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Whit Haydn V.I.P. 5449 Posts |
The story in magic is the story told afterward. We construct an event in which the spectators are witnesses and participants. The story of the magic is the description of the events as remembered by the spectator. "He borrowed my watch, and put it in a little bag..."
In magic, we may tell or enact a story, but this is just dressing, and the main story is the one the spectator walks away with. "He told this story about a witch, but then he put a safety pin through my handkerchief and..." So the question in magic is "How do we create the most riveting, believable, thought-provoking and mesmerizing experience of the impossible for these people?" Character, backstory, costume, makeup, lighting, music, acting and everything else that theater can provide should be used in the service of creating that experience. But the more obviously these things are used, the less "real" and believable the magic. One of Blaine's best ideas was to strip away theatrical elements in order to give the impression of "the real." No one believes Soma's story. They know his phone isn't really acting up. They go along for the sake of the story. But then they don't go away with a story about how someone can use magic to solve problems--they go away with the story, "I saw this guy on stage, and he pretended to have trouble with his phone but suddenly..." |
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Brad Burt Inner circle 2675 Posts |
All of which is to say that there are a LOT of ways to present magic that will be effective. Derren Brown is not David Blaine is not David Copperfield is not Pop Haydn is not is not is not..... It's not mere pragmatism is just the fact that for differing reasons of style, intent, whatever differing magicians perform in differing ways and thus the story that Whit points out folks will walk away with will be a differing story even if two magicians do the same exact 'trick', but framed with a differing routine, etc.
I thought the Soma routine very cool and frankly it brought Cardini's act almost instantly to mind. It was in fact a very classic frame work for a manipulative act and it's cleverness should have won some awards and I can see it being wonderfully successful on stage, but to say it's the ONLY way magic should be presented....Yikes! Best,
Brad Burt
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Josh Chaikin Inner circle Kansas City 1430 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-07-04 12:56, The One wrote: I'm willing to accept that. However, magic is, or can be, performance art and theatre is performance art. It may be a little circuitous, but, by extension, that does give magic the potential to be theater. Certainly, there is more theatre found in Max Maven's "Thinking in Person" than is found in a weekend children's party entertainer. Equally, there is more theatre, and art, found in a Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman" than there is in a high school production of "The Odd Couple." The argument being made is a syllogism. |
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Ray Pierce Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 2607 Posts |
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On 2011-07-04 17:17, Whit Haydn wrote: This is because most magicians are rotten actors. Yes, I love theater... and magic can be theater but it is typically a different medium. We can debate the syllogistic fallacy and subjective vs. objective theater all day but in most cases... magic is a cabaret art with direct communication with the viewer, not as a 4th wall character based on the modern conventions of realistic theater but as a direct personality. Yes, we can play a "character" that connects directly with the audience. It is typically a distraction but Whit does it well so I know it can be done. I've also seen so many attempts at 4th wall pieces that fell so flat due to weak dramaturgical methodology and lack of credibility and conviction as an actor. I've even seen worse attempts by so called "theater trained magicians" where they start in 4th wall, then turn to the audience breaking the 4th wall to get and accept applause! I'm not sure where they got legitimate training in that ***ized technique. Can it be done as pure theater? Of course it's possible. Is it as effective? Not typically. My goal is to connect with the audience as closely and viscerally as possible. To take them on this personal journey as a guide. You can respect a "character" in a play, but you pull more for a "personality" that you really want to get to know as an individual. It's all a part of growth and fun to experiment with!
Ray Pierce
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Brad Burt Inner circle 2675 Posts |
Excellent post Ray....and, to that end and contra to the Soma presentation.... Cardini.... Watch his act and is there anyone who doesn't believe that it could be possible...maybe even probable that Cardini was a little bit tipsy? You are correct: Most magicians ARE terrible actors. They have no sense of believing in the 'part' they are playing, no sense generally of where they are going, no conviction.
