A horse of a different color

[AnthonyL]

Hello magic people,

Recently i've been getting bored, bored of doing the same things again and again. It feels like every new card trick is just a slight variation of the last one. Every coin trick; here i have a coin! now it's gone! now it's back! now it's over here!

And im bored of it. So my question is, What do you do that's different? like really different? not going from coins to rings and cards to tarots, but like using tennis balls and jars! (i say, looking around my room)

Thanks and much appreciated
-Anthony

 

[Tower of Lunatic Meat]

I have a children's hospital show and two strolling routine in the works that are all purely prop-magic. To make the challenge more interesting (and mentally easier for me to manage), I'm using only tricks from one company: Tenyo.
If you haven't looked up prop magic (or Tenyo, for that matter), I'd say that might be up your alley if you're tired of the conventional cards, coins, strings, and things. Plus, if you were to look up a few of these tricks, it's fun to try and figure out how they work--or at least provide a few hypotehesis' of how they WOULD work. Some are real magician stumpers and some of them are so simple that they are just diabolical. I'll give you 3:

Security Lock
Dragons Altar
Mini-Morphosis

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

What do I do that's totally different? Everything I do is different because I specifically avoid doing what everyone else does.

Before I can give specific recommendations I need to know what your performance style is, and what your performance goals are. What is your character?

In more general terms I can say a few things, though. The first step to getting away from the boredom that creeps in is to create! You don't have to create methods from scratch. It's a good exercise in creativity, but most likely a good method has already been created. Particularly if you're in the realm of card or coin magic. However, you can take an existing trick and tweak how it is presented to be totally unique and thus more interesting to perform yourself. I find if you base a presentation/performance around things you are naturally interested in, you can't help but, well, be interested in it. This is integral to taking something from a trick to a performance.

Personally, I found it boring when all I was doing was learning tricks and "performing" them. It became incredibly captivating for me when I began to create my own style of performance, and creating my own presentations for my material. Partly because I knew I was offering something unique, and partly because it meant I had to learn more to do it. I had to research concepts, I had to develop acting skills, I had to search for or create methods to accomplish my goals.

So my advice is become a real performer and you'll probably find yourself hooked. But also be cautious; you'll probably find yourself hooked.

 

[Justin.Morris]

I find the area of psychological forces interesting and perhaps moreso the idea of equivoque. A simple place to tinker that has recently come out is thetalia by Ian Rowland. It's really fun to do a trick that you have no clue what will happen, but to roll with it. The more you perform effects like this, the more you will improve as a performer.