Mick Ayres
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Hilton Head Island
998 Posts
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Posted: Mar 16, 2011 09:15 pm
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In the year 2000, I started performing mentalism regularly for Disney. For the sake of my own sanity, I found myself creating, scripting and choreographing whole new acts every 18 months or so. Over the past several years, the 'retired' acts have been offered to the conjuring community as part of The Act-Series. Each act has been performed hundreds of times in front of guests from around the world.
S'lie (pronounced "sly") is the fourth book in the series to be released. It has been extremely well-received so far. You can learn more about the complete Act-Series here: http://www.mickayreswares.com.
Warm regards,
Mick Ayres
THE FIVE OBLIGATIONS OF CONJURING: Study. Practice. Script. Rehearse. Perform. Drop one and you're done.
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Mick Ayres
Special user
Hilton Head Island
998 Posts
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Posted: Mar 17, 2011 01:54 pm
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Here is a S'lie review from Tom Baxter, author of "A Card Merely Thought Of..." and "The Open Prediction Project":
Quote: On 2011-03-15 11:11, entity wrote:
Hello All:
As promised, here is my review of Mick Ayres' new ebook, S'lie --
Although Mick and I have never met in person, I consider him my friend, and I am a big fan of Mick as a performer and as a person. He sent the ebook to me as a gift, with no strings attached.
S'lie is part 4 of Mick's ACT Series. It is subtitled: Drama, Dialogues and Deception for the Parlor Mentalist. The ebook is 43 pages in length. For those unfamiliar with the other installments of Mick's ACT Series, this ebook consists of an entire 30-45 mentalism show with playing cards.
Those among us who consider playing cards verboten in a mentalism performance might do well to check out Mick's work. He has thought everything through very carefully, and his scripting not only justifies the use of cards in a series of mind reading experiments, but lifts the effects to a personal, mystifying and highly entertaining level of PROFESSIONAL theater.
Mick has tested and refined these routines through literally hundreds of paid performances. For a quality working professional to share his work to this extent is of far greater value than most will realize.
So, the ebook --
While billed as a complete "ACT", I would suggest that the six effects plus added scripts and monologes are really several finished effects or acts in themselves that combine to create a show that begins with a charming and disarming introduction to the reason for using playing cards, builds through a series of highly entertaining experiments in thought reading to a grand finale. These experiments begin with a single audience participant and gradually more and more people are involved, until the last routine has the performer reading the thoughts of many people in the audience in rapid-fire succession.
S'lie is written and constructed to be performed in total, as a show, but my feeling is that each effect can be taken as a presentation that will stand on its own. Many readers here will not often find the occasion to perform a full show of mentalism, but everyone will find something in S'lie that they can use to mystify. None of the effects are technically challenging. No sleight of hand beyond the ability to hold a pinky break is called for, and indeed much of the work appears to be done by the audience volunteers themselves.
Beyond the ability to create miracles with playing cards with little or no sleight of hand, one of Mick's great talents is to develop theatrically sound presentations. It's here where his experience and professionalism shine. His opening, "UnRap To Open" is a short monologue in rhyme cleverly adapted and updated from an idea by Alex Elmsley. It is pure theater that, when presented according to Mick's direction in the ebook, will delight and disarm any audience right off the top of your show.
"Hand Out", the first experiment in mind reading in the act, has the performer offering an ungimmicked pack of cards for shuffling. The participant then peeks a card, closes the pack and reshuffles. Without looking through the cards, and while the cards are in the audience member's hands, the performer (with no pumping or guessing) can tell the person the color, suit and value of the card they are merely thinking of.
In "Lemonade" Mick presents a lovely dramatic twist to the first experiment. While appearing to repeat the test under even more rigid conditions, it appears that this time things go wrong and the performer has trouble picking up on the participant's thoughts. A sudden inspiration allows the performer to not only reveal the thought-of card, but to take it a gigantic step beyond that, so that the performer reveals a WORD merely thought of my the participant as well!
"Favorite Reaction" allows the performer to change gears slightly, offering variety to the performance. This effect is a demonstration of the volunteer's powers of discernment rather than one of mindreading. The audience participant decides upon a "favorite card". This is an absolutely free choice. They shuffle the cards, and they deal the cards one at a time onto the table, stopping where they feel inclined, again a free choice. Unbelievably, when they turn over the card they stopped at, it is their previously stated favorite card.
The title effect in the ebook, S'lie, is a completely hands-off presentation that reverses the procedure of the previous effect, allowing the performer to stop the participant's deal at their thought-of card. Not only does this presentation bring in a completely different type of method to anything else in the act (throwing off anyone who may think they know what's going on) but the context of the effect ties the card to the audience member's fondest memories. This entire effect can be done with the cards in the participant's hands and the performer's back turned. Or even over the telephone.
Imagine the possibilities!
"Four Card Influence" is a killer prediction/synchronicity type of effect that is based upon an earlier effect by a good friend and early mentor of Mick's, a man name John Murray. While the mechanics of the effect are Murray's the presentation is pure Ayres. I have a feeling that this effect will be the one most performed from this ebook. It is dead easy to do, yet has a stunning sequence of surprises.
The cards are thoroughly shuffled by the audience participant. The performer looks through the deck and removes one card, which he places face down to one side as his prediction. With some wonderful "bits of business" and very entertaining by-play, the performer has various audience members call stop during a deal or cut the cards so that in the end, each has found cards that are mates to the performer's prediction card. This is ultra-clean, ultra easy and is one of those "worth the price of the ebook" effects we love to talk about.
"Calling it Straight" is the Act's finale. In reality this effect is an act in itself.
A pack of cards is shuffled and the audience participant takes it into the audience, randomly distributing bunches of cards to several audience members that they choose themselves. Those people holding cards are asked to merely think of one of the cards in their bunch. Almost as an afterthought the performer also asks those standing behind or nearby the people with cards to also just think of cards in the bunch they can see. With building energy and unfailing precision, the performer names the specific cards thought of by each and every specific person who has a card in their mind! This becomes a crescendo of thought-reading that ultimately leads to a dramatic and unexpected demonstration of synchronicity to end the performance. Mick states that standing ovations result from the performance of this effect and I have no reason to doubt that this is true.
S'lie, the ebook, is a finely tuned ACT of mentalism. It is FILLED with professional wisdom and insights. Anyone desiring top-notch material where most of the grunt work of honing, polishing and scripting is already done for you can't do much better than buying Mick's work. I don't know what he charges for this (I assume it's stated somewhere on this thread) but I predict it's a bargain, whatever the price.
HIGHLY recommended.
T. Baxter
THE FIVE OBLIGATIONS OF CONJURING: Study. Practice. Script. Rehearse. Perform. Drop one and you're done.
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