Custom Connections
You’re pumped up; You’re energy’s high; Table number 4 requested “The Magician.” You walk over there and everyone seems nice. You introduce yourself. You pull out a deck of cards, and that’s when it happens. The spectator says the most retarded thing you can imagine: “I’ve seen this one.” Doesn’t that kind of imply that there is only one card trick in the entire universe?
How do you counter that? Even if she wasn’t being a heckler . . . maybe she was excited and she was telling her friends how excited she was to see that trick again. However, you’ve got to show your range; show that a box of 52 is not a one trick pony. What’s the key to this?
Root:
Let’s remember our roots. This month’s root: Customization. There are many types of customizations. For the purpose of this article, however, we will address two of them.
- Spectator
- Client
Obviously there are cases when the spectator is the client, but here’s what I mean by “Spectator” and “Client.” Spectator is the person/audience member(s) you are currently performing for. If you’re on stage, it’s pretty much everyone (or a volunteer on stage). If you’re working tables and lines, then it’s the 2 or 3 people at the table, specifically the spectator assisting (i.e. picking the card, holding the coin, etc) at the moment.
So broad stroke, customizing for the close up spectator’s is all about getting to know the people. Talk to them. Don’t be afraid to chit chat with ’em between effects. Listen to them. Then you can slip in lines here and there to make the effect more personal. For example, “Lori, you mentioned a minute ago that your husband takes care of all the finances and you rarely have cash on you because of that. Well I’m going to let you hold onto some cash (coins) since you normally don’t get to. Here take this dollar, etc . . .
Then it becomes more personal and even a bit more logical. This is what I call customizing on the fly. It’s the customized connections you make with people when you perform intimate magic with them. The other kind of customization is all about the company who hired you . . . the client.
Imagine you’re performing for a bowling league. Do you just break out your same exact act? or do you try to incorporate at least a bowling ball joke or line or something that relates. No patter about Chinese people doing their laundry please. There are differnt approaches you can take. You can modify an existing effect to have a more applicable theme. Or you can add a whole new effect to your act (Kevin James’s Bowling Ball Production, Max Maven’s Arm Chair Bowler or something unique that you’ve created yourself.
Speaking of Max Maven, he has an excellent effect called French Active in his Prism book (same place you’ll find Arm Chair Bowler. The really short version is this: six people come up on stage and are each given a picture of a flag. Another member of the audience picks one of the six people and thus a flag. You prove that you knew they would pick that flag (let’s say France) by turning the flags over and showing the letters on the back of each flag which happen to only be able to spell one word, the name of the selected flag.
The presentation is very fair and very clear. I had a gig for a dentist office, so I swapped out flags for dentist related things (anesthetic, cavity, tooth, veneers, etc). You could, with a little bit of thought, convert Maven’s French Active into an effect for just about any industry/genre/venue.
Branch:
Let’s build our branches. Try this exercise . . . in the next 30 days, ask a friend to name any industry. Then take whatever industry he throws at you and go through your repertoire . . . figure out a way to convert one of your effects into an effect that is related to the industry. The point is to get creative and challenge yourself. There are plenty of articles and ideas about creativity right here in the magazine. Search through and read them if you need help.
The bottom line is that you need to look at your magic through different eyes . . . those of a golfer, a bowler, a press operator, a Barber, a UPS package handler, etc. Modify (or create from scratch) an effect that suits that industry. You’ll find it quite a rewarding experience. Make sure you share your experience in the comments below.
Now go study the classics and go discover your true magical self.