Aloha, Howdy and Hi,
Many people have contributed thoughts on here so I may as well deliver some as well.
Audience, purpose and tone? What does that mean to you and me as performers? How can it help? These are questions I will be addressing here in this essay. Just a note before I get down to it, the post is written as if you perform as a gorilla magician ie. street magician spring attack.
Audience, purpose and tone these three words are actually a mental process that you should go through as you approach people. People are your Audience, now that to some may sound like a no brainier. But are you aware that people are different, your audience could be professional, casual, or hostile even. Using observations of body language, speech, and if your doing a gig previous to identify the type of audience you have.
This ties into Purpose, what you intend to do, what you want to accomplish. If you are very conservative and writing a history essay which its audience is very liberal, you would write with the purpose of persuasion and light handedly, what I mean by light is very light on personal beliefs.
Finely we get to Tone, the way you act, how your speech structure is going to be etc. This ties almost directly into Audience. Because without the previous knowledge of what your audience is going to be like, you will not be able to accurately communicate to them. Because magic believe it or not is communication! Ex. You walk up to some people and started speaking gangster then show them some gangsta licious magic, and they turn out to be snobs, you made yourself look stupid and turned them off to you. Another example would be this essay if you want to call it that. It is very loose and casual because my audience is peer magicians and a younger crowd.
Next time before you approach someone to perform magic, stop, look and think about the three words “Audience, Purpose, Tone” I can almost guarantee if you do this, you will be able to be more successful at entertaining all of your participants. Maybe even if you stop and think some more you already do the unconsciously, but like creativity you have to keep that part of your brain well lubed and ready for anything.
BONUS MATERIAL short and sweet
The madman, carpenter, architect, and judge. The process of Creating.
These things are what I think of when I create magic. The madman is my brain, which flows creative ideas onto paper (brainstorming). I then let all of my creative thoughts kind of sit and sizzle for a day.
Then when I return, the carpenter goes and removes and lumps together information that are relevant and possible. After the carpenter is done making the pieces, the architect comes in and takes these pieces and structures them in a way that makes sense.
Once that is done, the judge comes in and goes over the entire finished product being incredibly critical. If it spots something that doesn’t look right or he doesn’t like the outcome, he says go back to madman and redo it until it meets the judge's expectations.
It's a frustrating process but the more time spent on something the better it will be.
Many people have contributed thoughts on here so I may as well deliver some as well.
Audience, purpose and tone? What does that mean to you and me as performers? How can it help? These are questions I will be addressing here in this essay. Just a note before I get down to it, the post is written as if you perform as a gorilla magician ie. street magician spring attack.
Audience, purpose and tone these three words are actually a mental process that you should go through as you approach people. People are your Audience, now that to some may sound like a no brainier. But are you aware that people are different, your audience could be professional, casual, or hostile even. Using observations of body language, speech, and if your doing a gig previous to identify the type of audience you have.
This ties into Purpose, what you intend to do, what you want to accomplish. If you are very conservative and writing a history essay which its audience is very liberal, you would write with the purpose of persuasion and light handedly, what I mean by light is very light on personal beliefs.
Finely we get to Tone, the way you act, how your speech structure is going to be etc. This ties almost directly into Audience. Because without the previous knowledge of what your audience is going to be like, you will not be able to accurately communicate to them. Because magic believe it or not is communication! Ex. You walk up to some people and started speaking gangster then show them some gangsta licious magic, and they turn out to be snobs, you made yourself look stupid and turned them off to you. Another example would be this essay if you want to call it that. It is very loose and casual because my audience is peer magicians and a younger crowd.
Next time before you approach someone to perform magic, stop, look and think about the three words “Audience, Purpose, Tone” I can almost guarantee if you do this, you will be able to be more successful at entertaining all of your participants. Maybe even if you stop and think some more you already do the unconsciously, but like creativity you have to keep that part of your brain well lubed and ready for anything.
BONUS MATERIAL short and sweet
The madman, carpenter, architect, and judge. The process of Creating.
These things are what I think of when I create magic. The madman is my brain, which flows creative ideas onto paper (brainstorming). I then let all of my creative thoughts kind of sit and sizzle for a day.
Then when I return, the carpenter goes and removes and lumps together information that are relevant and possible. After the carpenter is done making the pieces, the architect comes in and takes these pieces and structures them in a way that makes sense.
Once that is done, the judge comes in and goes over the entire finished product being incredibly critical. If it spots something that doesn’t look right or he doesn’t like the outcome, he says go back to madman and redo it until it meets the judge's expectations.
It's a frustrating process but the more time spent on something the better it will be.