Stabilizing

Recently, I talked about a bit about using a smartphone camera to shoot quality video. If you missed it, you can read it HERE. It can certainly be beneficial to those looking to shoot something on the fly without the need for a lot of expensive equipment. In this month’s newsletter, I would like to add to that and share a few options for stabilizing your camera and preventing your footage from...

The Monkey and the Wall

This is a presentation for Robert Neale’s lovely effect Brick Wall. Monkey and The Wall One day, the spirits of the world above and the spirits of the world below met to solve a problem. What to do about Monkey? They were tired of his tricks. “Let’s pool our resources,” Said the Jade-Emperor. He always talked like a politician. “We can build a wall to keep him out of both our...

Magic as Reassurance

A magician begins “doing incredible things with big silver hoops” for no less a purpose that to REASSURE a spectator.  (This we learn in an intriguing illustration in The Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 12, 1904.)  We don’t typically associate reassurance — the restoration of confidence — to tricksters; we all know that a “confidence man” is ironically named. Even so:...

Scriptwriting for Magicians

One of the questions that I get asked the most at our classes is “Is it better to script or just to talk naturally?” When I hear this question, I usually regard this as someone who is asking me to give them permission to be lazy. An argument I hear frequently, is “Well, I don’t want to sound like I’m reciting words from a script.” The answer to this argument is that we are actors playing the...

Mentioning the Message

About a week ago, I was at Jeff McBride’s home and we started talking about communication, when he asked me to write an article about ten ways to get your message across.  Enjoy! Give them what they want The audience you are delivering to wants to be told what they want to hear. If you make them sit too long, you have lost them. It is better to leave them wanting more.  As far as content...

First Impressions

You never know who you are really talking to. They could be a terrorist, or a great leader. Let me explain…. It started in Israel. A bomb had blown up in a tourist section of Jerusalem. Dozens of people were dead or injured and all of our major convention shows were cancelled. A young magician, born in Italy, now living in Budapest, named David, was in a challenging situation with the management...

Turn Up the Light

Magic is the shadow cast by the fire of the soul. — Michael Fraughton Dear student of the art, There are some who say that magic is a dance between shadow and light. There must be darkness to create mystery, true, but there must also be light in order to perceive it. One of the practical problems of darkness and light is encountered onstage. A PRACTICAL PROBLEM I often get asked by young...

Mario’s Top Ten Tips for Street Performing

I have been street performing for more then 15 years and I love what I do – it has allowed me to travel, teach, and perform at festivals all around the world.  It has  given me the training and experience required for me to gain work as a festival worker, cabaret performer, close up magician and write and perform my own one man show.  Everything I do stems from street theatre.  I have...

Mike Larkin Interviews Paul Draper

There are many highly specialized brilliant performers in the world of magic. Amazing stage artists such as Lance Burton, experts at the card table like Guy Hollingworth and masters of manipulation such as Juliana Chen. But modern day Renaissance man Paul Draper takes a different approach, proclaiming himself to be a perspicacious polymath. Despite ostensibly being a mentalist, the...

People Support What They Help Create

NO SPECTATORS One of the maxims I live by is “People support what they help create.”  This holds true in just about any organization, political movement, internet group, club and yes, even in the theatre or at a magic show.   I currently feel that the more audience participation there is in a show, the more successful that show becomes.  If you look at current Las Vegas shows, the ones that have...