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Close-Minded

I'm often amused by the popular hit and run street magic television specials of late. Someone sees a card trick, they blink and the magician has vanished. This is no doubt due to the fact that we are fed the fact that audiences have such a small attention span that we should move on immediately after performing one short effect. This isn't true.

True, the audience are giving you their maximum attention and when watching a magic performance, that attention is normally used in solving problems at the unconscious level (i.e. the bewilderment of an effect). However, this doesn't mean that your audience can only watch one effect before you leave. The human brain is quite capable of keeping several streams of thought active simultaneously (whilst passing from one effect to other, for example) as long as you are interesting and entertaining!

With that myth eliminated, you can probably guess that I love the art of gathering effects to create a routine, however long or short. My first ever routine consisted if a common theme of recycling and was developed with the aid of my friend Mark Pierce. That was five or six years ago and I still use some of the items from that routine in my performances today.

That first approach helped me learn a lot about routining effects together. Mark and I discussed a number of different themes and listed and created as many effects that we could to fit with the theme. Every single effect, gag and idea was written down and no thoughts were rejected. The theme we choose was that of recycling. Sound strange?! It was!

Two or three weeks later Mark and I sat down and found common links in effect and method between several of the tricks and ideas. Some didn't fit into a close-up act at all, whilst others slotted together immediately in our minds. This giant jigsaw puzzle is the main element to creating a routine and each piece of the puzzle plays its own extremely important part.

Although I've described the process as a jigsaw puzzle, it should be understood that the puzzle has an obvious structure. I've often heard it said that the opening effect should be your second strongest effect. Not true. You have thirty seconds to make an impression otherwise you will loose your audience for the entire act, so, be sure that you make it a heck of a good opening!

However, don't use this as an excuse to perform weaker magic after you have earned the audience's attention. Another myth is that you shouldn't perform all amazingly strong magic in one routine, but instead offer a slight roller coaster so that the spectators get to relax a little during your performance. To prove that this isn't true, just look at the routines of performers such as Bill Malone, Lennart Green and Juan Tamariz - hit them hard with each and every effect. I try to gauge how good an effect is by thinking, "If I only performed this one effect, would it be strong enough to make me an excellent reputation?" If it is strong enough, the effect goes into my routine - if it doesn't, I trash it!

To link the routines, I normally perform an effect to myself and sit down and examine what I'm left with. In one of my effects in my card act I am left with a deck secretly separated into red and blacks. I make a list of all of the effects that utilise this set-up; here's an example:

· Two Shuffles Harry
· Out Of This World
· Full Deck Oil And Water
· Call To The Colours
· And many more

I then choose which effect would best follow on from the previous one. I start with the methods for practicality reasons, but notice that I choose which one to use by the actual effect. The reason for this is that in a performance where the magician introduces a string of massively different effects, the audience are taken on a 'roller coaster.' When there is no smooth transition between the effects, the audience becomes restless at constantly having to change their attention states. You only need to pay attention to the editing of television shows to notice that the main content focus is always kept in the same area before and after transitions between shots. This helps to keep attention and to save the viewer having to refocus where they're looking.

I'm often asked about the material that I use during walk around performances and how I manage to structure them. It's always difficult to close a restaurant set since it's tricky to know when you're actually going to finish. Sometimes you can get all the way through to the end of your structured act (even if I decide to work 'Jazz' I always have a basic structure for how I want to end), but often you are interrupted and have to move aside for the food (the food is far more important than the magic).

Lately and whenever possible, I've been having the servers tap me on the shoulder just before they are going to bring the food. This way I can move to the finale of the routine that I'm currently performing. I was careful to ensure that each routine that I choose for my act is multi phased and the ending of each routine is strong enough to close my act.

This creates a minor problem that when I perform three routines in a full act as the ending of each one is of equal strength. To overcome this, I simply use presentation to build up the last routine a little more than the others.

As an aside, I was recently driving and noticed a learner driver waiting for traffic lights a few cars ahead of me. I watched his routine actions of putting the car in gear, taking off the hand break, checking his mirrors and so on and compared them to mine; a little more experienced driver. I change the order of my actions and use my experience of driving and apply them so that they are more suitable to the current situation.

When performing routines in a more informal situation (I consider walk around magic to be informal), try to be the more experienced driver. Let your own experience give you confidence to chop and change your routine to make a better performance for that day.

Thanks for reading and happy routining!

Andi Gladwin