A thankfully quiet week this week. Next week is completely full so am enjoying the rest. Heroes, Prison Break, Curb Your Enthusiasm – they won’t watch themselves you know. I did one job on Sunday in Sedgefield near Teeside. I was performing alongside 3 other magicians. It’s always interesting to work with other performers and see how they go about things. Magicians tend to work out a plan when they are working together at the beginning of the evening to make sure not everyone is doing similar (or exactly the same) tricks, to divide the tables up to make sure everyone gets to see magic etc. Think of it as a plan to go to war – a battle plan. I was working with 2 magicians that I’d never worked with before. One in particular was very interesting. He decided to change the agreed plan for his own advantage using, what we call in the trade, ‘dirty tricks’. To ask the audience to clap and cheer and bang their hands on tables to create the illusion you are going down well, is in my opinion, bad. Even more interesting is the fact that the magician in question is a very good magician with a good image – he has the whole package. So why he feels the need to go down this route is beyond me. Anyway as I said – always interesting to work with other magicians.
Foot note – If you ever see me at an event, I will guarantee that the audience reaction I get will be 100% genuine. I won’t prompt them to cheer or clap extra loud – they will do that if they enjoy what I’m doing. Good, strong, direct tricks and funny lines gets the reactions I like – no need for the ‘dirty tricks’.
