Guys and Girls,

I've recently been working with my director on a stage show, which has its first preview tomorrow. One of the most interesting things which has come up during our rehearsal stage isn't just how hard it is to script, run through and rehearse a mentalism based show, but how blasé I've found I can be in performance.

I thought this was an unusual issue, which might spark off some good discussion. When you get used to you're material and doing it night after night, you very quickly can find you loose the "sparkle" and joy of performance, without noticing it. It almost seems as if you are just going through the motions.

I very often forget that to the audience this is real magic, and unbelievable...to me its something I do every night...so therefore (especially in a show) it's very important to believe in what you are doing, how you are doing it, and what you want the audience to think about it, to create a successful performance. I fortunately have a background in acting, so for me performing on stage, is much like stepping into a character. Each night I have to be as amazed, in wonder and delighted by the same things, make it real and make the audience believe this. I cannot afford to be blasé about what I'm doing.

The simplest example of this is just going through a trick, which you know well. The audience often get confused as to what is supposed to happen, or has happened and thus the impact lessens, only because you are being blasé. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Stage is a very different beast, and with my Mentalism and the ideas I create that I use psychology amongst others I have to strongly remember while performing, that what I'm saying that I'm doing...the I actually believe it. Does that make sense? What I'm trying to say is when I say I'm influencing through my language and how I'm standing, then I have to believe it, otherwise the audience will, I mustn't get blasé about it, knowing that I'm using a multi-out, switch envelope or whatever. The mechanics of Mentalism are dull, but when you dress it up it can be terribly exciting.

I've missed the joy of first discovering mentalism and dressing it up. My first real mental trick was an ESP one, using marked cards. I worked out very cunning and deceptive language which meant that 80% of the time the words I use would do the trick, but I could double check with the markings. I performed this hundreds of time, each time I would amaze myself, at how joyful it is. Then I learnt more and more, and discovered the simple mechanics of some "tricks" and re-dressed them to my accord. Eventually all I ever thought about was the mechanic, which I had to do, not about the trick I was presenting to an audience. I was still having great shows and gigs, but areas were missing.

It's only with the addition of a director that I've rediscovered this, and noticed where I've been going wrong, so to all of you I say, re-evaluate why you are doing what you are doing, as chances are you can make it even more magical.

Just a thought or two I suppose!

Make it more magical, learn some hypnotic language!
Learn how to manage your own state!

Have you ever met someone and felt totally drawn to them - to the point where you were almost mesmerised?

Perhaps it was the sound of their voice, or the words, or even how they moved, that had you hanging on. Perhaps you saw them perform a simple trick for the first time and you were totally amazed to the point where as you think about it now you discover those feelings inside, now etched into your nervous system - fresh as the amazment and wonder of a young child experiencing a flash of colour pass by them....seeing their first butterfly.

Chris: you need to learn to completely relax on stage and learn the effects till the need to think about the mechanics disappears and you focus on creating great feelings for the audience. This is what is missing for a lot of mentalists. You need to learn about how to control your own and others states.

When all the effects are laid bare its the "states" we are trying to create in the audience we are after. The mechanics are just part of the ends to a means.

The ability to keep a performance fresh and alive is one of the significant differences between someone who just wants to perform and a truly professional performer.

As a conductor of musicals and opera, I've been in a position to watch the same performer do the same role for dozens upon dozens of times, night after night. It is always a revelation how a true pro can do all those repetitions as if each night's performance was the opening night.

For me, the essence of this is remembering that you're giving a theatrical performance that REQUIRES a story (in the broadest sense), a motivation and a character. If you lack those, you're just another guy doing stunts. As you say, Chris, although you're ostensibly playing yourself as a mentalist, you are, in fact, playing a character each night in that performance.

This doesn't mean, however, that the performaer has to put on a swami costume and do garish gestures or don black tie and tails, paint one eybrow into a perpetually raised position and start practicing your (God Help Us!) Quizzical Look in the mirror.

Rather -- again, as Chris mentions -- you have to think of yourself as the person who REALLY CAN do the things the audience thinks you're doing. If that were true, what would you think about your abilities? How would you comport yourself? Would you be eager to share your skills? Would you be a wise guy trying to show up everyone else's LACK of supernatural skills? Would you be afraid of what forces you might unleash by demonstrating your abilities? In short, you have to find the dramatic reality in your magical unreality.

These are all the kinds of questions that can lead you to developing a performing persona. And developing a relationship with each night's audience.

I'm just finishing reading The Mystery School Book. This is a SENSATIONAL read for anyone who is serious about performing. Not heavy on tricks but genuinely inspired in its essays on the theatrical and the internal mindset that a performer has to develop to become a TRUE artist.

Many mentalism effects, by their nature, are low-energy theatre. There may be a build to tension, but most effects don't crank up the energy. I had scripted a pulse stop routine in my act and, after viewing a tape of the act up to that point, decided the show was too low on energy as it was and the pulse stop could literally stop the show in its tracks.

Maybe someday...

- Greg Owen

Anyone read absolute magic recently?

There are pieces I have performed literally hundreds of times (to the point that I really am quite tired of them). But to the audience I am in front of, it is brand new. So I have to make it brand new for me as well...each and every time I do it. I like to think I succeed a majority of the time. (The reactions I get from my audiences seem to support this delusion.)

