A J Irving wrote:Mumbungo wrote:In that respect, you could save a lot of money by perhaps reading Peter Brook, Brecht, Artaud, Stanislavski, thinking for yourself and generally accepting it as a truism that most magicians are awful and embarassing.
If magicians spent more time studying acting and performance rather than learning one hundred different ways of controlling a card to the top of the pack, maybe the general public would have more respect for it as an art form rather than just jumping to the assumption that all magicians are the horrific creepy Uncle Bob monstrosities that they remember from their childhoods and are commonly seen propping up the bar at magic conventions wearing sequinned waistcoats and playing card ties. When I think about how I want to appear as a magician and, more importantly, what I would like to see when I watch a magician, I think of the characters in The Illusionist or The Prestige- you know, magicians who in actual fact are portrayed by professional actors and therefore are actually convincing as people who appear to magical abilities rather than coming across as socially backward degenerates who spend to much time perfecting their classic pass.
Only other magicians care if you've perfected a complicated sleight, if you're doing it properly, the audience won't ever notice you've done it so why not use an easier alternative, think about how their going to perceive what you're doing, and spend more than a microsecond thinking about whether or not at the end they're clapping because they're astonished or if they're just being polite because "you've obviously spent a lot of time practising you're complicated moves and it would be massively rude to reward your efforts by being honest and yawning in your face."
Maybe this isn't the right thread to have a rant but I've seen a lot of magicians and been massively disappointed by how boring and unconvincing they are but I've rarely been to the theatre and gone away with the same feeling so we must be doing something wrong. Don't get me wrong, I love good magic of all varieties, it just appears to me that it's pretty thin on the ground and the muggles all know it!
Here here, hence why I have never been to blackpool, I hate magician! There I said it, that is a weight off my mind
No that's not true, I hate most magicians, I agree about read books on theatre, also looking outside magic, films, books, comedians even singers. Look at how they hold an audience, how they wrap up a simple song or joke and captivate an areana full of people.
