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My question to you all is, do you have a character when you perform? At the end of this year, I am doing a performance with my magic club, and we have been asked to provide for ourselves a character. I was thinking along the lines of a very poor man, wearing rags, very depressing, and I could do a Miser's Dream sequence, and some other coin tricks, but that has just been taken. Can you suggest another branch of magic I could use with a completely different character type? Thanks guys!

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A geek : Number magic and loads of freckles and unneccesarily big glasses.

goth : Bizzare and black magic (LOADS of options here)

Adventurer: Binoculars (for patter use and even some revealing tricks), doves (if you are on a stage and have the resources), flourishes, im sure you can think of some decent tricks for this role

Soldier : Camo gear, tricks like Hitman and slap happy, cig thru card/coin etc Not really many ideas for this character

Old man : making fun of the golden oldies at your club, prof's nightmare (act confused and annoyed for most of the trick...). If you can get a load of dentures, keep taking them out of tyour mouth non stop and putting them on a table in view of everyone (FP them one by one). Some classic card tricks. Wheezing all the time as you speak

Professor : Prof's nightmare, PH invisible palm, any tother tricks where you can use scientific patter.

Be yourself. If your witty be witty, if your quiet and shy then perform silently as a mime (CERTAIN TRICKS PROBABLY WOULDN'T WORK with mime).

I just do most of my magic as i am a scruffy long haired singer with time to waste waitning to perform.

Or you could do the ever popular "psychologist" stand point ala derren brown. Or you could combine that with a previous suggestion, "Goth" and do a more witch doctor-esque scheme. Then there is always the famous "Gypse" or just flat out "Wizard".

I would suggest you do a witch doctor thing. I rarely see that, and if I liked to dress up I would. But, to really get good effects with this, you either need alot of gimmicks or knowledge of hypnosis.

Hope this helps.

1011

Drunk respectful Englishman that likes to make billiard balls appear?

When I'm doing magic I'm more of a clumsy (not sure if that's the word in english..) magican. I tell everyone that I'm going to do a trick, and then I start to do it but does another trick while attempting to do the trick I told them.
So if you want to produce 4 aces to use in another routine, then ask the spectator to choose a card and put it back in the deck, then while trying to figure out wich card it was you produce the aces, and then while trying to make something with the aces their card comes forth and so on..i guess u get my idea..

Thats quite a nice idea you have there NOX with things going wrong.

Very TOMMY COOPER.

A couple out of the box characters

A magician with short term memory loss

A magician who has a "know it all" invisible assistant/partner

A "James Bond" type moonlighting to pay the bills to support his lady friends...I can see some good "Q" gadget references

A out of work lawyer..speaking legalese through the perfomance.

Sam:monkey fist wrote:Be yourself. If your witty be witty, if your quiet and shy then perform silently as a mime (CERTAIN TRICKS PROBABLY WOULDN'T WORK with mime).

I just do most of my magic as i am a scruffy long haired singer with time to waste waitning to perform.

He wants a character, not performing lessons.

DaveOrdref wrote:Drunk respectful Englishman that likes to make billiard balls appear?

this is just funny, roflmao

There are (possibly literally) hundreds of characters you could be:

Silent Pierrot style clown
Loud 'August' clown
A bounder (don't know what you call them in Oz)
An Egyptian Pharaoh
A houngan (voodoo priest)
A politician
A sideshow performer
A chef
A doctor
A cricketer (make the bails float off the wicket, do a cups and balls with a cricket ball as the final load - make a joke about the cup being empty - a 'no ball' - do the Ashes on the arm trick, do a number force with scores).

However, we need some input from you. It's no good us suggesting that you pretend to be something if you don't have effects that are suitable.

So, what sort of things do you do? Do you have any big props that you'd like to use? Are you primarily a silent magician? Do you favour one type of thing (such as coins)? Is it a full theatre show, or more like cabaret?

How about just being oneself with passion...

J

jokerdan wrote:

DaveOrdref wrote:Drunk respectful Englishman that likes to make billiard balls appear?

this is just funny, roflmao

Oh I forgot that this character does card tricks and had the word card in his name

no seriously why is that funny??

I have no idea. Am I supposed to?
Maybe the mental image of a fat gentleman with an eyeglass and pocket watch wearing a sweater nder a brown suit constantly producing an endless supply of billiard balls has somethign to do with it...

I think it's one of those characters that is supposed to be funny. Anything that you get "dressed up" for, has to get a laugh. I think this totally helps with the presentation.

As to the original question, I think it really depends on what kind of magic you are doing. I think it was Derren Brown in Absolute Magic, who said something about magi changin their personality to their tricks, rather than the other way round... or was it the other way round?

If you've not read it, Absolute Magic is an amazing read. Learn from a true master!

~Sym~

Symtal wrote:I think it's one of those characters that is supposed to be funny. Anything that you get "dressed up" for, has to get a laugh. I think this totally helps with the presentation.

I'm supposing noe of you have heard of cardini then?

Edit: which was the character in my original post?