There are a lot of ways to present Color Monte exactly as it's written and one of them is to actually BELIEVE that the story you are telling is in fact true. It changes everything including how the audience reacts throughout the routine. Best,
Brad Burt
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Ray Pierce Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 2607 Posts |
Thanks Brad and yes, Cardini was a great example! You just didn't really know for sure and he was brilliant. Do you remember Foster Brooks the great "Drunk" comedian in the 70's and 80's. Most knew he didn't really drink but was so convincing in spite of that.
Conviction is everything which yields one of my favorite quotes... "Ultimately all is acting". Of course the other is the famous George Burns quote, "The most important thing to succeed in show business is sincerity. And if you can fake that, you've got it made."
Ray Pierce
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Brad Burt Inner circle 2675 Posts |
When you work in a magic shop and do literally thousands and thousands of demos a year it is very easy to get into a kind of automatic mode of just dashing off a presentation. But, that same could also be said for someone who may do lots and lots of regular "shows" a year. You just get used to doing what you are doing.
There came a time when I began to examine what I was doing as a magician whose job was to demonstrate/present magic routines and I began to experiment. Out that experimentation cam my ideas concerning the various 'internal states' that might be present when one is performing. The most important being The Magic State of Mind. The entire idea is essentially that to produce the strongest effect/affect one should be thinking/acting as if what one is doing magically is in fact true. I place a coin in my left hand, but retain in my right. In my mind when this happens I believe in the 'reality' that the coin is actually in my Left Hand, thus furthering what I call Body Language Conviction, etc. For the period of time that I am performing my thoughts reflect the faux reality of what the trick/routine is supposedly showing. It's ALL acting, but it's acting with as you say above: Conviction! When you watch a lot of actors talk about acting over and over you hear them talk about the concept of "commitment". Committing TO the action, the form, the routine, the story, the.....whatever. But, magicians are not really taught this! Most magicians, myself included until just the last ten years or so, are essentially taught what amounts to a purely materialistic form of presentation. Here's the technique, follow these steps and while you do say this and you will receive the prize: The audience will be fooled and amazed and hopefully entertained, etc. We talk about 'acting', but very few magicians have ever taken an acting class or read a book on acting. How many folks reading this have a copy of Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen? Not many I'd bet and here's a book that very approachable for anyone interested in upping their 'acting' game. By just acting "belief" in what we perform we can ratchet up game. And, you can practice this. Just run through something like Color Monte. Just do it as usual. Now, do it again only this time tell yourself that the story you are about to say is TRUE. It really happened to YOU. Now, ACT as if you believe it. Now, notice the difference in how it 'feels' when you do the routine. Video tape both and watch the difference. It's all technique. Nothing wrong with that. Palming the top card of the deck without detection is JUST technique also. One physical/mental and one strictly mental. Best,
Brad Burt
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funsway Inner circle old things in new ways - new things in old ways 9982 Posts |
Great thoughts/expereince, Brad. It would certainly seem that the "internal state" of the performer must change according to the intent of the magic performance. If it is only to entertain then an "other than real" character may enhance the appreciation of magic. If the goal is to teach (magic secondary to the message) then any "chaaracter" must be congruent with the instructor image peresented in other lessons and classes. If you use magic in a sales situation then it must enhance the "authentic you" with a goal to building trust and raporte -- no character allowed. It would appear that Gospel Magicians desire to keep the religious message ahead of the performance, etc. So, for me, it is more than acting -- but of realizing who you are and how the audience will perceive you.
Now -- with many/most of any audience presenting a false/peretended persona, i.e. presenting a character rather than being authentic -- should the performer take this into account or ignore it? Does he really enjoy the magic, or play the role of person who seems to enjoy it? DOes it matter? Does a person who has purchased a ticket for a magic show have a different "state of mind" than a person on the street or customer in a restaurant? Does saying "I am a magician" produce a different "state of mind" that saying, "Wanna see a trick?" Just musing here -- desirous of the experienced opinions of others like yourself.
"the more one pretends at magic, the more awe and wonder will be found in real life." Arnold Furst
eBooks at https://www.lybrary.com/ken-muller-m-579928.html questions at ken@eversway.com |
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Ray Pierce Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 2607 Posts |
Brad, you're right on the money.
