talkmagic.co.uk

... In the non kinky sense.

Basically, ive been putting the finishing touches to my act for the show with Jimmy Cricket at the end of the month. Ive been playing with the cut and restored skipping rope from practical magic, and decided that I want to work on a routine, entirely with rope.

I can picture the stage, with a long stretch of white rope spanning the stage, with a few Silk Handkerciefs on it for "laundry", but im just wondering if anyone has any ideas on what I could do.

Any reference sources you can think of would be great.


Mark

There's the usual DVD titles that immediately grab interest but I would recommend the Encyclopedia of rope magic or Karl Fulves self working rope tricks. These are often overlooked by the masses so you will get some ideas that may be different from what else is being performed by the masses.

I'd look for rope effects that can then be strung together (no pun actually intended ) into a lengthier routine. It depends on how much time you have though.

Lots of rope routines, thought with the silks on the line u were talking about magician's clothesline. About 20 or 30 variations of that, of course there is Daryl's Rope Routine, Tabray's rope routine, you could mix and match out of that. There is a magician's clothesline variation where you saw a woman in half with a rope. Some pros do their entire act only with rope.

Back in my touring days, i used to do a kids routine which was a giant washing line routine, based on the Grandmothers necklace routine. It used 2 ropes and had all the comedy of counting the laudry, not tying it on properly etc etc and it went down great.

Now, I specialise in family magic, but I think that if its too child orrientated that the parents will get bored, thats always been my quota.

What I would like to do is do something with the long length of rope, then cut it down as the routine progresses to do things like Cut and restored, Professors nightmare etc, its just essential that everything links in together, and so it makes sense to cut the rope down, but not to bring extra props out (with exception of scissors etc...)

I have Abbots encyclopedia of rope magic somewhere, so ill dig that out and have a read up.



Mark