Hi all. I am examining the ways magicians and mentalists treat their audiences. My premise is that what passes between a performer and their audience (the CONNECTION between them)is a relationship and some magician's relationship to their audience can be more or less EVOLVED than others. Do you agree? Can you provide examples of what you could consider a highly evolved and a poorly evolved relationship? Can an individual performer evolve in their relationship? If so, what would that look like?

All the best,

Christopher

Happy to discuss this if you write ken@eversway.com I have many eBooks that address performance magic as "communication."
I can send you excerpts/articles and even some free eBooks.

One new area to explore for info is the field of "entertainment psychology." Many folks are now addicted to entertainment (chemically and psychologically)

Jay Sankey has a nice pdf eBook "Beyond Secrets" that has many thoughts on this theme.

I see my question is far too opaque. I asked what YOU thought the evolution of a performer's relationship with their audience would look like or even if it CAN evolve. I do see that you believe such an evolution (in the way the performer treats their audience) would involve something to do with communication. Thanks.

Christopher

For me, a more "highly evolved" relationship has to do with knowing your audience. I live on a beautiful ranch and I entertain guests a lot. Frequently, they spend the night with us at the ranch. So, my magic here is interwoven with reality. For example, when I show them the chicken coop, I will tell them in a very convincing way that I discovered that one of the chickens does something very unusual. She lays invisible eggs. I show them a cloth bag that is empty and have them hold it. I have them help me look around for what looks like wavy lines, like what you see coming off a very hot pavement. I get them to point to a location. Then, I then show my hands empty, short sleeve shirt or t-shirt, and produce an egg from that spot. The egg is dropped into the cloth bag and they can inspect it. When we get back to the house, I place the eggs in the fridge with the rest of the eggs.

Before Covid, I used to perform at senior centers. I might go back to doing that, now that the fear has subsided. At the time, my daughter was around 8 years old and she would accompany me and interact with the seniors. She would take some of the props and show them to each senior close up. For example, we used, of all things, a Tenyo product, the butterfly box. She would take it around and show the invisible butterfly. I would then have one of them pick any of the colored cards and wave it over the empty box in my little daughter's hand. The butterfly would be come visible, the selected color. She would show this around to each of them. She would then remove the butterfly from the box and hand it to me and I would make it fly like the Japanese flying butterfly. Jeff McBride has an excellent video instruction on this.

When performing for a random audience, I think the evolution of an audience involves getting them involved and making it more personal for some of the audience members, not only by bringing them up on stage, but by having a running gag or relationship with a few of them. When a large audience sees you having an ongoing relationship with one or more audience members, it's like the whole thing is more personal to everyone.

KJ

Okay, I'll take a crack at this, with a caveat.

One of my pet peeves for many years has been how we seem to lump everyone, from the guy who presents (or, in many cases, demonstrates) a self-working packet trick, to someone like David Copperfield, into the general term of "magician." This pet peeve comes mostly from my own experience, when I started out as a ten-year-old kid who thought magic was about fooling the pants off of people and came across that way. I didn't know it back then, but I wasn't a "magician," I was a "fooler." It took years of reading about showmanship, and studying other types of performers, before I finally got the hint.

But my point is that I wanted to do all this learning because it was important to me.

Case in point. I'm a retired professional set designer, which means I was mostly a free-lancer like most of us. Over the years, I was approached by a number of community theatre companies who had seen my work elsewhere and wanted me to design a set for them. A lot of these companies were made up of volunteers who had full-time jobs and treated it as a part-time hobby. No problem there, but their concept of "good enough" (mostly in craftsmanship) was far different from mine. And they had no interest in doing better or in putting more work into it: it was good enough for community theatre. I had to turn down some of these gigs because I could not put my name, as a professional designer, on what they thought was adequate.

They didn't -- couldn't -- evolve their level of work because it wasn't important to them.

Okay, so for me, here's how my relationship evolved. When I was around eighteen, back in the late sixties, I put together a cards-and-doves act inspired (of course) by Channing Pollock. I watched and studied every similar act I could find (mostly on TV and magic clubs and conventions) and began to realize that most of these performers were basically ignoring the audience. Okay, I didn't want to do that. So, my first few performances, I looked at the audience and smiled at them. The responses were very good, but I didn't feel "right;" there was something missing. So, since I could do the act in my sleep, I began watching them and really paying attention. This was where I began to know my audience, like KJ said above.

Finally, I had it where I wanted it. One bit consisted of producing a dove, then placing it in a paper lunch bag, inflating it, and bursting it. As I watched them, it was clear that they were following my moves, wondering what was coming. So I went there. I would place the bird in the bag and inflate it, then come right down to the footlights, or close to the audience, all the while smiling at them. I looked around the audience for a bit. Then, "just at the right moment," my face went serious. The (live) music stopped. I looked around a bit more, then looked at the bag and back at the audience and nodded very slightly a couple of times. You could hear a pin drop. That's when I burst the bag. There was more to it, but I think that answers your question. How I did that act evolved from watching the audience and getting to understand them. But I had to care enough to want to do it.

And that's where it either happens or it doesn't.

I will also take a crack at it with George’s caveat. I share that dislike for lumping in everyone as if somehow they are equal.

So I will describe my relationship with the audience and how I believe it needs to exist, and I am 100% correct, for me.

