Stage magic

Feb 16, 2015
45
16
Hello again,

So I am currently working somewhere that has a big stage and roughly 200 seats but I am struggling to find effects that work well for stage.

I was just wondering what your favourites stage magic recourses or tricks are.

I am kind of looking for geek/‘dangerous’ magic or mentalism but I am more than open to anything you guys actually like
 
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Oct 19, 2015
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Rope magic is always good on stage.....Cut and Restored Rope and Professors Nightmare. I saw Mac King in Vegas a couple of years ago and he performed a Cut and Restored Rope where instead of producing one knot, he produced like 5-6....he was amazing doing common tricks that he made his own.....
 
Mar 4, 2018
101
85
This is a legitimate question and I don't mean to sound like a jerk but how do you keep on getting gigs when you don't have a complete show ready? Are you contacting them or are they contacting you? I think what would help the most is if you had a product to sell before you sold it so my first piece of advice would be put your show together first and polish it.

Now to answer your questions a bit more directly is I second what Timewise64 said. Rope magic works great on stage. I've seen Scott Alexander kill with a rope routine on stage. Mentalism/Mental Magic can play well if you have a background in that area. A lot of Geek Magic can border on the line of close-up but with some creativity you can make it play bigger. I would recommend anything by Tomas Medina. I would recommend Mat Parrott but I've heard a lot of negative things about his book and wouldn't advise learning directly from a book but someone that can teach you geek magic in person.

Some specific effects I like to see on stage is bill in lemon (although any fruit really works), levitations (tons of pros use Losander's table and there is a reason for that), escapes, card manipulation, book tests, geek magic, any drink called for, floating rose, and there are several others. You can't go wrong with anything by Scott Alexander or Kevin James. I highly recommend studying Mark Wilson's Complete Course and Tarbell to get a better idea of stage effects that you can perform.
 
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May 3, 2018
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New Mexico
This is a legitimate question and I don't mean to sound like a jerk but how do you keep on getting gigs when you don't have a complete show ready? Are you contacting them or are they contacting you? I think what would help the most is if you had a product to sell before you sold it so my first piece of advice would be put your show together first and polish it.


Truth.
 
Feb 16, 2015
45
16
A bit harsh before you knew the situation and besides the point of what I was asking...but okay guys if it’s gonna be like that let me explain.

I am working at a magic venue where they put on shows every night but before the show they have close up magic. I do the close up and I help out back stage. However if I get a routine down that works for stage I get to go on stage... are we happy now? Can we get back the the point?
 
Hi Tim,i think you can go for some black art magic( like 52 shades of red, but we don't get the rights to perform on stage I think)so you can take the principles and properties of its and apply it in your act

Just like this guys in prophets magic
 
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Be creative man,do not follow the exact ideas by others .give them your own magical twist. it may be a simple effect but still make it unique .As others said rope magic on stage looks great but if you do black art in the correct manner then you can leave the audience speechless .TIM ALL THE BEST FOR GETTING ON STAGE .I have strong felling that you will.
 
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RealityOne

Elite Member
Nov 1, 2009
3,744
4,076
New Jersey
Tim:

What is the width and depth of the theatre? Two groups of 5 seats 20 deep? Two groups of 10 seats 10 deep? Are the seats rising as they go back? Is the stage elevated?

What resources, books, DVDs/Downloads, effects, etc. do you currently have?

What effects do you currently perform?

What magicians do you like their performance?

What is your character?

What is the typical audience of the theatre?

How long is the show going to be?

What is your budget?

All of those factors go into selecting what to perform. What I would perform and what you would perform probably are completely different.

Now, I am of the school of thought that you shouldn't mix mentalism with magic, even geek magic UNLESS you can make a coherent connection between the powers displayed. That is, what is the connection between being able to discern a chosen word from a book and being able to swallow needles?

For a mentalism show, I would do the following:

Lie to Me - There is one person in the audience who is lying to me and I find them by process of elimination.

