Debuting a stage show for strangers that have connections to people you know is enlightening...and frightening! As I stated in my other thread, you can find out from your friends and family just what these strangers are saying and thinking well after the show is over.

What I'm hearing is very disheartening. People go home and continue to think about it, some people figure it out during the show and don't say anything. But, if this audience was any indication (none of which have ever seen me perform or have ever even heard of the word "mentalism" before), audiences can figure out what we do.

Not all of it, but some of the most deceptive effects/concepts in mentalism have been logically deduced, despite the multitude of subtle proofs. I realize that the temptation is to assume that I just did a poor job and that it would never happen to you. Trust me, that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not perfect, but one of my major strengths is in the area of subtleties (hence me being in PS2 and PS3) and routining to make it as impossible as, well, possible to reverse engineer and figure out.

Thankfully I've been able to get some honest feedback and it's really pushing me to ridiculous lengths to try and throw them off. If I had never done this trial show I'd never have figured this out.

I think we underestimate audiences. It might only be a couple that figure it out, but you can bet that after you leave they will share their "insights" with the rest of their co-workers. They may still invite me back, because they enjoyed the show and enjoyed the puzzle, not necessarily because they weren't able to figure anything out.

something I don't think we want to hear, but something we need to hear.

THIS is why I am totally paranoid about methods. Message me about my add a number method and I'll give you an example if you like.

The truth is ALOT of people treat it as a puzzle, and only stop doing this if they think they have no chance of figuring it out. I think for this reason we must always try to be deceptive as possible.

Tom
xx

Where's Kissdadookie when you need him to argue that you must be performing it all wrong?

But deception isn't just about the method employed Tom. The deception happens through the ability the performer holds on mentally misdirecting the audience and leading them to believe in what they are seeing. So much has been published on this subject within Mentalism.

I would look at Richard Osterlinds' 'First Dog' from his book Mystique. The method is unbelievable and will show you what you need to be working on.

There will always be the few audience members that no matter if you were Jesus and turning their cheap plonk into Chateau Latour, would always believe it to be 'just a trick'. Most are willing to be lead up the garden path and have their beliefs suspended, even if its just for a while, and then there are the few who leave you little presents at three in the morning on your doorstep proclaiming you the next messiah (well almost, but you get my drift).

The important thing as a magical entertainer is to give your audiences a reason to NOT try to figure out how you did it.

Philemon... That was an outstanding statement.

Suitable for framing, that one.

Thanks,
Neil

Agree with Philemon and with the man who said this..."A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his own family." It is not a good idea to do mentalism for people who know you...because they know you have no real powers.

And yet...it is the natural urge to do so. That is why Derren Brown. Marc Salem, The Amazing Kreskin, David Berglas and others give a possible explanation for what they do. It muddies the waters slightly and puts people off the scent.

The nature of what we do is different to that of the magician. With a magician, the audience knows that what we do are just tricks, they just don't know how we achieve what we do but, are just as just entertained because they know it is theatre.

With mentalism, we pretend (or Act) that what we do is real. Now....unless we really are psychic...or pretend that we are as in John Edward, Colin Fry, etc...there HAS to be another explanation. That is why performers like Derren Brown, Marc Salem, Banachek and David Berglas amongst others, base their explanations on clever psychology. Otherwise, it has to be the skill of the magician that creates what they see.

Yes....WE know that that explanation is complete ********....but the audience buy it 100%!...if performed with conviction.

My view....and it IS only my view...is that if you want to perform as a psychic...then you MUST be a psychic! As Jon Riggs rightfully states...."there is no market for a fake psychic". Uri Geller is our example here....despite what the majority of magicians think, the public generally buy what he says and accept him for what he is!

However, if you want to perform as a "mentalist"....then I believe that you MUST accept that what you do is NOT psychic.

Look at the greats....Kreskin, Al Koran, Dunninger, David Berglas, Canasta, Banachek, Fogel, Marc Salem, Derren Brown...even The Mentalist (Jane)

As far as I am aware...none of them claimed any psychic ability but claimed that they could replicate it by using down to earth techniques.

By leading the audience "up the garden path", you stop them from looking for an explanation elsewhere and take them one more step into believing what you do.

Or...am I way off the mark?

Thoughts?

Mark

PS...and by the way, Philemon...I realise that you answered this in your reply. Just thought I would expand

Never a truer word said

Exactly. Now, enlighten us as to how this can be done for every audience. I'll let you know if it's not something I'm already doing.

