Very interesting read Alex.
As a pure mentalist I try to disconnect any idea of sleight of hand in my effects, I want my audience to be believing in my demonstrated abilities more so than the hidden ones that they know exist (sleight of hand, mathematic principles and things of that nature). As for where I perform I am usually in a stand up environment and very rarely do I do any close up. I do believe that all my effects however should be able to be done anywhere no restriction on the stage or just in the hands one on one.
The biggest varibles that I face is timing and what I plan to present. The number one rule I do have though is if I have more than say 2 minutes I want there to be a story present. I want to show the people some form of growth in the effect and the 'power' that I am demonstarting. When I am hired for table hoping (very rarely) I always open with one of two effects and more often than not it is my variation on Prevaricator. I personally believe that this one of the best effects as there is no hidden method as the demonstration uses a method so close to the presented one. It also has room to grow adding more people, which hand games, serial number divinations and much more.
In a lot of my shows I think very much about numbers and odds. I want everyone from people of all mathematical abilities to see that my effects are getting more and more difficult as time goes not. This however is a double edged sword in an example with which hand game is only a 50 / 50 chance and guessing a card is a 1 in 52 chance. I have to way up the pros and cons of the selection critera as to eliminate all the expectations of something underhanded occuring. And as the show goes on I add more and more hurdles to the method that I am performing to help with cementing this fact.
I talked at the begining of my post about 'power' and mentalism. Whilst this power might be psychic in nature like many of the old time mentalists and spirtalists presented their shows as, it could be a more accquired knowoldge that has be come so popular now days. It seems like most mentalist subscribe to one of the two groups. However, in my show I start off with the idea of what I have is a learned ability like the reading body tells and such from Prevaricator. Finally ending with a piece that completely destroys all logic if you are taking what I am doing as a learned ability. Yet with enough dressing it can still look like I am doing this with the same 'method' as the earlier pieces in my show. A perfect example is Derren's Evening of Wonders and the Q&A that he did, rationally it makes no sense espectally as he starts randomly naming off people in the audience but people still believe him.
I have chosen to not include my effects that I will be perfoming for the reason that they are still make up the show I am using.
