Routines I CAN'T Do

Maybe I should say I won't do them. Some of them I want to do too. The Bowling Ball production. What a beautiful effect and done by EVERYONE! Cardiographic, also a great trick and frankly fits my character well, but everyone is doing it. Though I think a different take on it might be ok.

The Losander Table is another effect I totally love but at this point with so many people doing this, I am afraid I'll have to opt out for now. Sadly there are a whole series of great tricks that I just won't go near because they are being done by so many other performers.

My feeling is you have to offer something different or you have to do something so well that you are clearly the best at it. Look at it like this, if all the magic performers are doing the same routines, what does the buyer of entertainment do to differentiate? The buyer looks to find the cheapest act. That doesn't help anyone.

I've also noticed for illusionists it's often the smaller tricks that everyone goes away talking about, yet those seem to be the ones that they put the least amount of time in. Instead they are doing the standard routines. I often wonder what would happen with a straight jacket escape if it was really played up for what it is, stressful, confining, constricting and near impossible to escape from. But what you see instead are performers using jackets too big, getting out in under 10 seconds or using the jacket as a comedy routine. The moment it's used for comedy, the 'tough escape' part of it goes right out the window. Granted there are a lot of comedic moments possible in the routine, but all out comedy for something as powerful as the straightjacket, I don't know. I've written a lot about the SJ in my older blog and it's something I love and hate. I hate that it's over done, but I think in the right hands it's still powerful.

All the magic above is powerful, don't get me wrong. But the first thing any act has to do is get past the buyer, they have to please the booker, they come first. The audience actually comes second as strange as that sounds. If you don't please the buyer/booker, you don't work and no one sees you.

I'd put the following routines in that mix:

Interlude Illusion
Origami Illusion
Sub Trunk
Modern Art
Orange, Lemon Egg Canary
Torn and Restored Newspaper
Any sort of Russian Roulette Knife Stab

those are a few off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more