Please understand, that during the show they loved it and gave me as much praise as you could ask for. But, AFTER the show they kept thinking about it and tried to figure out how it was done. I never would have known if I didn't have people I knew relating to me what the strangers were doing/saying.

When you make it clear that you have no psychic ability, there's only one option left and that's deception.

I'm serious, share your thoughts on how to make everyone not want to figure it out. It's easy to just say that...shoot, I've said it myself many times.

There were quite a few people I knew there, but many of them I'd never met before (they were friends of friends).

Unfortunately, unless I see you perform, I have no specific advice to offer you.

What you want to accomplish is a willing suspension of disbelief in your audiences.

How you go about doing so is a function of your skills as an entertainer and to a major extent on the nature of your particular performing persona.

If people already believe you're the real thing, then you don't have to worry about them trying to figure out how you're accomplishing your effects.

Alternatively, you can deliver such a strong and compelling story, that they overlook any weaknesses in your methodology, and instead sit back and enjoy the ride.

Either approach is valid, and there's no reason that you can't strive for both.

Jonathan,

Put up ten minutes of your show on YouTube and we can respond intelligently to your needs.

I once gave a lecture when I was in my early 20s to a Ring in my hometown. I said that if you fooled 80% or 85% of your audience but entertained 90% - 95% of them then you were doing your job as a magician.

Frakson was sitting in the front row repeatedly nodding his head in agreement, a tremendous boost for a then-very young guy trying to find his way as a professional. Not long after Frakson took me on as his student and my world changed.

If your audience has a good time they won't be paying enough attention to be able to remember exactly what you did so they can figure it out. Besides, some clever people will hit on the method but they are still only guessing unless you validate their guess.

Let's see the video and we can make more intelligent comments instead of just guessing. Since this was your debut show do I assume correctly that you taped it?

They were definitely entertained. The reason they thought about it so long to try and figure it out was that they had such a good time. They can suspend their disbelief for the length of the show, but after the show many people go home and rack their brains trying to figure out how on earth they did it!

My point is that we have no way of knowing unless you do something like what I did.

Of course, if the things you do are pretty easy for them to figure out then they won't rack their brains trying to figure it out and might just sit back and enjoy the show.

Trust me, I've said the same things you are saying. I think you'd be surprised to hear what your audiences are saying and doing well after the show. People like us will always rack their brains trying to figure out how stuff we don't understand is done. It's in our nature.

That said, I'd love to hear some basic concepts and ways to answer the question "how to make an audience suspend their disbelief"...especially people like us who can't stand it when there are things we can't figure out!

(as for the video, the sound didn't work...grrr!)

David, while I personally agree with you on this matter, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a second and remind readers of the story T.A.Waters tells in MMM. Waters tells of bringing Katherine Kurtz (a fantasy novelist) to see a performance of Romark in Los Angeles. After watching the show, she agreed that Romark was a 'brilliant performer AND a strong showman.` BUT she also figured out MANY effects from his show including the Centre Tear, the billet knife, psychometry`s marked envelopes and the Add-a-no effect.

Mind you, a few months afterwards, he took her to see Fogel at The Castle and after HIS show, she was convinced she had witnessed a man with 'real' power to read thoughts!!

Just throwing this out there for anybody who recalls reading it...

Happy Thoughts,
Paul Pacific

Paul, I remember reading the story in one of Tom’s booklets that were all later combined into MM&M. How true it is, I don't know. Perhaps Tom took some license to make a point. Perhaps he didn't like Romark but did like Fogel. I don't know.

What Tom didn't say and apparently did not ask was if Katherine had done any reading on mentalism before seeing Romark. Writers are known to be widely read and she may have recognized certain things she’d read, however with Fogel it was a different matter. As Ray Hyman likes to say, "Forewarned is disarmed."

Given that Romark’s act was created for him by Corinda, I find the story a bit difficult to buy, but those sorts of things can and do happen.

I remember doing a show a long time ago for a Mensa group. As I was doing a bit of pre-show some wise guy asked me if "that clipboard" was one of those "trick clipboards." Seems he'd read a few things and "knew stuff" and couldn’t wait to show off how smart he was. Normally, Mensa groups were easy to fool.

I was doing a walk-around gig years ago. In the middle of Polaroid Money a woman said, "Oh that's one of those trick wallets. My husband has one." I'd done the trick several hundred times and never had that happen before...or since.