On the other side of the coin, I do recall a tour where I did over 200 school shows in just under 5 months, and during one show very late in the tour I literally "woke up" and became aware of my surroundings about two thirds of the way through the show. I was giving my lines and nobody was looking at me funny so I must have done everything I was supposed to. That was scary. And, no, alcohol was not involved...which, as I think about it, makes it even scarier. Just WAY too many performances of that show I guess.

Anyone else ever had that happen to them?

Yes, and it is called "burnout." So many of us spend all of our time on our work since it is a danger to under-prepare that we forget that over-preparing can also lead you into a world of hurt. I got bored enough with magic that I left it completely for ten years. The key that I have found is to give yourself other things to do. Magic is a lot of fun but get a few hobbies as well and stick to them. This forces me to clear my head every now and then. Also, take a vacation when it gets too bad! The last trick is that I will have a little post-it with me that is hidden from the audience that says "Remember, this stuff is @#%$!* amazing!" Glancing at it has helped.

I don't have the "luxury" of performing regularly and so the little advice I have to give will be based on my experience as a teacher and as an amateur musician. It may have some relevance.

When giving a lecture or teaching class that I have taught many times before I too become swiftly blasé. As my students have often lauded my energy and spontaneity I feel I am really losing something valuable when this happens. My solution has been to:

• Introduce something new each time I give a class I have given before. Not too much, as that takes time and I already have a well planned and functioning lecture, but enough that I feel excited at trying this thing out or excited at telling/showing this new thing. The "new thing" can be something which addresses one of the weak spots of my lecture and tries to improve on it. It need be only a very small thing, but I find that my looking forward to it rubs off on the rest of my "performance".

• Another way I try to vary my lectures is to focus on one particular aspect of lecturing. I might decide one session to work with my voice and vary tempo and strength, or I might decide to write and draw more on the white board. I don't change the lecture itself, just pay more attention to some aspect of lecturing.

• I hype myself up. Even if I don't feel like lecturing (or playing a gig with my band) I remind myself that the gig/lecture is short and soon over, that each thing I say (or each song I play) will only happen once that occasion. Even if I find it boring I only have to do it once. I also only have one opportunity to do it well.

Some great points and tips there, thanks guys. I didn't make myself brilliantly clear, but what I was trying to get at is, I've found my performance self now, after a lot of searching.

Absoulte Magic was mentioned...great book...but follow it exactly and you'll end up being a Derren Wannabe, but take it's advice and fit it to you and you have a performance style which will amaze and astound...and keep you on your toes!

Shrink, the relaxing etc...is terribly important, I now see my tricks as only what the audience see's, me doing the moves are invisble to myself, and second nature...I forget I've done or am doing them, and thus the audience never notice them. People must remember though there is a fine line between being amazed by it all like the audience, and being in the audience...remember you are the performer and you have the power. Oh and Shrink....so many of my routines now feature anchoring and hypnotic based language...and I've amazed myself with how it adds to the effect and my performance.

Here's wishing myself luck for my first preview!

I can't give you a book title off hand, but what you should do is get a good book on acting (or speak to a drama teacher) and learn a technique known as the "illusion of the first time".

Great stage actors use this technique. Yul Brenner starred in The King and I thousands of times and yet performance after performance was totally fresh. He credited this technique as part of it.

Great luck and... break a leg.

Blair

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<< I can't give you a book title off hand, but what you should do is get a good book on acting (or speak to a drama teacher) and learn a technique known as the "illusion of the first time".

Great stage actors use this technique. Yul Brenner starred in The King and I thousands of times and yet performance after performance was totally fresh. He credited this technique as part of it.>>

There are a few good books on acting. Read everything you can by Konstantin Stanislavski including An Actor Prepares.

A good modern work would be Acting One by Robert Cohen.

There's also a lot of nonsense written about acting. The above suggestions are a sensible way to start, and have applications to other kinds of performers.

Jack Shalom

I believe the phrase Blair refers to was coined by William H. Gillette in a 1915 essay called, "The Illusion of the First Time in Acting."

An excerpt of his essay is found in Actors on Acting edited by Cole and Chinoy.

An excerpt (from the excerpt):

"Unfortunately for an actor, he knows or is supposed to know his part. He is fully aware -- expecially after several performances -- of what he is going to say. The character he is representing, however, does NOT know what he is going to say, but, if he is a human being, various thoughts occur to him one by one, and he puts such of those thoughts as he decides to, into such speech as he happens to be able to command at the time. Now it is a very difficult thing for an actor who knows exactly what he is going to say to behave exactly as though he didn't; to let his thought (apparently) occur to him as he goes along, even though they are there in his mind already; and (apparently) to search for and find words by which to express those thoughts, even though these words are at this tongue's very end."

Later Gillette makes a second observation, that the actor's personality must fit the personality of the character he/she wishes to portray. Not everyone is suited to play Hamlet. And those who can play Hamlet are usually ill-equipped to play Othello. In other words, as actors, we must find roles that allow us to be ourselves.

Gregg Tobo

Chris, the reason I mentioned the DB book was because it covers the same aspect of what this inital thread was about. Sorry it was my lame attempt at sarcasm.

I believe the hardest part of performing is when you have performed a certain effect for quite some time and you can do it blindfolded in a straight jacket after 15 beers. Your perception of the effect can become stale and your effort and enthusiasm is minismised. For me, I have to take a step back and try to look at myself from an unbiased opinion, what am I showing? what do I want to show? and how can I do this convincingly? This again may seem straight out of the DB book but I have been doing this off my own back for some time now, prior to me actually reading the book.