On 2006-10-09 02:07, Mystician wrote:
You can most certainly consider me "truly bizarre" (on many levels !).

I'm not sure that it's not just "growing pains" though.. but true enough, far too many other magicians just don't "get" it.
Not to bust on my local brick'n'mortar shop, because I love the place, but a few weeks ago I was there pondering whether to buy "bounce/no bounce balls", and how I could use them in a bizarre routine. Something in the back of mind tells me there's something good there, but I still haven't found it.. anyway..
I mentioned to the shopkeep my little internal dialog, and he happily reproduced an idea from the B/NB book, whereby you use a super cheesy fake hypodermic to "draw blood" out of the ball, whereby it now is dead and won't bounce. He said, "There you go, that's bizarre !"
I could only look at him, semi-pathetically.. speechlessly.. lol.. (sorry, John !)
Nope, he doesn't get it.. I sort of tried to explain it, but he just isn't into it I guess. It almost made me change my mind about buying the balls, but I bought them anyway, I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Another more recent purchase was the "Gypsy Curse" effect, which includes several "antique" playing cards wrapped in parchment. The cards are pretty nice, being oversized, they have only pips, no indexes, which lends authenticity, and then they ruin it.. they're plastic coated ! It shouldnt' be hard to remove that gloss from them though, really.

However, historically speaking, I'm not so sure Eugene Burger ever felt it should be played as "real"; in fact, in his Spirit Theatre tape, he says there are 3 methods of doing seances: real, comedy, and an in-between mode he called "tongue-in-cheek", which is what he would do.
Some of his effects, like the self opening matchbox, which was immediately followed by the levitating candle in a small bottle, were, to me, a bit over the top and more "entertainment" type magic than "bizarre" type magic. PK and levitations are touchy things - there's a fine line and it's easy to cross over it.

But for God's sake, yes, keep the *** bats off the props !!

On 2006-10-10 10:52, gsidhe wrote:
Here is how I break things down with the shows that Sylver and I do.

We do a show where all of the props are painted with skulls.
This is not our bizarre act...This is our Comedy Sideshow act.

We do shows which are all blood guts and fire.
These are not my bizarre act...These are my Performance Art/Shock Magic/Gore shows.

I do some walkaround with the old Rope and Bottle routine (Handmade with an etched glass bottle) and tell children stories about capturing a fairy or creature and stuffing it in a magical bottle I found. If they can make her mad enough by poking her with the rope and shaking the bottle upside down, she'll grab the rope and not let go.
This is not my Bizarre act- This is my Bizarre Light Act, a story that gets children to believe in something otherworldly. Let's them touch something they have been told is not real.

I do a show where I explain why I and Sylver can do all of the sideshow things that we do...It is because I know exactly when I am going to die and how, so nothing can hurt me before that time. It includes demonstrations of how I found out how I was going to die and when, what Sylver really is and her unique abilities, and an open invitation to an audience member to look into their future and see what might happen to them...
This is one of our Bizarre Magic acts.
All of these acts have a bit of crossover, some are directly related, but I would never think of putting them in the same category.

As for what props should be used...
98% of our props are made by hand specifically to the act in which they are used. The 2% that are "Off the Shelf" are modified to fit the acts.
Nothing is plastic. Nothing has little Asian Dragons or Kanjii (although a few props have skulls burned into them) and nothing looks even remotely generic.
As a Bizarrist, I think that this is critical, much more so than the average magician. If a person off of the street were to walk into a magic shop or go onto E-bay, they should not be able to look at an item and say "Hey...There's that trick I saw Spooky-o the magician do yesterday!"
Our props are artifacts, as unique as the magus themselves should be. Not necessarily old, but special, different.
There are a few exceptions to this.

The bounce/no bounce balls...I can think of ways to use them. I wouldn't use them as a focal point in a routine, wouldn't have much patter at all directly about them, but maybe use them as an indicator of a change in the spiritual atmosphere before a seance. The magus simply bounces a ball, and catches it rythmically whilst talking about the energies being summoned into the room, about how certain changes to the normal rules might occur. This goes on for several minutes so that the audience gets used to the repetition of the sound. Then, in the middle of the speech, the ball stops. It does not bounce.
Dead silence.
The Magus pauses looking at the ball intently, then without any further ceremony announces "It is time to start."
No mention of the ball or what just happened.
This is one of the few occasions where I would not change the prop itself. You want it to look as normal and mundane as possible. In this case, the ball is not the object causing the mystery, but the mystery that is being worked on the object.

No...Bizarre Magic is not dead or dying. There are more people doing it, and even more people doing it badly. this is going to happen in any art form. For every VanGough, there are going to be 5 guys painting Elvis on black velvet.
All Painters, but man...5 out of 6 stink.
Gwyd

On 2006-10-09 02:07, Mystician wrote:
You can most certainly consider me "truly bizarre" (on many levels !). Another more recent purchase was the "Gypsy Curse" effect, which includes several "antique" playing cards wrapped in parchment. The cards are pretty nice, being oversized, they have only pips, no indexes, which lends authenticity, and then they ruin it.. they're plastic coated ! It shouldnt' be hard to remove that gloss from them though, really.

Certainly some manufacturers of "tricks" are slapping the concept on their tripe. The stuff looks silly and childish. They are mostly for commericial magicians who want something "themed" for their Halloween act.