I did the same thing demoing (I think that's a word!) effects. It might be because I grew up doing long run shows and having to make it fresh for each audience and convince them of the spontaneity. As an example, I had a great handling for a card frame that was a total challenge effect with everything examined at each step. I sat the card case down off to the right on the counter before the routine. At one point I just looked to the left and said "Where is the card case?" ... and as everyone looked to the right to get it for me I ditched the duplicate card. If this wasn't done with total conviction and believability, it wouldn't have worked. I've always said that a professional is judged by consistency but it's not consistency of execution but consistency of result. That means that you always had to adjust what you were doing to get the correct reaction from that spectator. It's not about being lazy and doing it the same way each time! I'm not saying that you always have to convince the audience that it's the first time you've ever done the effect, but it does give you a disarming quality as it has a spontaneity and life to it that is sometimes lacking in other effects. Each day behind the counter was an acting exercise for me and I used it for all it was worth. It taught me to do STRONG magic each and every time and try and create that same magic mind set that created the real illusion in the viewer's mind. My personal drilling technique was to always start with the reality of what I was purporting to do. Placing the coin in my hand, shuffling the cards, anything. Then I had to add the method until it matched the original. lol... Ok, time to get back to work! The discussion continues!
Ray Pierce
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Brad Burt Inner circle 2675 Posts |
Funsway: Yes. The 'Magic State of Mind' that I would employ as a 'magical performer' would be totally, or it would be my hope so, than that of someone using a trick to ILLUSTRATE a point in a class room situation or a Gospel presentation. UNLESS of course there was a valid reason for using a different 'mind' if you will.
For example: My wife is a fully licensed Dr. of Psych in CA. She also teaches at the University Level in Human Services which includes Psych classes and others. She uses two tricks that she learned over the years to help illustrate various points. She uses them sparingly, but well. Having talked to her about it I know that the internal state that she needs to generate to use the tricks effectively is totally different than what I espouse for a magician. She literally needs ONLY .... FOOL.... folks and not at a particularly high level. In effect she need not switch from Professor to magician, etc. So, yes, I would agree that the reason for performing a magic effect or routine would certainly for me dictate any number of internal state changes and accommodations. Ray: Yep! Not having any experience beyond the magic counter, that is, I had not been into acting, etc. it was a long evolving process in which I came to understand the opportunity I had to actually 'rehearse' and get paid to do it!!! I would literally slip in routines form my act and get the advantage of doing them for folks live. Very cool really. I think if I could distill the one thing from the last bit of back and forth that I believe to be the most important insight to me is the idea of COMMITMENT. Of committing TO the routine, the concept of the routine, the patter of the routine. One thing I have learned over the years that I actually did NOT believe at all at first was that you can tell folks the most outrageous stuff and you can have the believe it!!! I mean just totally whack-o stuff, but if you do it with committed intent, with belief in what you are saying you can get away with murder! Now, take that one step down. That's why a con man can tell folks very reasonable BUT totally FALSE stuff and get away with it! Just commit to what you are doing magically. All best,
Brad Burt
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Ray Pierce Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 2607 Posts |
Anyone that studies with me will tell you that the two most important words in my classes are Focus and Commitment!
Ray Pierce
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Josh Chaikin Inner circle Kansas City 1430 Posts |
It has been mentioned in the thread before, but it does bear repeating. I took an acting class in college and one of the things we did was a "moment before" exercise. It was a simply 10 second scene, we'd walk through a door, grab our keys and walk out, but had to construct a backstory to it. As a follow up to this, when we were assigned monologues, we had to draft up a backstory for our character. A lot of theater involves backstory, which is revealed as the story develops (look at the exchange between Jean Valjean and Javert during the beginning of Les Misérables).
Magic is largely concerned with "the moment of" and, as Ray rightly pointed out, there's a lot of difficulty in doing magic theatrically as magicians tend to break the 4th wall. (As a side note, does that make the Rocky Horror Show theater? The 4th wall is broken quite a bit there...) I would be more interested in elevating magic to the level of art than theater. |
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Brad Burt Inner circle 2675 Posts |
That's been one of the things that has bothered me on the discussion lately: IS magic theater? At least for now I would say no it's not. Just because a magician might and even should 'act' does not mean that that makes magic theater. Con men act also.
