As magical performers we often get the advice that some tricks are too perfect and that they should be avoided like the plague. The reasoning for this theory is that if you, or your trick, are too good then either one of two things will happen:

1) People will think you are a real magician.

2) The audience will think that the trick is too perfect and must be a trick. In other words, they will think that you are using a stooge, special magical tools, or something else that is hidden.

Both of these arguments, are for the most part, full of doggie-doo.

Let us look at them one at a time.

So many magicians, conditioned by the James Randi's of the world, are just plain scared to be associated with the perception that they are "real." They feel that their audiences will look at them as some sort of miracle worker and that they are (gasp) real. I do not, nor will I ever understand, how people that get into a profession that is based on deception are so worried that people will think that they are deceiving them. I am not saying that Uri Geller was an up-standing fellow and that bilking colleges out of grant money to examine a guy bending a spoon is good. What I believe is that we, as magical performers, have the right to use our "powers" (whatever they might be) to bring astonishment into the lives of the people we purport to entertain.

Recently, on a national magic special, a famous magician came out at the end to get an award. The show had already been on for a long time and many magicians had come out and performed. This magician accepted his award and then said, "None of us can do real magic..." I nearly fell out of my chair. No other entertainment art form would ever break the spell of what they were trying to create by reminding their audiences that what they were doing is staged. No dancer would ever stop in the middle of their performance to say that they were not really a character from Swan Lake. No actor would stop the show with the vocal revelation that they were not really Lysander from a Midsummers's Night Dream. No movie would have an actor stop in mid scene to remind the audience that what they were really watching wasn't really real.

In the movie The Prestige there is a wonderful line that says that a magician can not truly be a magician until he is willing to, "get his hands dirty." I am not suggesting that it is proper to try to kill our fellow magi or to smoosh a bird into a bloody pancake for our audiences to prove our magical mantle. But, I feel, that if magic is going to have any meaning then we need not worry if our audiences think we are real. We should, instead, be concerned that they do not think we are real enough.

Reasoning number two is even more perplexing to me. I don't think a trick can be too perfect. I think, that many tricks, can become bland if they are too perfect. For example, if a mentalist walks out onstage and asks a member of the audience to think of a card and the perfomer just names the card that the effect can be interesting, and amazing, but not entertaining. Now, if a performer could really do the "just think of a card" trick and he dressed it up with humor, drama, and interest, then his audience might be etertained as well as amazed.

My hope is that magic doesn't become bland and boring with too many magicians winking at their audiences with long disclaimers saying what they are doing is fake. Magic, and magicians, need to be creating wonder not destroying it. Instead of worrying if a trick is too perfect we need to start worrying if we are not as good as we should be. Once this is accomplised then we are creating real magic, and when we do that, we have nothing to fear.

Rich