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The Wise Farlsborough wrote:The advice you've been given on here is good, although I'm not sure the books will teach you fully about audience management.

Agreed. But, the Kronzek book will teach him a good, strong presentation. Using a strong presentation in the real world will teach him audience control. To my way of thinking, you can learn good presentation from a book, but audience control has to come with real performance. As long as you have a strong presentation, audience control will be much better to maintain and learn.

At least, that's how I see it!

As always, I could be 100% wrong.

Mike.

Thanks all for the advice! Just to let everyone know I did purchase those 4 books that M.J. suggested they will arrive Monday.

Hopefully, you have your books now. With those four books, you could have an entire carreer in magic and never need to purchase any other book or item in magic. Seriously. Of course, you'd probably want to pick up some sponge balls, cards, rope, etc., but those four books are all that you'd honestly ever need.

With Alkazar, just read it straight through and learn a couple of the tricks. It's easy to read and you can kill it in a day or two if you really want to do so.

With RRTCM, it's written for you to read it, page by page and work through all of the material. However, Opie (a member here at TM) put out a guide that you may find useful. Just click here if you'd like to peruse his guide. Certainly can't hurt, eh?

With Bobo, it is encyclopedic. I would point you to the Bobo study guide that I published on these pages. It will help you to keep it in perspective, because it's easy to look at the expanse of what is in Bobo and simply put it on a shelf and forget about it (you'd be surprised by how many people do exactly that). For the Bobo guide, click here.

Wilson's is also encyclopedic. Try to choose a couple of things that specifically interest you and page through that section. Maybe rope interests you - you can put together a strong rope routine using only the material that is supplied in the rope section of that book. The same for sponges, balls and all the other sections that it offers.

Most of all, take your time and learn what is there. I cannot say it enough times - those four books give you everything that you'd ever need for an entire carreer in magic.

Mike.

M.J. thanks for keeping up on me! I did in fact receive my books today. I'm starting with Alkazar but I already know most of what I'm reading. None the less I'm going to read threw it to try and learn what I can, or what I've missed. I'll keep everyone updated about any questions, or comments, that may arise. Again, thanks for keeping up on me and my (slow) progress!

If someone asks me "How did I do it?", I tell them, "Can you keep a secret?" They say, "Yes." And I say "So can I." Or if they say, " can you tell me how that was done?" I wll tell them, "No, but thanks for asking." When they get the picture you are not going to let them in on the secret, they will quit asking. Perfect your routines and just entertain with them. You will find that the majority of people want to have a good time and will enjoy themselves but there are a few that just have to know what it is you are doing and are relentless in their efforts. Ignore them and push on.
Best
Al

Returning briefly to the subject of animals, I think we've missed an issue here.

What about the audience's opinions about using animals in performances.

In my kids shows, I've lost customers because I don't have a live bunny to produce. In other cases, however, the fact that I don't use live animals has secured a booking. You can argue all you want about whether using animals is cruel or stressful - and it's true that most people with opinions have no experience to support them - but do you really want to have to justify the goldfish in a client's glass during a vegan buffet??

Humour can be a great tool. If I'm asked how something is done I'll shake my head and say "No, no, no, no, no....that's how this works at all." This generally gets a laugh and people understand.

Another tool I use is honesty. If the crowd I'm performing for is particularly rowdy (I tend to work in bars and clubs) then I'll tell them that it's not a contest and that I want to entertain them, if they'll let me. I point out that it would be very simple for them to make me look stupid because this is not real magic, but a trick. Generally, this is enough to make one or more of the group verbally restrain their friends.

Finally, the most important weapon in the magician's arsenal regarding audience management is love. This might sound strange but......

To my mind magic is not about the tricks. In fact, they're kind of irrelevant (sort of). Magic is about the relationship between the performer and the audience. You have to love your audience. You have to want them to be enriched, astonished, lifted up. Gentleness, kindness and compassion are just as important as 'moves' and routines. I think that without a firm basis of kindness towards the audience all attempts at managing them are doomed to failure.

