Dual reality is a magic principle in which one person/group experiences a different reality to another, usually more important, person/group.

When I watched Kanye West on the Glastonbury Pyramid stage restart his performance mid-song, I was equally bemused but not quite as upset at the thirty thousand people cramped into the muddy field. Kanye prioritised the experience of the millions who were to watch the clipped off performance online over the thousands of live festival-goers.

In a way, that’s dual reality — but dual reality in magic is far less Kanye.

More often than not, it’s simply two groups of people experiencing different tricks, or sometimes the same overall trick with different details. It’s something that’s utilized in everything from card magic to stage and TV magic.

Card Tricks

When I consider the most powerful examples of dual reality in card magic, I immediately think about The Hollingworth Principle. It’s likely the most deceptive and minimal use of dual reality out there. It’s a principle I’ve used many times on television when making signed objects travel from one place to another. It’s so minimal because the two realities are identical in nature; both parties see the same trick, but the audience at home sees a different signature — meaning they can see the fake signed object vanish and appear immediately. In contrast, the live spectator only sees the originally signed object with a little more delay and switches.

Stage Tricks

When I think about dual reality in stage magic, I think about the Q&A routine in which a mentalist reads the minds of those in the audience and reveals facts that were definitely not written on the cards before the show. The most powerful part of a Q&A routine is when the mentalist supposedly diverts away from what was meant to be written on the card, usually a question, and starts revealing information they could not possibly know.

Some mind readers are talented at doing this with the question alone, keeping information from within the question to reveal later and splitting…

…into the question of moving to Australia and separately revealing their current job. Others have extra space on the cards for people to write additional details. The dual reality comes from the wider audience not being aware of the additional details experiences a more impressive trick.

Worth noting that there’s usually a lot more at play, and the best Q and A acts combine several lovely methods.

TV Tricks

When I think about TV magic, I think about key details being left on the cutting room floor, such that the audience does not see something crucial like a force. But there can be more extreme and morally absurd dual reality TV tricks. You might see editing tricks to paint out something you always planned for the live audience to see.

Perhaps you’ll drop in a shot of a more impressive levitation after only floating up an inch or so for the live audience on the streets.

Some aspects of dual reality in TV magic are unavoidable. Due to the nature of television, it would be a bit odd if an object teleported from one location to a further away one and the TV did not immediately crash zoom in to a close-up on the object, for example. This isn’t cheating when I’ve done it; there are no cuts or editing tricks, just the Hollingworth principle mentioned above.

There’s often slight overlap with pre-show, like when an audience at home believes the magician is using the spectator’s item rather than an item a production member just gave them to hold.

My first time

My first experience of dual reality came in the trailer for Alvo Stockman’s Penguin Magic trick Battle Of The Sexes. The trick involves two people reading different words when they think they are reading the same.

After seeing the trailer, baby Rory set out to combine two songs such that one track would play out the left earphone and the other from the right side of a pair of headphones. I can’t quite remember what the trick became, but it was based on hitting the shuffle button and reading the mind of one spectator and then changing the memory of the other.

The best recent ballsy use of dual reality

The most powerful use of dual reality in recent magic is by Michael Murray in The Solution. In the trick, the spectator seemingly solves s shuffled cube behind their back. Once again, it’s important to note that The Solution is not “instant stooging” as the trick is still fooling for the main spectator. Both the spectator on stage and the audience at home experience different tricks, but both experience fooling magic.

Use dual reality to enhance the magic you already perform

Great consultants will look at magic through the lens of techniques like dual reality to enhance existing tricks. I can think of two occasions we added dual reality to existing tricks for television. On both occasions, the magicians tell me they now only perform the trick with dual reality.

Tiny small tweaks can enhance the trick for the larger audience at home.

I think the most basic example of doing so is via a dual force.

I’ll be candid, I’ve seen this used here, there and everywhere by television magicians, and no one has been able to tell me its origin.

Dual Force

The dual force is a simple way to enhance a force, even one you might already do via a SvenPad or an AmazeBox. Essentially, the wider audience believes that there is an even wider range of outcomes than there truly is.

For example, you might flick through a SvenPad or cards that are about to be dropped into an AmazeBox, which read something like this:

• Think of any celebrity

• Think of any animal

• Think of any movie

• Think of any pop star

• Think of any vegetable

That’s what everyone sees, so it’s safe to assume that there will be an element of free choice in the final thing the spectator thinks up. You can imagine the magician first revealing that they are thinking about a pop star, then revealing they’re tall, maybe blonde, American, and wait… are they, Taylor Swift?

The crowd goes wild.

Of course, the method here is that the card the spectator chose reads:

• Think of Taylor Swift.

Like all of the best examples in this post, both realities are great, unlike Kanye’s Glasto performance. The wider audience experiences a miracle, but so does the main spectator, who essentially experiences an entry-level SvenPad force.

I love the dual force because all you need to do is write something different on the SvenPad, and you’ve improved the trick by a factor of a thousand. How often do you see magicians walking around with SvenPads full of superhero names or types of vegetables? How much stronger would their magic be if they used the dual force instead?

Look at the tricks you already perform and ask yourself what does each viewer experience? When you do this, you’ll start to find pockets of attention that only select viewers experience — in this example, it’s when the main spectator looks at the force. Then ask yourself how you can exploit or blow up those pockets of attention.

Answering your questions

I asked Instagram for questions about dual reality…

Don’t be Kanye. Make the magic feel equally impressive for the weaker side of the dual realities. If they don’t feel let down or disappointed, or even better, if they don’t realise their experience was different to the other reality, they won’t spoil it.

Dual reality falls apart far less often than most similar principles like instant stooging and pre-show. If you get it right, no one knows it happened. The issue you fall into on telly is that the spectator does get to see the other reality on their sofa months later. I stand by the fact that they shouldn’t notice or realise its importance if you get it right.

If dual reality is done correctly, the experience of the hero spectator will always be less magical than the audience. Your job is to convince them that there is not a more magical version going on elsewhere.

Sometimes, there can be a disconnect between the hero spectator and the wider audience when their reactions do not line up. A good way to get around this is to make it such that the hero spectator is purposely out of the loop.

For example, let’s say the audience thinks the hero had a free choice, and the hero knows they did not… you can reveal your prediction to the audience in such a way that the hero does not see your prediction or know that the performer even made a prediction. That way, you don’t have their confused reaction when you predict something they were restricted to choose. Mentalists will often do this, perhaps while the hero’s back is turned or while they’re carrying out another task.

Beyond the usual TV tropes of seemingly “borrowing” an object, there are a few smart ways to use dual reality on social media. I saw magicians getting deeply upset back when social media magicians were faking reactions, made obvious by the fact that the stooges were stood behind a card colour change so they would see an exposed method. I understand their frustration, but it did spark a few ideas.

Around the time, I started experimenting with performing two tricks at once. The basic concept was that you perform a trick that is made more impossible because someone stands behind the trick and reacts. In actual fact, they are reacting to a different trick entirely.

For example, a levitation or an object appearing might be totally exposed from the back. But if you position a spectator behind you and they’re reacting to another trick (unaware of the main trick), it might enhance the main illusion for people at home.

As for FaceTime magic, I have some limited experience I can write about soon.