5 More Ways You're Secretly Sabotaging Your Performance

5. The Wrong Audience
When you get right down to it, most people really have no idea who they're rehearsing for. They have no target in mind. Whether it be based on simple demographics or mutual interests. It's ridiculous, really. I have to hold the old guard magicians at least partly responsible on this one. They talk as much as anyone else about developing an individual style, but not many of them react positively to seeing younger magicians, no matter how talented, being topical or deviating from accepted norms.

And I also have to hold the new guard to task for this as well. David Blaine opened a lot of doors for magicians into the mainstream, but that doesn't mean that being fresh and topical is a license to perform to just anybody. Everyone can enjoy magic, but in the same way that anyone can enjoy movies. Not everyone is going to want to see a romantic comedy, nor is everyone going to want to see a horror movie. They have their own audiences.

By all means, experiment. But in the course of that experimentation, you need to find who consistently responds the best to your material and get yourself in front of them more often.

4. Too Much of a Good Thing
I'm going to get so much hate mail for this, but... Do you know what people think when someone like Uri Geller tries to move an object telekinetically, and it only moves just a little bit? They're thinking, "Wow, it really moved!"

Do you know what they're thinking when someone like Michael Ammar makes a small object float over a distance of several feet and even do some acrobatics? "Wow, that is really good thread he's using! I can't even see it!"

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. The audience isn't stupid and they can only suspend their disbelief so far before reality kicks in. Drama and uncertainty are much more powerful than just tooling around and showing off. Richard Osterlind says that magicians and mentalists should endeavor to be more like Tom Bombadil from "The Lord of the Rings" in that material objects are but playthings to god among men. To an extent I agree. Magic must be sublime to be effective. But there's no inherent drama in everything being effortless.

One of the things that made Geller a success was that he genuinely looked pleased every time something happened around him. If the spoon bent or the compass moved, he was bloody thrilled! For him to be so excited over such a small thing made it into a really big deal.

Try it yourself. Stop showing off and understate things. Don't give your audience too much of a good thing.


3. Wrong Hemisphere
Are you watching people's faces to gauge their thoughts during a performance? Do you think you can tell when people are lying by how their eyes move? You're kidding yourself. There's a reason the term poker face exists.

From early childhood, we're taught how to conceal our emotions on our faces. "Don't make that face, young man!" People's eyes generally don't move when they're lying because we're so damn good at it already. When a parent tells a child to look them in the eye and tell the truth, the kid's probably going to lie anyway. He just gets really good at making eye contact when lying.

So watching people's faces to properly gauge emotional reactions isn't as effective as you thought. What should you be looking at? Their legs. Not directly, of course. It's very awkward to be staring at someone's lower half and lamely comment, "Nice shoes," when they call you on it. But you should be peripherally aware of what their legs and feet are doing. The reason being that as our main source of locomotion, they naturally align themselves with where we want to be.

For example, people who want to invite others to conversation will face the person they're currently talking to at an angle, creating an opening as if asking someone to come and complete a triangle. On the other hand, if one of their feet is pointing away from the conversation like they were caught in mid-step, it means they want to get away.

Learn to recognize these signs and they will help you out significantly.

2. You Have No Personality
Irving Goffman wrote that people project a variety of different personas depending on context. Who we are in the privacy of our homes is rarely who we are in public, for example. Most people however are not aware of this. It's such a routine, familiar part of their life that they don't recognize it. And therein lies a problem.

Performers have to really sell themselves to an audience. They have to remember you. But all too often I hear young magicians who insist, "I'm just myself when I perform." Technically it's not a lie if you believe it. That still doesn't make it any less false. I say this because these kids unanimously describe themselves in the same, generic, utterly forgettable way. They describe themselves in a fashion that you'd expect from a con artist using the Fohrer effect to claim he's reading auras.

And that brings us to the heart of the issue. With no self-awareness or goals, these kids are simply using the Fohrer effect to describe how they imagine they're coming across. In reality, they're bland and samey. There's nothing to distinguish them from some other no-name schmuck.

In the previous article on this subject, I touched upon how most people don't get the reactions they want because they don't actually know what reactions they want to begin with. And joined at the hip is the problem that they're not projecting the demeanor or persona needed to foster those reactions.


1. Your Blood, Sweat and Tears Are Showing
Yes, I know you spent hours working on your double lift. Yes, I know it took you months of rehearsal before you felt ready to show David Roth's hanging coins to a live audience. Yes, I understand you want validation for those hours of work. But you're not going to get it.

People want to believe that the things we see are sublime. We're in awe of the natural world that never reveals its mysteries and workings to us. Seasons change, the sun gives life, wildfires destroy in minutes what took years to grow and build. That sense of awe never left us. And we want to capture some of the sublime for ourselves.

If you ever get the chance to, attend a Japanese tea ceremony. It's a testament to austerity and elegance. You need that in your performance. Talk less, don't explain things and let action imply power beneath the veneer of appearances.

That's not to say that your performing character (and if you're saying to yourself right now that you don't have a character and you're just yourself, shut up and re-read the previous point) can't explain what he's doing. He just chooses not to. If you can bend metal with your mind and this is a perfectly normal, mundane thing for you, would you really feel the need to explain it every chance you got? And if there is no explanation, then you have to run with that as well.

The point is that less is more. Accept the fact that no one cares about your hours of work perfecting sleight of hand in your room. You'll find that once you stop seeking validation for that work, it's liberating.


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