A play can and often does use "magic" to produce an effect in a theatrical context, but that doesn't mean the play is about 'magic' or a 'magical play'. It could be many things and generally is without it being magic. Sometimes 'magic' is presented in a more theatrical style, but that still doesn't make it theater. Magic of all kinds and iterations is, well, magic and nothing else. It's pointed out that 'magic' tends to break the fourth wall. Sometimes 'experimental' theater breaks the fourth wall, does that make it 'magic'? Of course not. That fact that a magic show will have elements of theater in it doesn't make it theater. It's hopefully entertainment, but magic is what it is. It's it's own form. It's not like juggling. It's not like stilt walking or fire eating or whatever else you want to list. That's what's cool about it. It's it's own thing and in some ways the most versatile. Magic can and often does draw from all manner of disciplines to augment it's own uniqueness. Norm Nielsen floats a violin, but that doesn't make Norm a musician. It's an element of music taken to make something magic and it's offered up AS magic. I'm agreeing with Josh's post above. I don't want magic mistaken for anything else in the entertainment industry. I love when someone in the craft has elevated some or all of their act to the level of art when art is defined as something not just different or trivial (a urinal stuck to a wall and 'called' art), but actually better in that sense which when watched and experienced that tendency is to say to ones self, "That was just perfect...what a great act! I'm amazed at how good that was." And, you are left feeling the same way I feel when I hear anything played by Stevie Ray Vaughn: A kind of awe that anyone could play the guitar like that. Best,
Brad Burt
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Ray Pierce Inner circle Los Angeles, CA 2607 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-07-06 09:46, Brad Burt wrote: I'm even less concrete! I guess magic can possibly be anything we want it to be. For most illustrations I've made... I'm speaking in generalizations of what it most commonly is in current use or maybe what is the most efficient means of creating the most magical impact for me. Yes magic can be theater as we've seen at the Conference of Magical History with Jim's staging of "Will, The Witch and The Watchman" ,"The Mascot Moth" and many other classic works. My main overriding thought in past posts was that for me... the most magical impact is from a direct connection with the viewer with the least distractions between the effect and their mind. These distractions come in the form of additional characters, theatrical devices, and other things that we use as dressing on our magical cakes. Now that is not to say that these items don't add interest in some ways. These are the choices that separate our performances... sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I've done a lot of magical theater character pieces including my Charlie Chaplin park sequence, The Mission: Impossible routine, My Pirate ship segment, one version of my "Backstage with the Magician" and Magician's Rehearsal routines... etc. Our audience is the final judge of these choices. Magic is like art in that the more we try to define and pigeon hole it, the more elusive it becomes. Yes, I have many thoughts and reasons behind all of my personal choices but that's not to say that other choices aren't effective and correct. My goal is to always question these choices I make to make sure I've really thought through my reasons so I have a clearly defined and well thought out analysis on the audience impact and benefits. It's all about them!
Ray Pierce
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Jonathan Townsend Eternal Order Ossining, NY 27297 Posts |
Are folks familiar with the older sense of the word "comedy" ?
Another frame might have magic as "rhetoric designed to demonstrate what is only true during the demonstration". Another frame might have magic as the use the what one believes to be true configured to create a perception of what can't be true. As long as there's a performer and an audience - it's a performing art, one of the dramatic arts when there's a story to be told, and theater when the explicit intent is to have the audience understand that what's given as true during the performance is not necessarily to be taken as valid outside the performance. That's my perspective FWIW.
...to all the coins I've dropped here
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
If the job of the dramatist is to make the audience wonder what happens next. Not to explain to them what happened or to suggest to them what happens next. Then what is the job of the magician?
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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Jonathan Townsend Eternal Order Ossining, NY 27297 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-07-07 07:10, tommy wrote: To realize the vision of the dramatist when he writes "the two single solid rings were really linked" or "and then the elephant vanished".
...to all the coins I've dropped here
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