that. If someone mentions how close they are to someone who's there, I've got a routine for that. Pretty much, I just take the subject, pique their interest in the idea, then do a trick as a demonstration of the subject at hand. At that point I usually have a choice to either just leave it at that, or to leverage that into further performance.
Ideally I will never ask someone if they want me to perform. Almost always they ask me to do something and that's how I prefer it - it takes the pressure off of me, and also puts me in control of the situation - which for what I do is pretty essential.
Just never make the mistake of using magic as a substitute for having an actual personality.
Ones I've created that tie into various themes. None of them are commercially available - everything I do in my performances is either created by me or cobbled together from several different sources to create the best method for my purposes.
This is something that far more people need to try to do. Even if you can't create, build your own routines from things you already do. Don't buy new things to fit situations.
I rarely perform at parties, I prefer to talk to people, but if I want to perform I'll usually find a way to mention hypnosis, that usually gets people to ask me about it and i can go into a performance from there.
If im in the mood to do some magic to get something started or whatever the purpose is in that situation what I do is I walk past a person, drop a quarter in front of them, turn around and say " oh is this yours? Here" I then do a retention pass and ditch it into my pocket, its an awesome ice-breaker.