<-|Top|Showmanship For Magicians|Trick Brain|Magic By Misdirection|Mail|->
<-|!*!|C|I|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|->
SHOWMANSHIP
For
MAGICIANS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It is well known that people like physical action. This is one of the reasons why sporting events such as football games, ice hockey, ice shows and other types of amusements featuring physical exertion are heavily attended by the public. In the theater field the dancers, acrobats, trapeze performers and other entertainers of this type, where physical action is paramount, fill this requirement.
This kind of appeal is difficult to incorporate in magic. Yet it has been done. Carl Randall, one of the better dancers, used to do magic while he was dancing. Perhaps he still does. The well-known hotel dance team, The Hartmans, also uses magic in some of its dance routines. Benny Tolmack, one of the original principals in the International Magicians, does a tap and acrobatic dance routine while producing fans of cards, cigarettes and the like. It always registered well, extremely well, with the show.
Later Eddie Burnette took Tolmack's place. He, too, did a tap routine, and he used repeated cigarette productions while doing it.
If you insist on doing productions, there is no reason why many other objects cannot be produced, besides cards and cigarettes, silks or flowers, or multi-colored balls. Action can be incorporated with any of them. Even certain types of apparatus may be used for the production.
Yet the field is not limited to productions. An act incorporating a series of repeated vanishes or transformations or transpositions is quite feasible.
Anything in the magic line, if sufficient intelligence is given to the job of adapting it, can be incorporated in some type of dance routine.
Violent physical exertion, of course, has been used in escape type tricks for years, particularly in connection with certain rope ties or the straightjacket. Some performers use violent action with handcuffs and box escapes, as well.
Undoubtedly there is a much broader field for exploration here. Violent sensational action, if the performer has sufficient intelligence to keep from making a superior ass of himself, has considerable possibility. The way violent action was incorporated with our presentation of the substitution trunk trick in the show has been explained.
Group coordination, where a number of performers act in unison, has been adapted to magic also. This massed coordinated movement is extremely attractive as will be realized when it is remembered that this is the fundamental of all chorus work in musical shows. Such a group at the Radio-City Music Hall has become known all over the world.
I believe it was Manuel who staged several group numbers with the Follies girls in one of the Ziegfeld shows. If I remember correctly it was a routine wherein all of the girls simultaneously vanished birdcages.
One of the nightclub lines in Chicago makes a specialty of group numbers performing magic. I have seen them use large phantom tubes, cigarette to silk changes, the mutilated parasol and other stock tricks, all done simultaneously.
Of course, in the International Magicians show we made a specialty of group numbers but in somewhat a different way. In the opening, as I have mentioned before, the entire company went into the audience and performed the miser's dream. Later the principals did the paper tissues to hats, using the comedian for the tissues to panties as a laugh punch. Also, at the close of the first half, the entire company did an original adaptation of the water fountains, and at the finale, as has been mentioned before, a bewildering series of productions by all of the principals, working simultaneously, brought the show to a smash finish. That this group work is effective is shown in the review of the show written by one of the critics when he said, "when . . . (they) . . . put on a finale, as they did last night, the total trickery is stupendous."
The inspiration for a closing number such as this came to me years before when I was arranging a magic club show for public presentation. Since all of the members did some type of production, I thought it would make a novel and smashing climax.
The idea had to be abandoned then because we couldn't make arrangements for satisfactory rehearsals.
At that same time I toyed with the idea of a group miser's dream number as well. For the same reason, it had to wait until the International Magicians show came into being. And the idea of simultaneous group presentation by MAGICIANS, not untrained girls, came into being with that show, I am certain. Strangely enough, I hit upon the tissue-to-hats number because I liked the song and wanted to use it. Having the group idea in mind as a feature of the show, and the musical background. the issue of the hat number was almost automatic.
This does illustrate, however, the manner in which ideas are born and how they are developed. The water fountain number came entirely from a desire to use the trick. It was entirely written around the trick. So here are four numbers. Two of them developed from a desire to use a lot of members of a club, one of them came from the title of a song and the other grew from a trick.
Of course, it is realized quite well that this discussion of group coordination cannot possibly apply to a lone unassisted magician. But most magicians carry assistants. Even two people can perform simultaneously, just as a pair of dancers do.