I look at my relationship with an audience a bit different than almost anyone I have met. I was taught that our relationship is actually an obligation. An obligation that I HAVE. Keep in mind that I do NOT work when I am not being paid in some way to work. I do not just show tricks to show tricks. (If I am at a family party perhaps they ask but 99% of my performance is paid audiences.) I get all my performing fantasies out of my system by being paid to perform. The Schulien’s were the same way. We have worked so much that just doing tricks to do tricks was exhausting and needless.

So my audiences in one way or another have one thing in common. They have paid money and made a time commitment to come in and see me do what I do. Think of this because there are two parts to the equation. One is the money. The second is the time commitment. In New York the combination of the two of these things can be colossal!

All that being said where does that leave me? With an obligation in my eyes. They have made this commitment in two parts. Money being the first. Well if I biff the show or they don’t enjoy it then certainly we can talk about a refund. The second part is far more tricky. They have committed time to me and time is one of the things in this world that simply can NOT BE refunded! They could literally doing ANYTHING else and they have chosen to see me. So in my eyes it is my job to be better than literally ANYTHING else they can possibly be doing at that time. At every point of my performance they need to enjoy it more than anything else available. When you think of it this way, it makes you rethink the way you perform.

I don’t do “filler”. Never. I produced a “vocal band” and I used to joke “We open with your closer”. Turned out it wasn’t a joke. My magic act has the same attitude. Start like Raiders of the Lost Ark with the rock rolling at ya and go forward from there.

So my relationship comes from a place of obligation. I owe them not only the money, but the time. The time is the most important. So while I fool them, I NEVER make a fool of them. Schulien came from a place of being the ultimate host. Good food, good fun the whole time you are in the place. Same attitude with me. I am the ultimate host. Close-up show or Hypnosis show it does not matter. Everyone is the guest of the ultimate host. It is the way I address everyone. They are all in my care.

It is a relationship that evolves well beyond the effects. Sure the effects MUST be able to fool people as you are claiming to be a magician. But far more important is the ability to be able to just make them feel at home.

It should be said here that I NEVER take gigs that do not allow for this environment. I don’t do private parties, I don’t do corporate events, I don’t just shoe horn magic into a conversation hoping someone wants to see a trick or any of that. I don’t even tell people I am a magician in social situations. I don’t show magic to coworkers and claim somehow that is a show. (I don’t have coworkers but still.) I only do shows that are specifically designed for them to see me. I am the reason they are in the room.

I am in no way saying everyone should work this way. I am only saying it is the way I work.

Danny, I have a problem with the word "fool" as used in magic. To me, fooling someone implies that I did something in such a way that they couldn't figure it out, i.e., that I know more than they do. And that implies that there is a "how:" that it's not magic but only a simulation of it. In my field, we call it special effects.

For me, I thought I finally hit it when people went from telling me they didn't have a clue how I did this or that, to telling me how much they enjoyed my act.

Years ago, at a birthday party, a friend of mine, who was a full-time pro, was a guest. He started chatting with people, and one thing led to another, and he ended up doing the Ambitious Card. But he started off by saying that he was a guest and there to have a good time, and that the people around the table would actually be doing the magic. The way he did it actually looked like he didn't do anything, and the response was incredible. Watching the audience, my impression was that, for them, he wasn't doing a trick: he was causing something impossible to happen, over and over. When I spoke with them afterwards, no one said anything about "how he did it," they just talked about how it was impossible and how much fun it was.

BTW, he got a paying gig from one of the guests afterwards.

Fool is a word I use here to avoid having to explain. Best compliment I ever had was a guy in Key Largo who said “how can this be happening? You’re not doing anything.” Again it shaped my performance.

At some level there mindset be some level of not knowing the method used to accomplish the effect if you want to credibly claim the title magician.

In the end beyond the semantics it comes to attitude. I bet you everyone there knew he was doing something. How could adults not? But the friendly attitude and dismissive of his own ability is a much better sell if you ask me.

Now we are on the right track: feeling obligated to our audience and a concern for making them feel at home are perfect examples of having a "higher view" of the way we should treat an audience; such attitudes are a long way from, "Hold out your hand. No the clean one," and other ways of abusing the privileged position a magician is given when performing.

Christopher

I’m not sure it’s a “higher view” but it is my view.

Now I think I understand your OP, and I would agree. For a family-friendly show, the magician should never embarrass anyone from the audience.

However, it also depends on the type of show. If it's advertised as more of a grand-guignol type of show where a foxy young guy with nice abs is sawed in half by a pudgy old hairy magician out of spite, then I would hope the people who paid for the show might know what they are in for.

I think this is very much along the lines of the OP's intention: to treat volunteers as if they are part of the act or in on the joke, instead of embarrassing them. Or at least treat them as fellow humans.

For instance, one might ask a kid volunteer, "Are you also a magician?" and if they say "yes" one could say in a stage whisper, "That's such a relief, because I'm not a very good one," and then let them take credit for the effect that follows. And I guess if the kid says "no" then one might say, "Neither am I. Therefore we must combine our forces."

Or for an older volunteer (depending on their looks and vibe and type of show), maybe ask if they have any spooky people in their ancestry, and if so, maybe say something like, "Thank goodness! I hope one of them might help us out for this next item, because I'm kind of psi-blind myself."

Please explain a little about what you mean by relationship and by evolve. Is this something that changes during one routine or across an entire act?