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Are these things that can be taught? There have been several new teaching materials on the subject above and I was wondering are these things that people are born with or can Showmanship, comdey and creativity be taught?

I think one's sense of humor develops over time but you have to be naturally funny to be fully entertaining.

As for showmanship and creativity these are things that don't develop and can't be taught IMHO. That's why there are only so few who make it big in showbiz. They have charisma showmanship and are most of the time funny.

Agree or disagree?

ACtually success in showbusiness has as much to do with good ability at business as anything else. Talent is certainly a factor but only to a limited extent. There are plenty of talented performers who are starving.

Showmanship is indeed necessary but that doesn't always necessarily mean "funny". Funny is good if you have the knack for it but if you haven't then you could actually be hurting yourself with this type of presentation.

You CAN learn showmanship. There are quite a few texts on the subject. However I always tell people the best advice is contained in the back pages of Expert CArd Technique in the section on presentation.

Those keys are all relative....what it takes to be a showman if you are naturally funny is different that what it would take to be a showman if youa are naturally a serious person. There are comedians, magicians, musicians, and entertainers in all genres of the arts that are great showman...but with completely different talent levels, abilities, comedic value, etc....the key is to know who you are and find out how to be a "showman" in your own way.

I think I am a good showman when it comes to performing magic...also rather funny (naturally and in my shows)...yet performing mentalism to me seems to "silly"...I don't have it in me to be the way I would need to percieve myself for that role. I feel that I would need to be a serious toned performer to pull off mentialism and I don't feel I can do that.

Am I a showman...you would say yes if you ever saw one of my magic shows, but that is becasue I found my niche and found out how to do it my way.

I suppose that it could be taught but I think it's something that is learnt over time. I cringe if I look back at how I used to perform a year or so ago. It's for me to perform to strangers to start to realise what they find entertaining. It's all very well someone saying that you have to do this or do that or you copying another magicians presentation word for word (I've done this in the past and it doesn't work) but I think we're all very individual and we all have aspects about us that people find entertaining. We've jus got to get out there and find out what those aspects are and use them.

There is an argument in Psychology that nobody is better at anything than anyone else, it just takes some people longer to learn how to achieve.

And on the most part I agree but in the area of being an entertainer I don't think you can be taught from scratch. Sure you can be taught new skills and new ways to deliver them/use them but you need to be natural to begin with.

Comedy is all about having a natural lean towards being funny in the first place. Then it comes to timing. The timing can be taught but being funny can't. You need to already possess the talent to make people smile easily and laugh at you. Imagine this... You've got Jimmy Carr (love or loathe him) who is a naturally funny person, you can tell this when he is interviewed and so on. Now imagine Gordon Brown trying to do Jimmy Carrs routine. He can be taught the jokes, he can be taught about timing and delivery but he can't be taught how to be funny.

It's the same for being an entertainer as you need to possess pre-requiste talent already... ability to sing, dance, act etc. Again it is only by being in possession of the natural talent can you be taught showmanship properly.

Showmanship is about the only one of the three where you can be taught something from scratch. But only because you already possess how to entertain. You see you may have the skill to perform but do you know how to use the stage well? Do you know how to motivate your crowd? This is showmanship. Developing and enhancing your skillset to achieve bigger and better results.

Creativity is again naturally inherent. We all went to art classes at school but only some of the class were able to follow the instructions and make something truly arty and creative.

To make a simple analogy, everyone can sing the same song, we can all learn the tune and the words. BUT only some of us can do it well. So yes you can try and learn all these things but if you don't already possess talent in these areas then you are fighting an uphill struggle.

It depends what you mean by "taught".

You can't take someone with no sense of humour, give them a few lessons and end up with the next Oscar Wilde, but at the same time you can definitely improve. Comedy (like magic) is no different to theatre in that you really need a director - someone to tell you what lines aren't funny, or whether to play up a certain angle of your persona. There is a section in Absolute Magic where Brown talks about how he used to make jokes about his spectators, until he realised that it was alienating them, and so he started making jokes about himself.

Showmanship is like comedy - it helps if you have a knack for it, but a good director will bring you on leaps and bounds. Some people have a natural aptitude for this, but every successful performer you see will have developed their own style, trying things out and finding out some things work and some fall flat on their face. Do you think Max Maven just woke up one morning and said "I think I'll shave the middle of my goatee off and raise my eyebrow all the time".

Both comedy and showmanship come under the remit of abilities that people perceive as being natural and almost God-given, but actually they involve just as much work and practise as any sleight or script.

Creativity is slightly different, in that it's not part of performance, it takes place a much earlier stage of putting together a piece of magic. However, it is just as much a practised skill as comedy or showmanship, only instead of rehearsing individual lines/moves/eyebrow lifts, creativity comes from experimentation. It is not aobut sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and coming up with something completely knew. The most creative minds in magic are often the most well read - the more magical literature you digest the more ideas will be floating round in your head, and the more likely you are to start linking things together in ways noone has before. The more time you spend dreaming up crazy routines and ridiculous effects, the higher the chance you'll come up with something actually useable.

I guess on reflection my argument is - perhaps they can't be taught, but they can certainly be learned.

Ian the Mental-Ian wrote:Are these things that can be taught? There have been several new teaching materials on the subject above and I was wondering are these things that people are born with or can Showmanship, comdey and creativity be taught?

Yes, they can all be taught. Whether you can teach someone from scratch to have a innate "feeling" for them is debatable.

basically to be a comedy great you have to become yourself, or some element of it

bill hicks said it took him years to realised this

i think comedy magic is cheesy. it would be interesting to discover what people are actually laughing at - i would say the following:

that the nobel magician is showing his abjection

they are laughing at the down fall of the profession

maybe