As a matter of actual fact it might be well right here to bring up an important point in connection with these long-suffering assistants. In my opinion characterless flunkies, bellhops and assistants of both sexes should be OUT. This servant and master idea, once permissible, is no longer good taste. This is particularly true when so many of the magicians are so palpably NOT the masters.
Once more I repeat: People are interested in PEOPLE. They are more interested in PEOPLE than they are in the things people do.
Why not let that boy or girl assistant also become an individual? Why not let that assistant assert his personality also? Two personalities are better than one.
In forming our big show that's one of the first things we eliminated. There were no assistants. Whenever the help of someone else was necessary in a performer's routine, other PRINCIPALS came on to assist, as principals, as the nice people they were, not as flunkies. I think that is one of the reasons so much comment was received on the friendliness and breeding and pleasantness of the members of the company. That positively got across the footlights.
This idea of a serf serving the mastermind is really corny. It is not convincing. It is mere ostentation, which is out of keeping in this day and age.
Where do you see any other entertainers using servants?
So now, you magicians who have an assistant, here is an opportunity to add that group number. Here is another personality to interest the audience. Make the act one with TWO magicians, instead of an act with one magician and an automaton.
Hints have already been given on how some group numbers have been presented. But there are many others. I remember one time we considered a dual manipulative act for a contest in which one of the clubs was engaged. Although we never used the idea, it went so far as to get in a couple of rehearsals.
We planned on building the act up with backhand card palming as the basis. One performer was to stand at one side of the stage with the other on the opposite. Magician No. 1 would produce a card then toss it invisibly to No.2, who would catch it out of the air, a sort of an invisible game of catch. In rehearsal the idea convinced me it had possibilities. We didn't abandon it. One of the performers became ill and we couldn't finish it
Now a similar idea can be used in a two-person magic act. They don't need to play catch necessarily. Some thing, perhaps a bouquet, can vanish from the hands of one and reappear in the hands of the other. One magician could start a trick and the other could finish it. There are many comedy possibilities, as well.
Group numbers, for the average magician, are more easily available than one would ordinarily suspect.
Bill Larsen suggested a possibility to me some years ago. Why not have two or more magicians doing the cut rope trick simultaneously, each move timed to the others? The rope is cut and fixed, even cut and fixed again, if you want. At the end of the restoration, the ends of the pieces of rope are brought together and all of the pieces joined in one long length. I spent some time on this idea with a view to using it in my own show, but suitable music was a difficulty that was not satisfactorily solved.
Precise attack is always evident in any first-class production. This means that each number starts without hesitation. The performer starts to work without any preliminary fumbling or faltering. He knows what he is going to do and exactly how to do it. He does whatever his routine calls for with greatest economy of movement, talk and detail. He comes to the point quickly, does what he desires with confidence and concludes it cleanly.
Smoothness is almost another word for precise attack. Precision comes with familiarity with your material, with utmost confidence in your ability, with exact knowledge of what you are to do and how to do it, and with the certain knowledge that when it is done your audience will like it.
Precision means: For heaven's sake, do it and get it over with.
The word "economy" came in there. It is a mighty factor in the show business.
Economy means freedom from extravagance or outlay, with a disposition to save or spare. Every act should proceed from start to finish by the shortest possible route. This shortest possible route will not permit digressions. It will not permit pauses in the movement of the act while you orate about a trip to India. It will not permit breaking up the continuity of your routine to ring in some trivial, disconnected thing.
The routine must be free from extravagance with time. It must be free from extravagance of movement or words. Your outlay of time, movement, words-and, yes, tricks-must be limited to the bare essentials necessary.
Cut every unnecessary thing out of the routine. Retain only the bare essentials to sell the idea. But be certain you are not cutting something necessary to sell the act properly.
Economy means just exactly enough-not too much, not too little. Not too much talk. Not too much movement. Not too many tricks. Not too much time. Also: Not too little talk. Not too little movement. Not too few tricks. Not too little time. It is a matter of instinct and judgment and theater and audience sense. You can't measure it with a tape measure or a scale. It is a thing of the mind and of the senses.
There's a good example of economy in Cardirn's entire routine, but one little thing he does illustrates it perfectly. How often have you seen performers doing the untying silk? They laboriously twist it up, blabber about it, horse around with it, yell and beat their chests and run around the stage and generally raise hell all over.
Consider Cardini. He quietly takes the silk from his pocket.
He twists it quickly, with a few deft movements. It unties.
Again: He twists it, ties it. It unties itself just a bit more slowly.
