Poor posture and awkward movement on stage. Take a theater class on movement and stage deportment. The book "Magic and Showmanship" (written by a theater man, Henning Nelms) has some good tips on how to present yourself on stage.

This illustration from the book showing the difference between good posture, "Poised & Relaxed" vs. the "Dreary Droop" or "Stiff & Starched" is etched in my memory.
(and I still catch myself slouching!)

I'm not a dancer myself so I shouldn't be so quick to judge but...

Stage performers who choose to dance but are stiff and unnatural should skip it. It is distracting.

Maybe you learn by doing though. I notice one of the ones who used to bug me looked better last time I saw them.

-Mary Mowder

That's one of my pet peeves too, especially if the dancing has nothing to do with the magic.

Pop Hayden made a comment a few years back about performers who slather comedy onto magic like ketchup, and that can go for dancing too.

And please, if you're going to dance on stage, take dancing lessons and get a good choreographer.

This is THE one for me! I didn't want to say it because I have gotten NUCLEAR heat for doing so because I offended a card guy in the Workers section here by pointing it out. There is no better way to point out just how clueless you are to the entire world than to lick your fingers, handle the cards, and then offer the pack for examination or selection. There is a regular poster for over a decade there whose hand vanishes up to his face out of frame and you KNOW he is doing this! UGH.

F for "Efffort".

Talking about mirrors rather than audience feedback.

Using mirrors rather than recording video for playback.

Ad copy.

Fussing about writing out a script complete with blocking.

Wrists, elbows, and shoulders out of alignment during sleights.

Narrating (for those who are not watching?).

Wasting time talking to a director about magic methods.

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TL:DR A director told me magicians are performers but "special" and above are just a few of the reasons why that opinion is worth the effort to change.

I'm not sure what you are saying Jonathan.

Could you clarify?

Great tip if you feel the need to moisten your fingers. Stand a glass with an iced drink to one side, it will gather condensation. When ever you feel the need pick up the glass briefly, or move it to one side, your fingers will be nicely moist.

First - the strange and quaint discussion of using mirrors to rehearse routines and check angles on sleights. If you want to see what folks will see from some angle just set your phone to record and place it so the video will record from that perspective. What folks tend to learn using mirrors is how not to look at the audience when talking.

The other item for those who actually start asking for feedback is distracting the discussion to matters of backstage mechanics and method when getting notes about pacing or "what are you supposed to be doing" type questions.

A few things we (me too) can work on:
Talking at the audience rather than to them. The show is supposed to be for them.
Unless specifically in character; talking to the audience as if they were young children who could not understand your overt visible actions and their mundane world consequences. It can come across as worse than "splaining".

Not listening to and attending feedback after asking for notes.
Begging the question of; not "how'd he do that" but "why'd he do that".
Using patter which narrates visible action (unless you have an audience tuning in over the radio).

For most of us a performance is not the same a math class when we've been picked to go up to the board and show how to solve a problem. Though that can be a way to present if you so choose.

Going along with Jonathan, a presentation that says, "I'm doing a trick" instead of I'm doing magic. I did too when I started out when I came across like "Here, I'm going to demonstrate the milk pitcher" or the something else. Pick up a prop, show it, put it back, pick up something else.

Many illusionists do this; they demonstrate a box instead of using it to create the illusion of something impossible.

Nobody ever does.

My style leans more to talking “with” them as opposed to “to” them.

I do like to listen to them. Talking to them doesn’t really allow for that.

One issue I have is with most performance. Most never seem to get across exactly “why” they are performing. Far too often it is a series of disjointed effects and nobody ever explains why. In the context of this show why are you doing that?

I don’t mean some goofy story about whatever to justify some effect. I mean an overall why? In magic things disappear all the time and yet there is no sense of “loss”. Performance needs to be more about these things, and not just about if you “can” do these things.

This is one of mine too and sometime back I wrote a piece in my column here about it:

"That's cool but why are you doing it?"

https://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/view......orum=173

Every magician who says "Do me a favor" can do me a favor and never say it again!

I would read that but in my defense it is long.

A pet peeve of mine - and I've seen this countless times over the decades. Asking a spectator's name - then forgetting it 30 seconds later.

"Errrrr, sorry.......what's your name again"?

It's not only unprofessional, it's incredibly insulting to the person 'helping' you.

This also applies in everyday life - not just whilst performing magic.

To paraphrase Harry Lorayne - "you haven't forgotten their name - you simply haven't afforded the person the courtesy of bothering to remember it in the first place".

Here's a bad habit that many in our community need to break: posting rehearsal videos on YouTube that are marked for PUBLIC viewing, not as PRIVATE or UNLISTED . If you want to share your rehearsal videos to get feedback from your magic buddies make it a Private video (invite-only by email) or at least Unlisted, so most people will never see it. ( THE SAME GOES FOR TUTORIALS . You can post your New Improved Double-Lift tutorial, but does the general public need access to this sort of information ? NO. Make it Private (invitation-only via email) or Unlisted (only those with link can view it).

You can still embed an Unlisted video in a forum like Magic Cafe or in a Facebook magic discussion group, but the general public will never come across it on YouTube. The public doesn't need to see your awkward progress through an under-rehearsed effect that more than likely exposes the method unintentionally through sloppy performance.

After you've rehearsed it and refined it to get it as good as you can , then post your actual performance in Public. (but don't be too satisfied with simply performing the effect so it technically works, you didn't actually expose it, but it's still a stumbling, awkward performance. Hone it. Refine it. Make it beautiful. Then post it) It makes you and magic in general look bad if you post half-baked , clumsy performances. Again, if you want to get feedback from your magic friends , make it a Private video and invite them by email to view via a private link. Or at least make it an Unlisted vide.

Also, remember that it's perfectly fine to DELETE a video and re-post another version, if you notice you've committed unintentional exposure or there was some other technical error in the video (bad lighting, muffled sound) Digital video shot on your phone or Go-Pro or Webcam doesn't cost you anything except your time to re-shoot. Do it properly. Put your best foot forward.

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Related:

If you post a video of your performance or the performance of another magician , LIMIT the comments . Make the comments subject to your approval. There are trolls out there who seem to spend all their time exposing magic in the comments section of magic videos; they seem to get some sort of satisfaction from showing off how "smart" and "in-the-know" they are by exposing or linking to exposure videos in the comments (probably to compensate for their feelings of inferiority from their very small ... thumb tip). Don't give a platform to these jerks. Monitor the comments section on your videos and if someone posts exposure delete the comment ... or better, set it up so that comments must be approved by you before they are posted. That way you can delete exposure comments before they ever appear under your video. This is so simple to enable on YouTube (I don't know about TikTok and others, but I expect comment moderation is similar). Do it. OR if you don't have time to moderate the comments section on your videos, then just turn commenting OFF on your videos. You can do this in the Editing section in your YouTube Studio content .




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Going along with what David said, I find it interesting how so many people seem to be more focused on putting a magic video out there than on practicing. Sure, nowadays putting a video online (i.e., publishing it) only takes a few moments, but I would think that putting the time into practice and rehearsal would be more productive.

Then again, some people seem to need to have their couple of minutes of fame.