Cheap Advice
As I mentioned on Tuesday, I spent last weekend doing a Vaudeville show in which I had a set of small acts spread throughout the show. I decided to try an experiment in audience training (in the interest of science!)… The first time I came out on stage, the audience had no idea who I [...]
The past few weeks I have been going to the “Open Mic” night at a local comedy club to work on some material. Open Mic nights are good places to, well, “not be brilliant” in front of a non-magician, non-family-member audience, because they’ll be totally honest in their responses to your material. Here are some [...]
“… you can amaze people once or twice, but if you can make them laugh you can entertain them forever.” Jeff Dunham, All By My Selves I like to call myself a “hack magician”. “Hack” in this case is a bit of self-deprecating humor, implying that I know that I’m not the greatest magician in [...]
Magicians are, by their nature, rather reclusive. We tend to practice by ourselves or with small groups of fellow magicians. We usually go out to gigs on our own or, in the case of larger acts, with our partners and crew. Regardless of how many or how few people you have as part of your [...]
One of the things I find myself doing from time to time is wandering through craft stores. Usually I’m doing this because my wife wants to go to one, but… I’ve found a lot of useful stuff wandering the rows of scrapbooking, wood, paint and random other supplies. Poster board, too. It’s odd, but in [...]
Hey Kids! A very Happy Merry Jolly Festive whatever it is you do during the cold, dark winter months from all of us… ok both of us… here at the Tobias the Adequate show to all of you. Yeah, even you there. Here’s some Cheap Advice and a video: I you purchase a book with [...]
“The Hook brings you back…” – Blues Traveller No matter how much pretty stuff we have to show our audiences, they have to, at some level, care about what you’re doing on stage if they’re going to stick around. Sometimes it’s easy. You ask someone if they want to see a trick and they do. [...]
One of the strangest things I’ve heard, and frighteningly enough heard with such frequency, is that magicians tend to be, well… socially awkward. This is even more disturbing because, well… it’s often true. We use magic as a lever, a way to have something “over” someone else, sometimes a shield, sometimes just a way to [...]
Continue reading about Books Magicians Should Read: The Golden Rule of Schmoozing
I’ve talked about the necessity of having a sign if you’re a stage act – it identifies you as, yes, an actual show, and gives your show an air of “legitimacy” (oh look he’s someone who’s performing and not some random weirdo who walked out onto the stage). I’d like to talk about another form [...]
Mike Caveney – magician, author, collector, and all around nifty guy, has said more than once, “Consistancy is the key to good magic.” I agree with that, but I also believe that good magic evolves with the number of times you perform it. Case in point – One of the centerpieces of my current show [...]