He shudders and discards the silk.
Just because you pay ten or twenty dollars for a trick it doesn't mean that you should take five or ten times longer with it than with a two-dollar trick. Many of these ten and twenty-dollar tricks do not belong in your routine at all. Many that you can use aren't worth more than a few seconds.
I have in mind a twenty-dollar cigarette rising apparatus. The inventor knocked himself out giving birth to a long drawn out routine for it. So, when they bought it, ninety percent of the amateurs followed his entire exhausting dragged out version. Done that way, the trick laid a large fragrant egg. But one smart professional used it as it should be used. He took the pack from his pocket, tore the corner off and stood it on his table. One cigarette rose. It rose without twenty dollars worth of talk, frenzy and rioting on the part of the performer. After it was up, the performer calmly took the cigarette and went on with his routine, forgetting the twenty-dollar investment still standing on the table. Forgetting that two cigarettes could have been made to rise. Forgetting that he could have vanished a lighted cigarette and had it rise out of the pack lighted. Forgetting that you could place the pack anywhere. Forgetting all of the piffling features claimed for it in the advertising matter. The pack had done its job as far as the requirements of his routine were concerned. It had delivered its twenty dollars' worth.
While I think of it, something should be said about featuring a trick just because it represents a large investment of money. Professionals won't do it, but many amateurs save the feature spot on their program for their most expensive trick. Many times these expensive tricks do not pack the wallop and have not the strength to be featured. Never allow what a trick costs to establish its place on your program. Never insist upon using an expensive trick just because it is expensive.
The only criterion as to whether a trick should be used or not is its reception BY THE AUDIENCE. The only influencing factor as to the placement of a trick is its relative strength WITH THE AUDIENCE.
Brevity is as important as economy. All trick plots should be SHORT generally. All routines should be SHORT generally. If you can do a trick in thirty seconds, and get the most effect out of it in that time, don't use three or four minutes. I've spoken before about the necessity of short turns. You have little choice in this in most professional engagements. Your time will be limited.
But where compulsion does not exist, your own choice of time will probably prevail. Take a tip from the show business. There is a reason why these acts are limited in time. The reason is purely psychological, although a lot of smart showmen wouldn't know what psychological means. Years of experience and observation have proven that audiences become restive and impatient when a performer takes too much time.
An audience will only allow its interest to remain with a performer as long as he arouses a lively curiosity or sympathy. Long drawn out repetitions of the same thing, or boring harangues, or periods of time when the action does not lift, dulls this interest. So the show business has finally hit upon the most practical solution. So limit the time of each performer that he can't lose the audience's attention for long. If you have a lot of personalities and a great variety of appeals, all aimed at the cross section of the average audience, mathematically his interest is bound to be maintained, even if it is only by reason of the fact that a new personality is soon to appear.
You are flirting with disaster if you take one second longer for your routine than you would be allowed under top pro-magnetic personality is sufficiently strong to interest an audience for long periods of time. That's the way YOU think. That's the professional direction. Of course, I know that you are certain your way is the way that everybody thinks. But it isn't the way an audience thinks.
You must not lose sight of the well-authenticated psychological fact that each individual is more interesting to himself than any other individual is. To him, and that includes you and me, the most interesting thing on earth is himself. But, unfortunately, that isn't the way it works out with other people. Those people are more interested in themselves, the dopes! Imagine! To them THEY are the chief interest.
Since you are paid to interest THEM, and not yourself, you must forego your own preferences and play to the preferences of the people out front.
Don't take your own opinion as to audience interest retention. Take the opinion of an honest advisor who can see you as the audience sees you. You can't possibly appraise yourself. In case of doubt, it is better to err on the side of under-estimating your personal magnetism.
So make all of your numbers SHORT. Do them in the most direct manner possible. This was emphasized when we discussed economy. It was also emphasized when we discussed lift and action and movement. Probably you are beginning to realize that I have been using different words to say the same thing for quite a while now.
All of these various words, economy, lift, movement, action, and precise attack, are merely different facets of one inescapable, all-powerful truth that permeates the show business from start to finish: Make each of your numbers as SHORT AS POSSIBLE. Get your act over with AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
Get to the point. Be brief. Keep interesting them. Quit before they've had enough.
<-|!*!|C|I|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|22|23|24|25|->
<-|Top|Showmanship For Magicians|Trick Brain|Magic By Misdirection|Mail|->