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As a long time hobbyist, i was asked to perform some walk around magic at a friends wedding last saturday, to which i said yes. I learned some valuable lessons there, both good and bad.

Firstly, i managed to notice when a trick went wrong and corrected it on the fly. Really proud of myself for that.
Secondly i learned a lot about angles and audience management, stepping backwards if people were looking over my shoulder and inviting them to move where they can see properly.
Next, towards the end of the night, i was more confident in dragging out a revelation to build suspense. At the start i was kind of in a rush to show the reveal.
Lastly, one trick went horribly wrong. I had an ID ready to cover some eventualities, but i forgot the key card for a fireworks control in a multiple revelation routine. I just had to suck it up, apologise and move onto something really hard hitting. Hopefully they will have remembered the tricks i did rather than the one i didnt.

Overall though, a great experience and i would recommend any hobbyists to get out to the real world and see what really happens.

Well done you! It sounds like it went really well, don't worry too much about an effect going wrong, it happens and the best thing that I find is to just laugh it off and move on to something else.

I saw Doug Segal's show a few weeks ago and a couple of things didn't work as expected, he just owned up by saying it didn' t work and could he try again. The audience all agreed enthusiastically and cheered loud when it worked the second time. Perhaps a failure, like a near miss on mentalism, isn't such a bad thing occasionally?

Anyway, well done on doing your first public performance - good, innit?!!

Hardly anything like professional work, but I did screw up gemini twins once with a couple at a work do (schoolboy error - I pulled out their actual selections from the spread rather than the force cards). Had a second attempt with their approval, and properly confused them. It's an effect that usually goes over well (especially the way I do it, using the handling I published in Choked, hem hem) but that was probably the strongest reaction I've ever gotten from it. I think (arbitrarily) it's 80% them wanting you to succeed and 20% hiding the method.

I think that with mentalism, a mistake can sometimes be a positive thing. I've deliberatly scripted effects to go wrong mainly for two reasons, it does help get the audience on your side, it breaks down that 'I'm a clever magician' front that's sometimes there and gets them right behind you. The other reason that I've done it is to get an easy laugh to break the tension, a bit tacky I know but it works for me.

Everyone makes mistakes. Last week I had someone turn over a card too early (no fault of my own or at least not much).
I thought it was hilarious though!

Firstly, well done for saying yes and performing

Things go wrong, no big deal, try and learn from it

And yes, amazing, how many things you never think about until you perform in public, angles, audience management etc, the amount of different types of people you will perform to, people that love magic, hate it, don't want to be fooled, want to catch you out etc

What sort of set did you perform?

i started with Cameron Francis's lie detenctor routine, as this is a nice one to get to know people and you can have a laugh about the liars etc. I also found the cards themselves generated a lot of interest and i think they are more interesting for a spectator than just a trick with a deck.

I then went into a trick i routined myself which is a fireworks control and Joh Bannons Bullet party display (i cant remeber the actual name), so its a way of cutting to three selections. I make each one 'more difficult' by doing one from memory, one from clues about the card and the third from facial reactions. The idea here is that this also involves lots of spectators, builds nicely and the deck can be freely shuffled before.

Next i use the extractor to do the basic routine. This floored people. Its a bit of a change of pace as its mind reading and a card transpo, rather than sleight of hand, but i wanted to give them something that no one could explain, and this was it. Again the deck can be shuffled, so they really have no idea.

Lastly, as the couple were going to Vegas for honeymoon, i did the version of gemini twins with a casino deck (from TMs Lawrence!). This has three climaxes and i used it to test a 'connection' between the two spectators. I said that each time there was a 'coincidence' then we would applaud the specs. This meant that the applause was heard by other people and let them know something was going on, and at the finale, where the deck is shown to be the same card, the group were already accustomed to applauding and did so without prompting.

it was about a 15 min set, and i also had coinvexed and John Bannon's Spin Doctor to mix things up a bit and finish in a different direction. I also learned that what i consider to be a flash on an Elmsley count is often missed!

I really enjoyed the set and thought it flowed well, so rather than buying loads of new stuff, im going to work on refining this set and making it better. Next step is to routine a 15 min tabled set and i may even advertise to do some other shows.

Okay I'll fess up. Once when performing a bill switch, I ended performing an excellent materialization of a TT. Was fine, we all laughed and and had a grand old time.

As we're discussing mistakes here... I'm feeling the need to confess...

I did a short spot on stage a while back. I only had about ten minutes, so I did Luke Jermays "Touching On Hoy" routine. (Three spectators chosen, each asked a question, and their minds read, and the answers revealed) It was all going well, until the very end, when I said - "A circle and a triangle, the year 1974, and the name Sarah. I'f I said what you're thinking of, can you please sit down," ... and NONE of them sat down!

And that was the whole set! As it was only ten minutes, there was no time to do anything else, so I just looked a bit stupid on stage! I learnt two things from this. First;y, no matter what I do in magic, I think that's about as bad as it goes, so I can be relatively fearless from there on... And secondly, I had the good fortune to talk to Luke Jermay briefly about this, and he suggested a single line in the script that really would have made it work...

And also...

Last week I tried out my brand new Spypad. It's a lovely little pad, and I highly recommend it. However... If you happen to be rather used to a Riggs pad, don't set it up in the same way out of habit before handing it to you participant! If you do, you'll very quickly discover that there is no impression made for you to read! This makes it rather hard to make the reveal! (Fortunately I got out of this one! A couple of routines I do require a bit of body language reading, so I used some of that and asked a few questions, watched her reactions, and got the answer that way!) If you're interested, I was doing the "Lip Stick" routine that is on the Spypad DVD. It's a great routine!

The best way to practice magic with real life audience is the public places - shops, streets, bus stops, oh well pretty much any place you are going to. I just like to meet new people, especially nice and beautiful young women it's win-win situation!

Things will go wrong. I made a really awful, sloppy mistake the other month: I was supposed to use a DL to reveal the "wrong" card (having already forced the spectator's card to the top of the deck), but because I'd been in a hurry I'd failed to do all of my reset steps from the last performance, and ended up with their card *second* from the top. So I revealed their card prematurely; they were impressed, I was skeptical, and I hadn't worked out what had gone wrong before they reached over and took their card... and seeing what was underneath! Whoops!

As far as real world practice is concerned, I'm a big fan of practicing in front of strangers: as a result, I spent many of my lunch breaks either traipsing around different departments of the organisation I work for, or else hanging out in the marketplace around the corner (which is also a convenient place to buy a sandwich for lunch) doing tricks for people who are stuck in queues. And like Relish, I too have recently learned that even if I can see where an Elmsley count went wrong, it doesn't mean that the spectator did, even if you're concealing something as dramatic as changing the colour of the backs of your cards!