Approach Archives

Sometimes magicians are asked to repeat a magic tricks for people that have seen it performed before. It’s great to have regular clients, and that our friends and family enjoy watching our magic, but this can cause a problem.
What should you do if you are asked to repeat a magic trick that you have already shown that person in the past?

Dominic Reyes filmed a few quick tips about this situation:

It’s usually not a good idea for magicians to repeat a magic trick to the same person. The expression goes ‘Once a trick, twice a lesson’. However, sometimes you will be in a situation where you have no choice. This may happen:

You join a new group and start to perform a magic trick, suddenly a member of the previous group joins, and they have already seen the ending to your trick.
A spectator calls you over and asks you to show his guests a trick you showed him earlier.
You have a limited audience and perform for the same small group often.

If you haven’t already started the trick, it’s fine to simply decline the request. You can say: ‘Yes, that’s one of my favourites too, but I really want to show you this, as I think you will love it..’ Then go on and perform something new they haven’t seen before.

If you are already performing a routine and a spectator joins, that has seen it before you need to handle this differently.

1) Involve the spectator. Make them your assistant in any way, even if one isn’t really required. This will often give them a new perspective on the trick, and cause them to focus more on helping and ‘being on show‘ than on noticing something they shouldn’t. You change their experience, and context within the trick, from audience to participant, and this gets in the way of them studying your method.

2) Switch to a new variation of the method. If you can, move or change one of the phases of the trick, use different sleights or better yet, morph the trick into a wider routine that they have not seen before. A great example is The Ambitious card. There are many different phases and stages, so it’s easy to simply switch to a different path. A traditional Ambitious card, could transform to end with an Omni Deck, or by adding in FAX by Loki Kross, it can even switch around altogether so it happens in the spectator’s own hands.

Sometimes, there is no escape, the trick is half way through, and can’t be adapted. If that happens, it’s not the end of the world. Just relax and preform the trick as normal. Most people don’t REALLY care about the method as much as you think. They just want to have fun and watch other people being fooled. If a spectator spots something they missed the first time, they may work something out, but generally they will be enjoying how ‘clever’ it was that they missed it the first time, and how everyone else didn’t notice. This knowledge can be just as entertaining as the trick itself.

How do you deal with repeating your magic tricks? Share your advice in the comments section below:

Magicians often ask me about the right way to approach people, interrupt them and begin showing them magic tricks.

It’s an interesting question, especially for a working magician as that’s something we have to do many times every night. If you do something often enough, you tend to get good at it.

After many years performing, I now consider myself very good at interrupting conversations 🙂

The magic secret is that you don’t actually have to interrupt. It’s about your ‘presence’ and being noticed, much more than just barging in and taking over a group.

Let’s look at the two main situations where this comes into play:

Approaching a standing group.

As you approach a group of people, they will already be in conversation. If not, something else is capturing their attention, or they just don’t like each other very much. You walk up to the group, finding a space to join the ‘circle of people’. Pause for a moment to see what the conversation is. The people either side of you will do one of four things:

Notice you are the magician right away and start paying you attention.
Assume you are a guest they don’t know but others in the group do.
Assume you are a guest wanting to join the group.
Ignore you completely.

If a conversation is taking place, chances are that someone is in the middle of telling a joke, anecdote or making a point. Allow that to finish, then introduce yourself. Don’t interrupt someone’s joke or story. You wouldn’t want that to happen to you, during a magic trick, so extend the same politeness to them. The moment they finish, and before someone else can begin a turn, you take the moment to introduce yourself.

If the guest has told a joke, make sure you laugh too, and complement them on it. Allow them to have their moment of ‘reaction’ from the group.

It may seem like the person talking is taking a long time to tell their story or joke. Relax! It seems a long time to you because you’re in ‘performing mode’ and waiting for a jumping in point. It will happen soon, and a minute or two is fine to wait. It’s not your turn yet.

Approaching a table.

Things are different at the tables. The dynamics of a magician approaching a table and interrupting people is different from standing magic. Unless a guest is talking to the whole table, people will be doing their own thing. Waiters approach tables and divert attention often, so an interruption is expected. However, you need to have presence and be noticed quickly.

It’s not a good impression to arrive at a table and stand there being ignored for long, so you should get the tables attention as soon as possible. Asking the whole table a question, focusing on a person on the opposite side of the table, works very well. You need to signal to the WHOLE table that they should stop what they are doing and pay attention to you. If you don’t, you may end up performing to only one side of the table while the other side continue their conversations. Not good..

Here’s a quick video of me doing a simple cup and ball routine at a table. The trick itself is nothing new, but I include it here to show you the approach to get everyone’s attention. It’s just the first few seconds of arriving at the table that are important to note. I want everyone around the table to stop what they are doing and watch, so I ask them to react to a spectator who will help me.

Many magicians worry about how to approach people to show them magic, but it’s much easier than you think. Just remember to ‘join a group, and control a table’. You will find that it only takes a short time for you to relax about doing this, and you will no longer worry about approaching people.

Let me know your thoughts about this in the comments section below: