talkmagic.co.uk

Hello,

I was just wondering whether anyone could give any tips on performing in front of spectators. While I can perform sleights fairly consistently when practising by myself, when I tried to perform a trick (my first proper one! ambitious card) I started rushing and handling the cards sloppily. While I suspect this is a common fault among beginners, I was wondering how people learn to perform confidently. I don't doubt that I probably need to practise tricks more and get more experience performing. But is it, in part, a mental attitude - a case of not really caring if a trick goes wrong?

Interested to hear people's thoughts on this.

Don't chase confidence; I think it's a mistake to assume that there's some state you can reach if you only knew how, and once you do you'll be able to perform brilliantly.

You'll only get better by performing, so perform more. Try using self-workers to begin with. This should allow you to focus on all the other (more important) things you need to worry about when performing, like engaging your audience.

I sometimes go onto chatroulette and shufflepeople and perform tricks on there.

It's not quite the same as being in front of a live audience - doesn't help with nerves so much - but it allows you to get experience with common problems with routines (for instance, oddly enough many people when asked to think of a card will say something like '6' or 'ace', so I now work my phrasing a little better to ensure they choose a suit as well!).

You also end up getting banned quite frequently, and you need to not mind the kind of content (very NSFW) that comes up on those sites. But you do occasionally get great reactions

Mr_Grue wrote:Don't chase confidence; I think it's a mistake to assume that there's some state you can reach if you only knew how, and once you do you'll be able to perform brilliantly.

You'll only get better by performing, so perform more. Try using self-workers to begin with. This should allow you to focus on all the other (more important) things you need to worry about when performing, like engaging your audience.

The only way to gain experience performing is ultimately to go out there and perform. The suggestion of using self workers is good but when you move on to sleights there is only one way. Practice, practice, practice and performing frequently.

You will make mistakes, we all do, you have to just pick yourself up, learn from it and move on.

Join your local Toastmasters club. You'll soon become a confident and assured presenter. Or take an acting class. I'd go with Toastmasters, but that's just me.

http://talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic20337.php

As stated, join toastmasters, an acting club or the like, I do recomend toast masters.

Really though part of your post says it all:

"While I can perform sleights fairly consistently when practising by myself..."

Forget the sleights so to speak, stop practicing and start rehearsing. You only practice to learn the effect. You rehearse to perform. Rehearse like you are in front of people, not just the method, not just the individual effect. You don't stop and start over when you make a mistake because you don't get to do that in front of an audience. I know this is going to sound impossible, but when performing you shouldn't be worrying about method. Method at that point should pretty much be automatic. Kind of like learning a new language. To become proficient you have to stop translating in your head, just immerse yourself in the language and it becomes natural.

Understand? I know they are difficult and seemingly impossble concepts, but in the end it is the only successfull way.

The nerves for most of us, don't go away until you are out there.

"While I can perform sleights fairly consistently when practising by myself..."

My good friend a drum tutor had this to say once and it can be applied to so much in life:

"Amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals practice until they don't get it wrong."

I don't mean amateur/professional in a remuneration sense there, but simply in outlook.[/b][/quote]

teknohippy wrote:

"While I can perform sleights fairly consistently when practising by myself..."

My good friend a drum tutor had this to say once and it can be applied to so much in life:

"Amateurs practice until they get it right, professionals practice until they don't get it wrong."

I don't mean amateur/professional in a remuneration sense there, but simply in outlook.[/b]

[/quote]

I like the saying "Practice makes permanent not perfect" If when you practice you don't learn from your mistakes you just engrain your errors.

Nic

bmat wrote:Forget the sleights so to speak, stop practicing and start rehearsing

...

Method at that point should pretty much be automatic. Kind of like learning a new language.

Nice analogy. You can't spend all your time learning the vocabulary and then expect to be able to make conversation.

You have to spend some time learning individual words of course, but you really have to engage in conversation in order to become fluent in the language.

there are some good and useful tips and I agree with what TOny has suggested, although I personally prefer the amateur dramatics route ahead of the Toast masters. Both will enable you to grow in confidence.

Someone once wrote that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician. Learn some acting or presentation skills and you should improve ten fold.

Honestly?

For the sake of magic, don't do all your 'performance' learning whilst performing magic- join a theatre group or go dancing amongst strangers, or anything like that. Gaining the persona of confidence and avoiding atmosphere of the social arkwardness created by many magicians requires genuine confidence.

