talkmagic.co.uk

in the intrest of good debate i am thinking of makeing my magic to an oriental theme, my shows are uaualy between 10 and 15 mins long.
i'd be interested in any ideas regards costume and propps for the purpose, most production boxes thease days seem to have an oriental theme i supose this is because the orientals still hold a facination and mystacism we have lost.

http://cnb-host2.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/merchantofmagic?listPos=20&productID=394&search=chinese+coin&op=catalogue-product_info-null does anyone know anything about this set
or this one http://cnb-host2.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/merchantofmagic?listPos=20&productID=395&search=chinese+coin&op=catalogue-product_info-null
there exspensive but are they worth the money any help apreciated.

well this should give you plenty to discuss and you will help me into the bargin many thanks in advance.

No ideah how it can be interpreted as racist, but there you go.

i was thinking on the lines of egg-foo young trainy mage to the great wazzis all about, getting the kids to help him perform the magic.
aort of tommy cooper / paul daniels you'll like it but not alot style that i already have.

any idea on tricks like snowstorm etc.

Since I'm not a proper performer like you, I can't really think of any useful suggestions to make but I'm sure the traditional Oriental thing is very dated and, to be honest, I'd avoid it. It seems to fit more easily with jugglers/acrobats etc where lots of long, flowing flags, seesaws and so on are in use.

OK, you could send it all up as a sort of Aladdin pantomime thing but there's only so far you can go with that idea unless you're a top class comedian and able to work it all together. Long, flowing Chinese robes immediately suggest concealed props, flocks of doves, herds of cattle etc. There is slight possibility that a comical 'failure' type of act along the Cooper lines might be possible but it wouldn't work for kids and only Tommy Cooper could get away with a lot of what he did. We continually see the statement that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician and it may have some truth - I'd doubt whether many actors could play the part well but that's only my opinion! The point being, why not forget emulating or relying on, a Cooper or a Daniels and just be you? Would it work to be simply Jason - the guy who does all that magic?

From your earlier postings, I guess business isn't coming in as much as you'd like so it's always a good idea to reconsider what you're offering in case there are changes which could be made. If you're offering the same as usual but in Oriental costume, the situation won't necessarily be much different so you'd need to re do the whole act to tie in and that would time quite some time to perfect. Scott Guinn offers some advice - in fact, lots of it - in his articles at Online visions and some of it might be useful. If you don't want to trawl around for the various articles I have them on file in Word format - about 251kb - and can e-mail it to you.

I'm in the process of upgradeing my magic props due to wear and tear and i have been quite happy with what i do but am thinking of a change also I'm getting repeat clients which meens i need to evolve my act, so i realy seaking ideas for my the magic part of the show.
the oriental idea seemed to fit in with the props i intended to purchase but thanks to your input i will think on diferent lines.
as far as the bussiness is going on i changed addresses and whent off sick for two years so I'm realy starting afresh on the inbiz scheme, i wont actualy start trading till march.

i have been quite happy in the past to do a few change bag routines and colouring book types of magic but now that i have control of the audio visual aspect I'm leening towards doing a choregraphed routine with words and sound like an interactive story type of thing, in the past iv'e done things like little red rideing hood with the kids playing parts and incorperateing magic into the storyline, so i want to exspand on that and do my magic set to a story line.

It all sounds very exciting - will keep fingers crossed for you!

i have been quite happy in the past to do a few change bag routines and colouring book types of magic but now that i have control of the audio visual aspect I'm leening towards doing a choregraphed routine with words and sound like an interactive story type of thing, in the past iv'e done things like little red rideing hood with the kids playing parts and incorperateing magic into the storyline, so i want to exspand on that and do my magic set to a story line.

Sounds interesting mate.

For my part I reckon there is nothing that beats trying these things. It's hard to know what a kid will react to, I mean they find the colour purple funny and I can't think of any logical reason why. I'm also not convinced something that may be dated to us would appear so to a 7 year old. So I reckon the best advice is that if you think it could work with the direction you want to take things and the props you use, then give it a go on a small scale and get your feedback from the kids themselves

P.S If I was creating a character to do a kids show in the vane you suggest, I think I might seriously consider a Wizard. What the Harry Potter, Lord of the rings etc. Wizards seem to be all the rage and also have a good history. It also would give you more scope to use your own personality rather than a pseudo chinese one with fake chinese accent.