Routine Routines

Routine Routines
By Jeff Stone

Um… excuse me Mr. Spectator… I’m trying to follow my script and present my patter… can you please stop interacting with me so I can get through this!

Have you ever been there? Hopefully not, but chances are, when you were a newbie, you had a situation like this where you were so focused on your presentation, that you forgot to present.

A perfect example of when I used to have this problem is back in the day, when I used to perform Color Monte. For the unfamiliar, it’s a 6 or 7 phase packet trick where the spectator is hearing a story about your experience when someone showed you this trick, and how fooled you were.

The stock patter that comes with the trick is, by it’s nature, going to inspire audience members to make comments and ask questions throughout the presentation. For example, one part of the script goes something like this, “… by this point, I was sure that I knew which one was in the middle.” At this point, often the audience will say, “It’s the blue one.” I would then basically ignore them, and show them that it was actually the red one.

A guy who used to hang out at Winkler’s Warehouse of Wonders named Andy (sorry – can’t remember his last name) told me that when the audience tries to guess the color, that he would simply say, “That’s what I thought it was.”

For a newbie like myself at the time, this was brilliant, so now the presentation goes like this:

Magi: “…by this point, I was sure that I knew which one was in the middle.”
Spec: “It’s the blue one.”
Magi: “Funny. That’s exactly what I thought, turns out we’re both wrong. It was red.”

As simple as that is, the presentation became much more entertaining and interesting, and the audience members really felt like I was there listening to them and interacting with them because I was.

Roots:
Let’s remember our roots. This month’s root is listening. Don’t get so wrapped up in yourself and your routine that you forget to interact with your audience. The best performers are those who interact with their audience and relate to them and communicate with them, not at them.

Branch:
Let’s build our branches.  Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to pause. Yep… That’s it. Just pause.

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See what I did there? I paused. When you perform this week, month, year, etc, pause. Do the double lift to show a card. Then pause. What are you pausing for? You are listening. What are you listening for? Anything. When the audience makes a comment, run with it. Don’t be afraid of the moment. The next move or next step or next patter line can wait. Pause, Listen, and Respond.

Trust me; this will change everything! I shall pause now.

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