When I was in my early 20s and really into card magic I did a lot of walk around at parties. At one a well-dressed man spent a good part of the evening following me around asking me to repeat certain card effects for various people. Turns out he was a famous expert on bridge, loved cards and just liked seeing good sleight of hand. He told me quietly that he knew what I was doing; he just liked seeing it done well.

Some nice stories david...
so what happened with the smart *** mensas?
did you still do the preshow?

I think you will sometimes find people that know a thing or two but you cant let that bother you or stopPing you, at the end, the main point is to entertain.

Hi Jonathan,

You'll never get everyone to not think about how you did some of your routines. There will always be some and there's nothing anyone can do about. Even those who present themselves as "psychic" are bound to have some members of the audience who do not believe in that and will try to figure out how it was done.

Focus on providing an entertaining show. After all, if everyone enjoys the show, does it really matter if some try to "figure it out" when they leave?

Regards, Steve

Jonathan -- yeah, it's easy to recite generalities, much harder to apply them in specific ways to get those results. Unfortunately, specific answers only apply to specific performers. What I might do to try and create a reason for the audience to not try and figure something out might work for me, but not for anyone else.

Not to get all lofty -- but striving to answer that question for your act is the "art" aspect of the field. With a certain degree of effort and commitment, we can all learn to do a center tear, we can all perform a drawing duplication. This is the craft aspect of mentalism. Creating true mystery is the art aspect. While most of us on this forum can master the craft, I'm not sure the majority have a strong handle on the art aspect. I don't think I do. If I had to give my self a ratio, I think I'm rely on about 75% craft and 25% art. But what I love about mentalism is trying to find ways to shift that ratio.

Specifically, to try and answer your quandary on "How do you get audience members NOT TO try and figure things out", I approach it in two ways...

1) I try to look at all the ways to create a relationship with my audience. On one extreme, you can have an antagonistic relationship. An example is a bad presentation of Bank Night -- where the audience feels like you are "better" than they are, they lose, you win. I guess the other extreme would be that you come off as so *** likable, that you entertain the audience to such an enjoyable degree, that they could care less how you do things, they just want you to do more! The overall theme of my mentalism focuses on the incredible power of human potential. My goal is to not just entertain, but also inspire in some way. Even of the smallest of scales, if someone watches my performance, and afterward wants to try Soduko, or a crossword puzzle, learn a fun memory stunt, or read a new book -- anything to challenge them mentally -- then I feel I've succeeded. I'm trying to find ways to shift the audience perspective from asking "How did he do that?" to "Hmm, maybe I should find a way to challenge myself mentally."

2) The other perspective on this is -- someone watches you perform, is completely entertained, goes home, and spends a half hour thinking of methods and googling for possible solutions -- well, you should be happy! The entertainment experience you've created has lasted well beyond your actual show. What's wrong with that? Honestly, do we all think that what we do is so amazing and unexplainable that no one will ever figure out a possible method? Since I was a kid, I've watched magic and mentalism performances and then spent hours figuring out how things were done. I'm not a brilliant guy, but the truth is, most times, I eventually figured it out. Why would out audience members be any different? Unless you are claiming to be a true psychic, there must be answers, and people are curious enough to want to try and figure out what those answers are.

The bottom line is that the pursuit to your question is what makes you an artist more than a craftsman. No easy answers, one-size fits all answers.

These last two posts are along the lines of what I believe.

To give a little more insight into my performance, I present myself as modestly as possible (the hype goes into the effect, not me, and I make fun of myself) and I try to present things in a way that makes the audience special. Either they are special for doing something (THEY are bending the spoon, not me) or they are special for being a part of an amazing experience. I also frame the show to be inspirational, in fact probably the most talked about thing on the video taped feedback was how inspirational it was and how that affected them.

I even go so far as to make subtle jokes about how some past audiences missed the whole point of the show and just saw it as a puzzle that they thought they had to figure out and how I appreciated how the audience here didn't see it as a competition but instead saw it as an inspiration...etc.

Given all the work I put into framing the show in the correct way and doing everything I could to prevent it from happening, there were still quite a few of them who were deadset on figuring it out.

I think that if you present something so straight-forward and impossible that there are no possible solutions it drives certain people (like me) INSANE until they can come up with some kind of explanation. I might need to throw in some red-herrings ala Derren Brown. I've always resisted that, but given the kind of show this is I might have to bite the bullet.