Silk Stocking Murder Mystery - My own routine where the spectator solves a decades old murder based on an old box containing the evidence of an investigation

Psychic Scrabble - Where I discern a word the spectator makes out of a random selection of Scrabble tiles

Identical Impossible - A drawing duplication where I draw the exact picture drawn by the spectator.

Romance - A routine where I discern a word from a romance novel as well as the spectator's thought of romantic dream date.

The Psychic Trust - A bank night routine where the I work with a spectator to save $100 bill from being burned.

Amulets - After explaining the significance of each of six amulets, a spectator selects one of the amulets from the top tray of the jewelry only to reveal a correct prediction under the tray

Lettie's Feather - A one person Touching on Hoy routine about a Jewish mother and son that are separated when sent to Nazi Concentration camps.​

Credits (in no particular order and put at the end to make it difficult for anyone to reverse engineer my routines) Jim Steinmeyer, T.A. Water, Max Maven, Rich Ferguson, Walt Anthony and Craig Browning.
 
Last edited:
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Feb 16, 2015
45
16
This is exactly what I should have said my apologies.

So there are tables and roughly 8 people around each. Max capacity is 200 but on average it is like 100 people a night. The stage is pretty high it is a proper stage.

I currently really like these people and I have some of their resources:

Luke Jermay
David Williamson
Wayne Houchin
Dan Speery
Rob Zabrecky

I am currently thinking that Wayne Houchin fits my style more just a guy who does weird stuff. As much as I want to be like Dan Sperry I haven’t developed my character enough for that.

At the moment I am doing a parlour show which includes:

Stigmata
Stapler roulette
Single needle
A game of Rock Paper Scissors to the death (basically an invisible deck with an interesting premis)

These all work but they don’t work for stage!


Thank you for your help this helps a lot!!!!
 
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Mar 30, 2018
1
0
Tim:

What is the width and depth of the theatre? Two groups of 5 seats 20 deep? Two groups of 10 seats 10 deep? Are the seats rising as they go back? Is the stage elevated?

What resources, books, DVDs/Downloads, effects, etc. do you currently have?

What effects do you currently perform?

What magicians do you like their performance?

What is your character?

What is the typical audience of the theatre?

How long is the show going to be?

What is your budget?

All of those factors go into selecting what to perform. What I would perform and what you would perform probably are completely different.

Now, I am of the school of thought that you shouldn't mix mentalism with magic, even geek magic UNLESS you can make a coherent connection between the powers displayed. That is, what is the connection between being able to discern a chosen word from a book and being able to swallow needles?

For a mentalism show, I would do the following:

Lie to Me - There is one person in the audience who is lying to me and I find them by process of elimination.

Silk Stocking Murder Mystery - My own routine where the spectator solves a decades old murder based on an old box containing the evidence of an investigation

Psychic Scrabble - Where I discern a word the spectator makes out of a random selection of Scrabble tiles

Identical Impossible - A drawing duplication where I draw the exact picture drawn by the spectator.

Romance - A routine where I discern a word from a romance novel as well as the spectator's thought of romantic dream date.

The Psychic Trust - A bank night routine where the I work with a spectator to save $100 bill from being burned.

Amulets - After explaining the significance of each of six amulets, a spectator selects one of the amulets from the top tray of the jewelry only to reveal a correct prediction under the tray

Lettie's Feather - A one person Touching on Hoy routine about a Jewish mother and son that are separated when sent to Nazi Concentration camps.​

Credits (in no particular order and put at the end to make it difficult for anyone to reverse engineer my routines) Jim Steinmeyer, T.A. Water, Max Maven, Rich Ferguson, Walt Anthony and Craig Browning.
I really value the insight of this posting may I ask your opinion of the routines outlined in Luca volpes “the Fox”? The concept seems to be, packs small plays big. There’s a few drawing duplication type routines using business cards for small shows he makes a point of emphasizing the lie detector premise etc. to remove heat from the actual duplication method
 
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