It's Your Fault If Your Spectators Say This

As someone who works on television projects but specifically in the writing phase, clarity is essential to me. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that clarity is the most important thing in all of my writing.

An audience must be able to understand what you are conveying; it's the basic foundation of every magic performance. In the new book I'm writing for magicians, I highlight the key differences between fooling and confusing your audience. A lot of people the magic community views as "magicians magicians" are often the ones I believe are confusing their audience rather than fooling them.

From my perspective, hearing a spectator say, "I have no idea what just happened!" is an instant red flag. I believe that your spectator should always know precisely what happened, and the magic comes from not knowing "how" it happened – "I have no idea how that happened!"

Ask your friends to retell what happened after you show them a trick. If they can't recount the steps you wanted them to remember, then clarity is an issue for you.

There's another big red flag I look out for when watching magicians perform. It happens when a spectator is hesitant after being asked to tell the magician crucial information like a chosen card or a thought-of word. They'll ask something like, "Do you want me to say it aloud?" or "Do you want me to tell you now?"

If you've ever had a spectator ask you these questions, you have a clarity issue – and it's a big one, too. It's a much larger problem than you might initially expect, and I'll explain why and the ways to counter it later in this article. First, something important that parlor and stage magicians often gloss over.

Top-End Anchoring

Last year, I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and at the time, I wrote about how impressed I was with the way Tom Crosbie put his audience at ease at the top of his show. A large percentage of your audience will be concerned about being picked to come on stage and embarrassing themselves. Addressing this concern early and putting your audience at ease is crucial.

Since seeing Crosie's show, I've been paying close attention to the first few minutes of every magic show I've seen. I carefully listen to what the performer has to say, and I look intently at the members of the audience around me to see how they respond.

And for the year I've been doing this, I've constantly reminded myself of a time I worked with illusionist Luis de Matos on a large stage show. I can't remember if he'd just recently seen The Lion King musical, but he sure as heck sounded obsessed with the show's opening.

If you've ever seen the live Disney musical, you'll know it begins with a sequence that would happily be the finale of any other stage show—it's a massive song with dancers and animals all throughout the audience and on stage.

Luis de Matos was obsessed with what he referred to as this "Lion King Moment." He insisted an excellent magic show should start with its own "Lion King Moment" to blow the audience away and put them at ease for the rest of the show. I believe the way he described it was that you need to give the audience their money's worth in the first five minutes – Whatever your first illusion is, the whole audience needs to think then, well, that was worth the price of admission alone.

While it's great to address people's concerns about being picked to come on stage and to give people their money's worth in the first trick of your act, I think there might be a big question on every audience member's mind that needs answering as soon as possible.

"What the heck is a magic show?"

Whenever you sit in the audience before a magic show, it's not long before you hear the people around you discussing what they're about to see. Most people have never seen a magic show in their lives, and the rest have only seen one or three. And the concept of a magic show isn't exactly intuitive. Is it like going to a theatre show, a stand-up comedy act, or a dance show? Nobody knows.

As I've spent the last year paying close attention to magicians' introductions to their shows and keeping an eye on the audiences around me, I've noticed something – hardly any of the audiences know what a magic show is. You can see it so clearly. They're sat there wondering, okay, so what exactly is this going to be then? After about twenty-five minutes, a few tricks in, you'll see them start to settle into it, confident they've got a better idea of what the rest of the show has in store for them.

Why make them wait that long?

That's twenty-five minutes wasted, during which your audience spends longer trying to figure out your show's format instead of relaxing and enjoying it as you intended.

Part of the reason I am so confident in this assertion is that I've also witnessed the opposite take place.

When the performer lays out the format of a magic show at the top of the show, the audience gets immediately put at ease—we got it, let's enjoy the show.

This is called anchoring, and it means you're setting the audience's expectations based on something you defined.

Salespeople use anchoring all the time. If you were to tell someone who is booking you for a magic gig, "I usually charge $3,000 for corporate shows like this, but I'm willing to work with you on the budget. How much do you have in mind?" This statement anchors the potential customer to the $3,000 price point.

You can anchor your audience's expectations at the top end of the show in a way that allows you to exceed them throughout the show and also puts them at ease.

Without this moment of clarity, your audience will spend the first twenty-five minutes trying to suss out what exactly they just got themselves into.

It only takes the addition of one line of dialogue, like, "For the next hour, you're going to witness a ton of impossible magic tricks with cards, coins, and a few objects we'll borrow from the audience – I promise I'll give them all back! We'll end the show with a big finale, but let's get started already!"

