This post may be irrelevant to the more experienced members; however, I thought it may be helpful to some, so I decided to post.
This post details the proper way to act when a trick goes wrong.
For the past three years I've been attending Daytona Festival of Magic. And each year I've entered the Junior Stage competition. Two of those times however, I flubbed the tricks (It was the audience member's fault I swear
).
After this years performance (which went off without a hitch) I started talking with another magician while waiting for a lecture to begin. He had watched the stage competition and he congratulated me and we began to talk. He told me a story where an older magician was performing on stage and his trick went wrong and he turned on the volunteer and was really mad. This made the audience more uncomfortable than they already were.
He also told me about when he performed on stage and the trick went wrong, (it was a production of a length of silks from his sleeve except he couldn't find the starter silk) so he decided to make a joke of it. He reached as far down his sleeve as he could and couldn't find it, finally taking off his jacket, locating and putting the silk in it's proper place, put the jacket back on and continued to perform the effect as if nothing happened. He said he received the most laughs than any of the other acts. More importantly, rather than panic when the trick went wrong, he put the audience at ease.
One must remember when performing that the audience (minus a few) is rooting for you. Nobody goes to a magic show to see a magician fail. When the magician does fail, the audience becomes uncomfortable and nervous as how they're supposed to react. They have a huge build up and suddenly the trick goes wrong without a satisfying finish.
The best way to remedy a failed effect is to draw attention to it. I received performance notes from the judges after the stage shows, while they felt bad that the trick failed, they always awarded me extra points for handling the failure well.
Usually I'll say something that is not really a joke but, in context to how the audience feels, makes them laugh anyways. For example I was performing a routine (which has a general name which I can't remember) where someone selects a disk and one disk has a different color and the mage, through mystical ability is able to divine the different colored disk.
Anyways, while performing the effect someone dropped their disk (not the odd one) and I said something along the lines of: well, we no what color you have. That makes things easier.
Which, on it's own is not a funny thing to say. However, because the audience didn't know how to react to the failed effect laughed. (Hopefully I haven't completely misjudged this and they laughed at me :shocked:.
I continued with the effect and eliminated 3 of the five people. It was time for the big reveal. I said, "I believe that you have the red disk in your hand!"(No, I didn't scream at her merely added the exclamation point for emphasis) She looked at me apologetically and said "No..." all I did was pause and continued with the pretense as though I was trying to find the chip and turned towards the other woman who did have the red disk and said "Well that must mean that you have the red disk in your hand." This again does not sound that funny but the audience needs something to do.
Before I begin to sound like a broken, ranting record (too late) I want to end by simply saying that the easiest way to put an audience at ease when a trick goes wrong is to try and make them laugh. This provides the audience with some sort of finish to the effect and also relieves uncomfortable tension.
One final thing I feel obliged to say: Don't prepare any lines to say if the effect goes wrong. You never want to go into an effect expecting it to fail.
Thanks for reading and I hope this was helpful to someone.
Two things I also wish to clarify: One, I did not intend this as an "OOO look at me" post. Two, I'm not sure what I want to say. I don't mean to make it sound like "Give the audience something to do, they expect certain things." But at the same time I do because they do expect certain things. They expect a beginning, and an end. In the case of magic they expect to clap. You can't clap because the trick went wrong, you need something to do because, well it's just awkward not to. So, I make them laugh. There may be other ways but this is what I found to be the easiest.
There, Done.
-Ian Baker
