Clear Effect to Affect: Reflect The Effect
by Kenton Knepper

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I was watching a performance of a student of mine the other day a portion of my critique to him I felt might be of value to others. With gratitude to my student for allowing me to share my reaction to his work with you, what follows is my written response to him.

While the specific example I speak about from his act may or may not relate to your own act, the principle and criticism of his effect surely will relate. By the way, I needed to remind myself of the following facts as much as you or any of my students.

Dear Student,

I am not clear what happened much of the time during your performance. That is, I was not certain what was the intended effect in much of your show.

This may be due to your being unsure of yourself. It may also be that you are assuming that the audience knows what you mean to demonstrate.

From my experience of your show, and my observation of the audience, many of your effects were not clear to us. You seemed to take it for granted what the effect was supposed to be, but most of the time we did not know what the effect was until the very end of the trick. By then, we had often lost interest as we became confused by what was going on.

It is best generally to give the audience a clue to the effect before you demonstrate it. I know there is the old adage of “Don’t tell them what you are going to do as it will put the audience on guard… show them don’t tell them.” But this is too often taken to a negative extreme.

The audience needs to follow and make sense out of your actions. We want to follow your performance, but we can do so mainly when we can figure out what you mean to demonstrate. If you cannot tell the audience directly in advance what that you mean to demonstrate next, then at the very least you need to use a phrase or words that suggest a basic concept to us. Give us something to entice us to follow what you are doing.

“Now a little demonstration of how we are all connected” seems to say something, yet it does not give away so much that a bold move will be noticed due to heightened attention. But such nebulous commentary alone should be the rarity and not the standard. An audience needs to be able to grasp what you intend on doing, or at the very least we need to know what you are doing as you are doing it.

The audience must know what the effect is, or there IS no effect to the audience, no matter what you do or how well you do it.

You seem to assume that the audience can hear and see all that you do, which is not the case always, and this can cause much confusion about the intended effect.

For instance in the metal bending example, what I heard you say was about anger and something heating up - hot - heat. Then I saw you lift up the spoon or fork in your hand and wait for applause. We didn’t understand that. Your only explanation of what happened was “Look at that!” which suggests something happened, but we did not know what. The applause was sporadic to start, as some people (me included) did not know what the effect was supposed to have been. As a magical performer and mentalist, I could make the assumption that the fork or spoon became bent. But most audience members are not mentalists and magicians.

I know that lighting is part of the reason for my not being able to view the effect clearly, but the audience reaction tells me they did not perceive the effects clearly much of the time either.

Bottom line: Don’t assume the audience understands what the intended effect is supposed to be. You know what the effect is of course. But that doesn’t mean your audience knows it.

Remember, you likely read a book or saw a video that was labeled “Effect” and this showed you or told you what the specific effect is, was and should be. The audience does not have this great advantage. You are the one who must be sure the audience can grasp what the intended effect is clearly. You are the translator between the book and DVD from which you learned, and your audience.

In the fork effect I heard you say the object in your hand was a “fork” once only. You refer to the fork as “this” however many times. The audience being a small distance away from you did not know what “this” was unless you tell us repeatedly.

“This” is a word that does not specifically inform the audience or educate them. If you had simply changed your reference from general to specific, from the word “this” to the word “fork”, I would have better followed your intended effect.

If at the climax you had said, “Look at how much the fork has bent now! Look at how bent the fork is now!” rather than saying, “Look at THAT!” I would have entirely understood the effect, even though I could not see it.

You did mention imagining the fork being bent, but this is the part you seemed to have felt was too obvious, so you delivered that line in a mere whisper or low tone of voice. After this low talk you loudly speak about imagining. By contrast then, I did not hear the word “fork” but only the loud part about “imagining that now” and so on.

Mind you, I caught that you said the words “fork” and “bending” only after a second viewing of your performance on a video. That means most of the audience who saw this live probably missed what you were doing. I know I did.

Performers often think that Wonder Words are used to create trance states, dual/multiple realities, and illusion only. Words also have power in creating the effect, or lack of effect, in the minds of the audience.

Consider that each word you use is either one of power, or one that is nearly powerless. A word such as “this” or “that” is most often powerless in terms of creating a clear effect to an audience.

While such nebulous wording may be useful for certain deception (therefore acting powerfully) usually such unclear wording in an effect leads to unclear reactions by the audience.

If you want the audience to understand what has happened, you need to imagine that they cannot see what you are doing. Your words then need to reflect the effect by words alone. In this way, if an audience cannot see what you are doing, they can imagine that they have seen the effect due to your talking about what is going on.

The audience reasons that what you say is happening must actually be happening.

If this were not the case, the person on stage and the audience close to you would say otherwise. We know from Wonder Words that such assumption can create great deception. On the other hand, this means you should be clear about an effect when you are not using your words to generate illusion.

Be sure the audience understands the effect. Do not assume that the audience knows what the effect is, just because you know the intended effect. Use your word power to let the audience who cannot see what is happening know what the effect is in their imagination. Use clear words except in those rare cases when you must be deceptively unclear.

To affect the audience you must be sure they know your effect. If you want the audience affections, you must be sure that the audience knows your intended effects.

Being uncertain about any of your effects may lead to confusion, lack of interest, and lack of applause.

Sometimes it is the easy and simple things we miss that make a great difference.

Kenton