talkmagic.co.uk

Hey everyone,

I have looked on this forum and searched for help with hecklers. I found most of them very interesting and helpful, I also noticed that is a popular topic and I would like to share something I came across, hoping it will help others looking for insight on how to handle hecklers.

http://www.magichat.co.uk/a65-How-to-handle-hecklers.html

I found this very helpful and was exactly what I was looking for on the subject, I hope others find it as useful as I did.

Ricky Gibson

Hecklers are good for you. Be thankful for them. They keep you on your toes and make you a better magician. And if you handle them properly they can become your biggest fans. Fighting them is not the answer. Winning them over is. It isn't easy but nothing worthwhile is easy. And I must say that many magicians deserve to be heckled because of their attitude.

Thank you Mark, I think that is a very good way of looking at it.
The article the link was for talks about ways you could work with the heckler, to entertain them, rather than working against them.

Here is something I found very interesting and another way of look at it:

"Let me explain, we are magicians, our job is to entertain people by showing them impossible feats. Hecklers are people who ruin this experience by showing a trick for what it is. This hurts the audience's enjoyment of the trick, and moreover it ruins the heckler's enjoyment of a trick. We are essentially protecting hecklers from themselves."

Ricky Gibson

I have always said that if the heckler spots the palmed card in your hand or figures out that the coin is not in the hand you said it is in he is doing you a massive favour. It means that you have to practice more. The fault is yours for being incompetent at your work. It is not the heckler's fault for spotting the flaw in your technique. After all, if he catches it then that means that the quieter people are in danger of spotting it too.

Not always the case if the spectator has some prior magical knowledge.

A lot of people know of double lifts,french drops and trick decks etc