Magic or trickery?
Jesus, Have I seen this debate to death? A lot of magicians defend the thought of "use theater! sell your effects as real magic!" while other hang to the thought of "Tell them is sleight of hand and let them marvel at your skill, they are not dumb! they of course know that magic doesn't exist!"
I have found myself lost in this discussion for some time witouth knowing what to do, Until I realised that we all could do something really simple( wich I have been doing for some time with great results).
Why not use both?
Whenever someone tell's me what is my set or routines of tricks,I explain my layout like this:
I have two sets of routines/effects and one opener, I call one of the sets "magic" and the other "trickery", and my opener is a pretty standard in the hands transposition.
Now, how does this works? It's simple really, the opening (As some people have pointed out before) in my opinion it's about gaining two things from the spectator, their attention and rapport. If you fail to get any of these two things during your opening trick, you may find yourself in a situation where either they are happy and comfortable around you, but they aren't that interested in your magic, or, they are going to be interested in what you are doing, but they are not going to follow directions right, or simply heckle you for the fun of it.
Now, I'm not going to talk about rapport because it's a topic that's been covered to death(use the search engine) and about attention? I may write about it in the coming days. But for now let's talk about using either magic or trickery as presentation.
I tend to use quite a bit of patter during my tricks, but during the opening sequence (the transposition), I don't try to explain the trick, or add some wicked story, the trick is doing the work all by itself it is "OPENING" people, and I let it do his work, I tend to focus on gathering rapport and attention with them, so that the rest of my tricks can flow well witouth disturbances of either kind.
In my humble opinion, a Magician (among other things) has to be observative and be able to adapt to situations and in the way I perform here is why it is important to have both:
Once I open, there are two possibilities, either they respond to it like it is magic, or they respond to it by thinking that it is trickery.
Of course I would prefer them to think that is something beyond sleight of hand, something either magical or unexplained. I love it.
So, what If they respond to it like it is magic? Then my work becomes easier and I perform my effects with the patter I already have practiced, trying to make them believe furhter more that something else is happening.
Easy, we all know how to perform those kind of tricks.
Now, what about those that love presenting magic as trickery/sleight of hand ? Now, those that defend this kind of thought usually have some very valid points, but in my opinion there is a really bad problem here.
It kills hope. Yeah, sounds cheesy, but often I have found people that try to cling (either if they admit it or not) to the thought that magic maybe exists (I have to say thanks to criss angle for that). And just saying "it is sleight of hand" kills that hope.
So maybe you have found youself in the situation where you enter this fight against the spectator trying to convince him that it is magic, and in response they heckle back.
Try to do it in a more subtle way.
Once I have observed that the spectators react to the trick like "slick hands!" or " wow you are pretty fast", I am (inside) like, "ok, let's play it their way then".
I start performing the effects from my trickery set, just like they think they are performed, I open with Collectors (DnD Version) using gambling as patter, and slowly evolving doing tricks like reset or the invisible palm routine, where more "impossible" feats are occurring.
What it's my aim? I'm not telling them directly "hey believe in magic" but by making the effects evolve in that way, a thought slowly starts to grow inside the spectator" it's sleight of hand, but, could it be something more? He is fast, but there is no logical explanation to that".
At the end of the performance they may still not believe that you are doing magic, but that little pebble will star to grow as doubt in their heads until they doubt thy're own logic.
And I have proof, really try it, I have performed this way and people (who claimed that it all was sleight of hand) later came on their own to ask me very seriously " can it be real magic?"
Try it, and let me hear your thoughts.
. Don't do the tricks sayiing that they are "Magical" or stuff like that, maybe start using CardSharks as a explanation to what you are doing and for your patter, (even if you aren't doing card shark stuff). I have two different routines for this kind of situation, let me re-post the thing here :