You should aim to quickly outline the sorts of things they'll see (the type of magic you do), the length of the show, and who will be on stage.

If it's a spot at a corporate gig, you might say, "For the next twenty minutes, I'm going to show you three impossible magic tricks, and I'm going to read the mind of your CEO—I promise I'll only tell everyone the good things I find in that mind of yours!"

If it's a guest spot on a stand-up comedy night, you might say, "For the next ten minutes, we're going to combine comedy and magic to show you three awesome magic tricks that will all be as fooling as they will be stupid, silly, and ridiculous."

If you ever want to see great examples of top-end anchoring, watch a street performer. With the total opposite of a captive audience, they have no choice but to heavily anchor their show at the start so their audience sticks around.

"Should I say it out loud?"

This question is also sometimes worded as, "Do you want me to tell you?" and it should be seen as a giant red flag that you did something wrong. Pause now for a moment and really figure out what it means if the spectator is cautious to tell you their choice of, say, a playing card or a thought-of word out loud.

Perhaps they didn't understand your instruction, which highlights the lack of clarity in your question.

But, I think it's more likely that the audience member is under the impression that telling you the choice they made would ruin the trick or make it considerably less impressive. In simple terms, they're thinking, but if I tell the magician the name of the card I chose, that'll ruin the trick – where's the magic? Of course, you could counter with the fact that magic is coming very soon, but I don't think you should ever have to counter a spectator with anything.

Unless you are bursting a spectator's expectations with comedy, you should avoid doing so at all costs. If your spectator is under the impression a trick is about to take place, then you should do said trick. Unfortunately, if the trick they believe will take place isn't the correct trick, then that's on you.

If a spectator is hesitant to tell you something out loud because the trick they're expecting you to perform would be ruined or become less impressive, then we need to work backward and find ways to avoid their hesitation entirely.

Here's how to add clarity to this scenario in a number of tried and tested ways.

Set Expectations Early

It is perfectly reasonable to say to your spectator, "In a moment, I'm going to ask you to name a card out loud." You're setting their expectations for what is to come. If you start by simply saying, "Think of a card," it becomes confusing later because why didn't you just ask them to say it aloud in the first place?

When asked by a magician to think of something in their head, most spectators assume their minds are about to be read. You can overcome this easily by simply telling them early on that they'll be asked to say it aloud later in the trick.

Tell everyone – not just me.

This is one of the simplest ways to avoid the clarity issue with spectators. Asking a spectator, "For the first time, say the name of the celebrity you chose," could easily result in them cautiously asking, "Do you want me to say it out loud?" But, if instead, you say, "For the first time, tell everyone the name of the celebrity you chose," you're much less likely to get the same pushback because even though it is understood that you can read minds, we know the same is not the case for the audience in the room.

An even better version of this involves more natural motivation, such as asking them to tell another spectator so that something can take place. For example, a spectator might think of a page number and then tell a second spectator so the second spectator can turn to the page. Or they might think of a celebrity and say the name aloud so a second spectator can look up the celebrity's birthday.

Commit to the decision.

Time stamping can be used to commit to your end of the interaction early. You will never get a spectator questioning whether they're supposed to say their choice out loud if you've just written down your prediction on a super large poster board, thrown the pen away, and shown your written prediction to one member of the audience.

By simply holding a prediction envelope with a question mark on it, you'll find it far less likely for a spectator to question whether they're supposed to tell you what they're thinking of.

You can also do this in opposition, so the spectator locks in their answer and commits to their decision. This works really well because you're giving them a reason to say the thought out loud. "Okay, now that you've landed on a playing card in your head, I want you to say it out loud for the first time so we can lock in your selection, and so you can't change your mind."

Invest in Clarity

I know the advice in this article will seem self-evident to many readers or perhaps unimportant to others. But I do feel the idea of clarity is not discussed enough because most of what magicians learn is squeezed into ten-minute tutorials for toy magic tricks—and because an industry defined by secrecy doesn't always emphasize clarity and openness.

I often see spectators confused about whether they should say the thing they thought of aloud or to the magicians. It might feel small each time it happens, but I promise you it's a red flag pointing to something worrying – a lack of clarity in your magic and the fact that you are letting down the spectator's expectations, which you played a hand in creating.

And for the people performing parlor and stage magic shows, tell your audience what they're in for so they don't spend the first twenty-five minutes of your show trying to suss it out. Close-up magicians are lucky; laypeople have seen enough internet clips and TV show segments to understand the concept. But with few TV magic specials online and the opportunity to see magic live so rare, you have no choice but to be the one to set the expectations for your stage and parlor shows.