In my experience, my magic (ha!) flows better when I have an attitude of caring, disinterested friendliness towards the audience. If that attitude is not present the audience will pick up on it. I'll tell you something else, if this attitude of disinterested love is present, you can make the most glaring errors or flashes and people won't notice because they are so caught up in the experience of the performance.

To end......whenI was a child I had a magic book by Ali Bongo. In the introduction Mr. Bongo stated that before the start of every show he would be standing in the wings, jumping up and down repeating the phrase "I love the audience, I love the audience, I love the audience, I love the audience."

Right then, that's enough of my ramblings. I hope you found it useful.

Best wishes
Gary

Gary Dickson wrote:whenI was a child I had a magic book by Ali Bongo. In the introduction Mr. Bongo stated that before the start of every show he would be standing in the wings, jumping up and down repeating the phrase "I love the audience, I love the audience, I love the audience, I love the audience."

I had that book too!! I'm sure I've still got it somewhere...

Funnily enough, the only thing I remember from that book is that bit in the intro. It stuck with me all those years, although now I come to think about it I think it had a cutting a girl (always a girl, never a boy!) in half with a skipping rope trick in it.

Ah, fond memories of getting my sister to stick her thumbs up!

I had two books by Ali Bongo when I was a kid - the other was simply called 'Be A Magician', and was part of a things-to-do series published under the 'Whiz-Kids' brand. It didn't have any of the Pongolia trappings - if it didn't have Bongo's name on the cover, you wouldn't immediately associate him with it.

What I noticed about both books, though, was the fact that they treated the young reader as an intelligent human being with a genuine interest in magic - far moreso than any other kids' magic books I read at the time. Sure, there were easy-to-do tricks in there, but just as much time and page space was given to issues of presentation and routining. It was nothing too heavy or daunting, but definitely got young minds thinking in the right creative directions.

pcwells wrote:I had two books by Ali Bongo when I was a kid - the other was simply called 'Be A Magician', and was part of a things-to-do series published under the 'Whiz-Kids' brand. It didn't have any of the Pongolia trappings - if it didn't have Bongo's name on the cover, you wouldn't immediately associate him with it.

What I noticed about both books, though, was the fact that they treated the young reader as an intelligent human being with a genuine interest in magic - far moreso than any other kids' magic books I read at the time. Sure, there were easy-to-do tricks in there, but just as much time and page space was given to issues of presentation and routining. It was nothing too heavy or daunting, but definitely got young minds thinking in the right creative directions.

I have both those books and they were easily among the top few ones I had as a child. Excellent presentations, great illustrations (the bigger one had drawings by Ali Bongo himself, I think) and full of good ideas.

However, my recollection is that he didn't say that he jumped up and down before his performance, but that a(nother) very famous magician did.

Tricks I can recall from that book include a 'sawdust factory' that turned sawdust into a block of wood, a card trick performed by a puppet made from a ping pong ball, hanky and a couple of those rubber 'mermaids' fingers' things that accountants or tellers would sometimes wear, a fairy story about a gold ingot that turned into an apple, saving a prince in the desert, a colour prediction (using a method that is very popular with mentalists) and a magic compass (yes, that trick). There was also a really nice routine with coloured pom-poms, where you put three red ones in one box, three blue ones in another and three yellow ones in the final box. Then you show that each box now has one pom-pom of each colour.

I never really thought about how the animals could affect my shows and customers. I guess that changes things lol I'm not doing any animal tricks at the moment but I will consider what was said for future use.

GhostFoxInc wrote:I'm starting with Alkazar but I already know most of what I'm reading. None the less I'm going to read threw it to try and learn what I can, or what I've missed.

The tricks in the book are not cutting edge. They have been around for time out of mind. The real power in that little book is the handling and presentational tips that it gives - things like subtlety, repetition, proper misdirection, economy of motion and such. The book covers the real building blocks of making your magic powerful. Many of these things are either not covered in more advanced books or they are taken for granted and the author assumes that the reader already knows these things.

I think that it is important to fully understand these building blocks rather than learning them as part of a trick but not fully recognizing the real principles that are at work behind the mechanics. Without an understanding of the basic principles, your advanced work will suffer and you simply won't be able to figure out why or where you are having a problem.

I honestly believe that Alkazar should be required reading for all magicians.

Mike.