Well, this sure has not gotten quite the response I would've liked to see, it's always nice to see what other peoples thinking is. Ah well, the response garnered was intriguing none the less
Thanks guys for responding.
The truth is I have actually already done the shows, why did I say I hadn't, well I didn't want it to seem like a challenge to see whether you could come up with a
'better' routine. But also for another reason, to see how many would suggest learning new material with such a short timeframe to get to comfortable performance standard.
I really enjoyed what some of you guys suggested, and if I could go back and do it again
(hopefully the school will put the arts festival on again and I'll be invited back, but let's not hope for too much) then I would certainly consider what some of you suggested.
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However, here is the following of what I
actually did. The school was a Catholic school and a gambling demonstration was out of the question unfortunately!
Being as I only had 15 minutes, I planned a 3 effect mentalism routine consisting of:
Prior Commitment -
Simon Aronson
Radar Deck -
Richard Osterlind
Diplopia (variant) -
Paul Vigil
I had timed these in my own time at home and it came to around 15 minutes, slightly over in fact, which was fine. I was a happy bunny... However, I learned something very quickly after the first show, there simply was not enough time to do these effects justice and have fun at the same time. I just hadn't accounted for the by-play with the spectators, little mis-haps here and there...
How did I adapt this for the next shows? Simple, I just did one effect per show with a preface that would lead nicely into what I do in magic. I won't explain my patter/running for all, but rather my favourite.
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After my friend had finished his routine of being a student Sleight of Hand, he introduced me as the student of Sleight of Mind.
I started by having everyone stand up to try a group experiment, including the teacher; there's nothing like group participation. I proceeded to write something secret on a small whiteboard and then took them through a process wherein by they would construct a playing card in their mind, bit by bit.
(A lot of you will recognise this as a psychological force - though, I'd prefer to call it a psychological nudge-in-the-right-direction)
Once everyone had constructed a playing card, I started whittling down the group, narrowing down the parameters of the card I'd written down on the whiteboard, a red card... a card above five...
Usually there would be about 3-5 people left standing, in some cases only 1 and in some cases unfortunately none at all
(but this was fine). I revealed the card as the
7 of Hearts. If the
'force' hit, then obviously reactions would be very well received and all was well and leaded into my passion for influence. If the force didn't hit, it was the case that people picked up on different bits of the card, a lot would have thought of 7 and most will have got the heart. The trouble with this I found was how to turn that from something which is possible through chance and turn it into an effect that gives me some credibility... How, by briefly explaining the
'force' and running back through what I did. Now, not only does this give me credibility, but it raises interest into what else I can do, they
want to see more, if that makes sense.
So, then I moved into
Aronson's incredible effect
Prior Commitment, those of you who know and perform it will know how awesome this effect is. Briefly:
- I would be genuinely blindfolded
- 2 Spectators would cut into the deck and show the cards they cut to
- They replace the cuts and make sure the deck is square
- Only then am I allowed to see
- I spread the deck to reveal 2 face-up jokers! What a climax, right?!
- I remove the jokers and attempt to get impressions of where their cards are in the deck i.e. where they cut to.
I count down to the 2 positions, 18 and 43 isolating the cards at those positions and recap the impossible conditions for me to know where their cards could be. They name their cards and I reveal their freely chosen cards at those positions, an absolute miracle
But... And I remind them, my true interest is influence... So I reveal that all along I'd hoped they'd cut those cards at 18 and 43, how can I prove this... By showing that on the back of the Jokers, one for each spectator are written in permanent pen
18 and
43. This visual interrupt to an already impressive effect is a nice addition that leads to a nice 2-climax effect.
How were they influenced? I explain to them that from the very moment they walked into the room they were influenced, I ask one of the spectators to look to a calendar on the wall, there is a large black mark in one of the dates the
18th and the other spectator and the whole audience to look at the classroom's white board where the date is
43rd of June; madness.
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All this, leads to a comfortable round of applause for both myself and my friend and also sometimes left time for them to ask questions about our magic. A lot of the questions were how long we'd been doing it and many of them came back at lunchtime to see if we would perform some more magic for them. A successful week in my opinion.
If any of you guys have any questions, suggestions or hatred about how I've disgraced the art somehow, feel free to post.
I leave you with a picture of myself performing
Prior Commitment and you can see the kind of backdrop we had, pertaining to the 'Art'/Background of magic, something a little different which, I feel made the whole thing more intriguing.
Click Me to see Sean looking ridiculous
Thanks for reading such a long-winded post!
- Sean
