If you've heard them say "I've seen that one before" even before you started a trick, maybe you need to read this article...

http://magicgizmo.com/home/General/is-yo......urs.html

Great Article and makes a very good point!

Yes, yes it is

The article and my show

The world of magic would be SO much better if only everyone considered this.


There is one piece I perfrom from some one else's work, Symphony of the Rings.
Before performing I acknowledge Dai Vernon and his contributions to the art and it is presented as my homage to Vernon



Always remember, learn it back to front first, learn the art (and acting). Your personality (or your stage persona) should come through it your work. How can it not!!!

I will speak from the world of stand-up comedy: Comics are destroyed by the stand-up community if they use any (note: ANY) material that isn't completely their own. If magicians could think more like comics, not in terms of humor but in terms of the necessity for originality, then the magic community as a whole could earn such a greater respect from the general public. One of the reasons magicians tend to get a bad rep to begin with is because so many magicians look like carbon copies of one another. Thanks for the link to that article.

To me originality only comes through performance. A lot of tricks I do are standard proven classics. Over time the become your own presentation. Tricks are songs to a musician. If every musician only played what they themselves wrote the world would have missed a lot of talent. Live performance in both arts is what you get your polish from.Practice gets you only so far. Performance is a whole other aspect of the art. It took about 20 years for me to get over stage fright and not until then did my real personality come out on stage. Around this time is when I started getting recognized as something different.I personally am flattered if someone wants to cover my song. When you think about it it's the biggest compliment you can get. I always allow permission if they do it justice. That's all I tell them. Do it justice. They can then learn to be themselves through the teachings and experiences of others. Is this too deep?

There was a very interesting thread in the Food For Thought section about being original (or not and the ways and hows) a few weeks back

Whit Hayden and others went back and forth on the subject (and a few other subjects)

It goes on about 10 pages so have a little time when you are ready to read it. It's well worth the time to read

Interesting article. What a delicate theme this is.
As magicians we love to do original stuff, and maybe we are getting good reactions whit it, But many times I have seen MASTERS fail.
An example would be Peter Marvey. He do a very nice and ORIGINAL tour here in Puerto Rico for 3 or 4 weeks. I met the man, the producer was a friend of mine, and his magic is original, well done and well thought...I respect the man, his original ideas BUT The audience DON'T like it!
In other hand the same friend produce a show with the Majestix here in Puerto Rico and they do classics...Origami,Metamorphosis,Snowstorm,Woman to Lion, Silk trough mic. stand and Silk to Apple. Very standard, very classic BUT DONE EXCELLENT. The result? a 3 weeks tour turned in a 7 months run! Full every night, 5 night a week, 3 shows on Saturday and Sunday!
Is good to be original, but sometimes classics are classics and good gags are good gags!
Just my opinion...
Hansel!

Nicely written, but I gotta agree with Hansel - sometimes classics are classics and good gags are good gags! I find the most casual outfit and a bit of humor always does the trick of distracting them into thinking that this is going to be some new cool tricks they have never seen before.

Hansel has a great point, but there's still relevance in the article.

Example: I can take a basic cut and restored rope trick and present it as any of several magic books show. "Here's a rope, here's the middle, I cut the middle, I put the rope back together." End of trick. Where's the applause?

I didn't make that trick my own. That's the point, even with a classic, at least I think so.

Then, along comes someone like Whit Haydn and he does the Mongolian Pop Knot routine. He cuts the rope three times. He does the PNM as part of the routine. He fills almost ten minutes because of all the little bits and business that go into making this routine his own routine, even though he didn't invent either of the tricks and didn't even pick the slicker versions of the moves. And he has what I believe is the best rope routine I've seen. And I love rope, so I've watched several.

Classics are classics for a reason. There are some great routines for almost any of the classic tricks out there, but the burden of the performer is always the need to make the routine into a vehicle for his own personality. If you are not working with a prop that can be customized, that makes it even simpler. Either way you have to customize the presentation, right?

-Patrick

Patrick:
You are rigth! Once in front of the same Lay audiences two different magicians do the Invisible deck, One standard and yes the audience like it, But the other build up a presentation with a Dart board, with different cards, and the board is on a wheel that spins...And the spectator threw a dart and in when the dart arrives....you know! This performer BRING DOWN THE HOUSE with the same effect, but a SUPERB presentation!
My best,
Hansel!

Yes! That'a part of the fun of Magic: figuring out how to do something "everybody knows" in a way that they don't even recognise it. I've shown people who know about (or even own) the Svengali deck "amazing" effects just by changing the handling.

Totally agree on the Mongolian Pop-Knot. Bought it, and it totally kills. What's more, I don't know if I've changed more than 4 or 5 words in the whole thing, and certainly nothing substantial. It even sounds like what I would say.

I don't think that there's any way for me to improve this routine - changing it would certainly make it worse, and I think I owe it anyone watching to do the strongest version of every trick I can. Is a minor alteration to some patter "original"? O rshould I not do one of the best rop eroutines in existence (imho)?