Have you ever watched a magician? Did you enjoy the performance? We are guessing that considering you are reading a blog on a magicians website that you enjoy magic!
Whether you enjoy watching magicians or not there is one thing that magicians are obsessed with that absolutely drives us insane. It’s something that most magicians do all the time when they are performing.
Now you are probably thinking that fooling people is what a magician is paid to do. It’s ‘their thing’ their job description so to speak. However, in our opinion fooling people is what makes people hate magic.
The problem with magic and magicians is that they can come across as egotistical. Several magicians come across as feeling they are superior to their spectators because they can do something that their audience cannot. We have even seen magicians that make their audience feel stupid.
The thing you need to understand is that magic is so much more than fooling people. When performed correctly it’s an art. The trick and the magic is simply a vehicle used to entertain the audience. At Slightly Unusual we would rather have our audience leave saying “they were entertained” than “they were fooled”.
So the question is how can a magician make a performance less about fooling people and more about entertaining them? Well as this is something we feel that we specialise in it’s probably a question we can answer. In fact there are three points that magicians should remember if they want to make their performances truly entertaining.
1. The performance should be more than just presenting a magic trick. It needs something more. That something more could be comedy, it could be a story, the possibilities are endless. However, the important thing is to make people care about the trick they are watching. Our founder Craig Petty for example loves injecting comedy into his performances. He loves it more when spectators laugh than when they are fooled. Watch this video and watch Craig’s performance. Notice that his audience are having a great time before the magic even happens.
2. Have an emotional hook and get the audience to relate to the magic they are watching. For example if a magician came up to you and made a coin disappear and appear behind your ear how would you feel? You might think it was a good trick and you might not. However, if the magician told a story about his granddad teaching him how to be a magician and that the first trick he ever witnessed was a coin vanishing and appearing behind his ear then you are hooked. The story is more interesting than the trick itself. Now the spectator is emotionally invested.
3. Make the spectator the star of the show. Make them the magician. Let me give you example of this in action. Craig performs a lot of magic with Rubik Cubes. Watching Craig solve a Rubik Cube in seconds is always amazing. However, the most amazing thing he does with a Rubik Cube is when he handed a mixed up Rubik Cute to a spectator and they solve it themselves behind their back. It never fails to get an awesome reaction from every audience. And the reason is the magic is being performed by the spectator not the magician.
The point to take from this blog is that if you hire Slightly Unusual for your event our aim will not be to fool your guests but that will obviously happen because we are multi award winning magicians and very good at what we do! However, our main goal will be to entertain your guests. We want them talking afterwards and saying how entertained they were not how much they were fooled. Not everyone loves magic but EVERYONE wants to be entertained. So our first priority will be to entertain people and our second priority will be to blow them away with some hard hitting magic.
If you would like to know more about the best tricks to have at your wedding CLICK HERE.
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