In my view this comes most easily from accepting the truths that it really does not matter one bit what other people think of you and that this is not to say that other people matter, quite conversley that they do, and that they are all incredibly interesting. This is much more general and a much more important philosophy of living which at first may seem abstracted from performance, but I think that the 'bigger picture' is by no means insignificant or irrelevant; from this genuine love of people and apathy about how other's might percieve you, I think you become a better performer, largley because you loose this whole ego situation where you are performing and trying to venerate yourself and show how interesting you are, that is to say, performance motivated by caring about what other people think about you and by thinking you are more interesting than you are, or to disguise your own insecurities.

Performance should not really be pretending, but being. In any valuable fiction, there is reality- and in any valuable performance there should be more showing than pretending. I am not interested in people who pretend to be interesting, but people who actually are.

I believe that if you genuinley embrace this attitude then performance becomes much more genuine and the barrier between audience and performer largley disintegrates. This is, for me, the ultimate aim of performance but of daily life as well.

Gaining the persona of confidence and avoiding atmosphere of the social arkwardness created by many magicians requires genuine confidence.

What a GREAT quote.
In WHAT other "performing art" do people expect to pay, or to see someone with dubious dress sense, and no/few social skills interrupt what they are doing and bumble their way through a badly crafted script? None.
So many magicians seem to think it's all about the magic; yet it's all about the performance OF the magic.
Good magic can never (IMHO) be a "way to get more confidence", as above, it needs to have the confidence first - and that has to be gained through other means.
You have to be a "people person" before being a good magician, although a high % magicians never realise this, or ignore it, bumbling on learning sleights and technical aspects, keeping the image of magic at a lower level than it should be.

I have just had a look at the (excellent) thread mentioned above http://talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic20337.php
Interestingly, while it is all good advice, it does seem to major on the "you", what YOU want to be, what YOU want to perform etc. Whilst I am not a successful, fulltime magician, (just an obsessive fee-charging amateur...), I firmly believe that a lot of the success in performance is about THEM?
When table-hopping in a restaurant, how do you learn to read whether people want to see you or not?
How do you learn to make the "alpha male" at the table work with you rather than against you?
How do you deal with the (drunk?) flirty member of the group?
How do you bring together, and hold a group of people at a wedding who do not know each other?
How do you manage your angles in a Mix and Mingle situation?
How do you engage folks in a mix-and-mingle situation, BEFORE starting the magic?
How do you "interrupt" a group - and how do you know when to?
How do you (politely) disengage from a group?
What are the rules of personal distance for all countries, so that you can perform appropriately, and take advantages of the social mores?
Can the words in your patter be understood by all "classes" of people, and all levels of education?
How easily can you change these things to adapt to THEM, or are you stuck to a (boring?) set script?
What are the social expectations for dress when performing to different audiences in different places?
How does your "grow-up act" take into account children that might be there, and do you know how to talk to, and perform for children of different ages and sexes?
etc.
When you have all the answers to these, or have at least considered them, and found a way to safely practice and hone your skills in these, then you have discovered the side of magic that is the other side of the (ungaffed) coin of being a successful AND LIKEABLE performer.

You can practice sleights in the bedroom as much as you like, but if you cannot find a way to get amongst other people and rehearse, you will only ever be a socially awkward sleight-monkey, and there are far too many of those role models around already.

Just my 2p worth...
Bruce

The thing is, though, surely no-one starts off as being a brilliantly confident performer? I was hoping to hear from people who might have started off like I have, but have now improved in both confidence as well as their card handling skills to perform confidently in front of people. If I'm not confident in performing now - bearing in mind that I've only just started in magic - have I just to give up, then? How would anyone manage to get better if they didn't persevere and try to improve?

Just a point BrucUK - I don't think you can technically be a fee-charging amateur.

cc100 wrote:The thing is, though, surely no-one starts off as being a brilliantly confident performer?

Exactly. They start off by being terrible and dying on their backsides. But the next time, they're a little better, and so on. Magic is exactly like comedy in that respect. They say you live to die before you learn to live. But it's not actually fatal if you fail. Just cringe and have another go.

That's why my style was always seat-of-the-pants-oh-god-I've-forgotten-the-act. In fact, I have to do a gig at a summer party in July where everyone who can do something has to do 5 minutes. I was up until 2am this morning carefully remembering how to "fail"