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Been a while since I sat down to write one of these. In this case, I want to address an issue that’s come up for a lot of magicians recently. With the advent of Celebracadabra, the panic attacks are coming in regularly and scaring the bejeezus out of everyone. Among the panic attacks are a...

A huge part of success is self-promotion. You have to know how to advertise yourself, how to network, and how to build up a reputation that precedes you. This is hard work, make no mistake, but it is essential to success. What we’re effectively looking at here is marketing your self, or...

Commonalities This is what human beings really bond over. When we have a shared passion to talk about, we can just go on and on. Me especially. So it only stands to reason that you really should try to find a way to work your interests into scripting when you know that your audience is going...

Allegory Using magic as allegory is a tricky but rewarding scripting technique that requires a strong sense of showmanship and a lot of creativity. It’s not enough to say, “The coin represents this, and the bottle represents that.” You have to create meaning. Allegory is an extremely...

Humor Comedy is an amazingly powerful force, but also one of the most difficult and elusive skills. Humor is incredibly subjective, but also ubiquitous because of its diversity. John Waters is famous for his bad taste comedies like Pink Flamingos, and also hated by some for the same reason...

Welcome to the beginning of a 4 part essay on scripting. Let's cut to the chase, shall we? A large part of what goes into magic is what you say… and what you don’t say. Language is a fascinating thing and magicians have been working on how to use it to their advantage for years. Kenton...

So you say you figured out somebody else's method, and now you can't wait to tell everyone online all about it. Methods are simultaneously the most coveted and most worthless part of magic. Magicians have stolen them, attacked their peers over them, and other less-than-admirable things. And...

VH1 further cements their move toward more of an entertainment network than a music one. Rumors of a show by the name of Celebracadabra have been echoing across cyberspace for a couple months now. Finally, some official info has been released. Right now, they're still being rather mysterious...

Here is the second installment of my Who Are You? essays from the Ellusionist boards. Who Are You? part I Earlier this week we laid the groundwork for figuring out your identity as a performer. This grounding is essential to the process as the way humans learn is first through external...

I posted this a while back at the Ellusionist boards, and it helped a few people out. Rather than just sitting on it, I want to keep spreading out the word as it's the culmination of a lot of lessons I've learned the hard way. I hope you get something out of this. Who are you? A...

Maynia is one of Andrew Mayne's more recent projects. Most close-up workers are familiar with Ghostbills and Ghostvision. Illusion workers may be more familiar with Bisection. Maynia is one of those DVDs that can be used in either close-up or stage work. It's a collection of effects that play...

I'm typing this up to address a disturbing attitude I've seen going around the magic community in general. I've had words with a few individuals personally, and this is the compilation of my thoughts on this matter. Let me begin by saying very plainly I don't want to hear about how you think...

This is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote on the Ellusionist boards a few months back. I cleaned up some of my some of my spelling mistakes and altered a few passages for the sake of brevity and clarity, and now hope to see what the community here can do with it. I want to start...

I originally was writing this for the Ellusionist boards, but after seeing what's going on here, I think it's just as relevant. This is a subject I've been sitting on for a long time, and I figured this might be the easiest way to air my concerns. Go through this simple questionnaire and...