Please Stop Telling Spectators It's An Ordinary Deck
Magicians should do this instead...
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Thereâs a phrase I repeat a lot when consulting for magicians: âYouâre running without being chased.â
Imagine, for a moment, that you go out for a meal with a friend who likes to play practical jokes. You sit down and they bring over two drinks. As they slide one drink over to you, they assure you, âThis is a perfectly ordinary cup of soda.â
Riiiiiiight. Yeah, thereâs no way that soda is ordinary.
Itâs gonna be vinegar or something awful.
â
You might say everyone is chasing magicians, but I would disagree. Youâre a magician, here to perform secret methods; your audience has bought into that idea and wants to see magic tricks. Why presume everyone wants to ruin your tricks and figure them out?
Letâs get this straight:
Ordinary humans only know about ordinary decks of cards.
You never need to repeat the âno threads, magnets or stringsâ line you hear in all the magic trailers that areâyou guessed itâmade for magicians.
Okay, some of you remain unconvinced. Youâre no fool. There must be members of the audience who hate magic. Theyâre probably sitting there questioning everything you do. They probably want to yell out how they think the trick is done. By doing so, theyâd ruin the magic for everyone. Even if the method they suggest is totally wrong, itâd still kill the vibe.
The problem is that by interrupting your own performance to tell the audience how the trick could be done (with a special deck), you are now the annoying person ruining it for the rest of the audience. You just killed the vibe.
By saying, âThis is an ordinary deck,â youâre often saying, âI could just do this with a special trick deck.â Anyone who hadnât thought of that possibility hears, âI could just do this with a special trick deck, and you wouldnât have noticed anyway.â And if Iâm in the audience, Iâm thinking, Use a trick deck then, you tit.
I understand the insecurity magicians feel and the need to fool every single member of the audience as much as humanly possible. But these statements always feel to me like a comedian explaining why a joke is funny to the only audience member who didnât laugh. In many ways, telling your audience a deck is ordinary is like a comedian telling their audience that their next story really happened.
Waitâwhat? Have all the other comedy stories been fictional? Should we assume every deck of cards the magician picked up earlier werenât ordinary decks?
Hereâs the solution, and itâs another thing I say a lot: âShow, donât tell.â Show us the deck is ordinary. If you believe there are members of the audience who will question the validity of your props, you should establish that they are normal by showing them:
Shuffle the cards.
Hand them out.
Remove the jokers.
Drop a few cards.
Act normal.
By showing the audience the deck is normal instead of telling them so, you:
Show the annoying spectators they are wrong about how they think the trick is done.
Allow the other spectators who arenât even looking for a method to enjoy your performance, and enhance the trick in general.
Even better, by doing this silently, you force the annoying spectators to âlie to themselves.â Thereâs a great lecture Teller gave in which he explains the best lies are the ones you tell yourself.
â
Imagine, again, that youâre out with the prankster friend. They return to your booth with two drinks. Instead of saying, âThis is a perfectly ordinary drink,â they pretend to accidentally take a sip of yours. âOh, this oneâs yoursâsorry,â they say before sliding the drink across the table to you.
And just like that, Iâm drinking the vinegar.
â
Pssst⊠none of the above applies to âchallengeâ magic tricks, like walking through a brick wall. Tricks that are presented as a challenge to figure out rely heavily on a combination of verbal and physical convincers.
âđŒHey! This essay is featured in my new book âMagic Musings.â If you want to collect a limited edition book filled with magic essays like this one â buy the book.
âYou titâ made me chuckle more than Iâd like to admit
On the other hand, I'd love to see you begin by saying "This is an extraordinary deck of playing cards." And then I don't know whatâthat's for you. But you end by giving it away.