Δ: It’s the Little Things
Hello sisters and brothers in magic! Like you, I have a deep and loving relationship with our art. I spend a great deal of my time working on magic, thinking about magic, and sharing magic with those around me. And in this series of articles, my hope is to inspire you to take a look at your favorite material and make it more thoughtful, magical, and meaningful. If you find yourself inspired or wanting to dive deeper on any of the topics at hand, I’ll be including reading resources. If you happen to read the books I mention, you will have read my favorite trilogy of magic books—a set of books written by El Maestro, Juan Tamariz, that completely changed how I think about our beloved craft.
We’ll begin with a discussion of details, appreciating that each of our gestures, words, and actions has the opportunity to aid our magical effect. Right now, think about some of your favorite pieces of magic—it could be something you’ve performed a thousand times, maybe it’s given you the strongest and most genuine reactions, or perhaps it’s a personal creation that you feel expresses your rich inner self. This may be something that you’ve worked on and performed for so long that you erroneously thought of it as “finished.” And even if you can appreciate intellectually that no piece of magic can ever be “finished,” you still may have stopped thinking a long time ago about how to improve some of your classics. However, it truly is the finest details—the ones no audience member will ever consciously notice—that will take your favorite magic to its next level.
Every piece of magic we perform can benefit from a deliberate and thorough analysis of our actions—from the noticeable ones, like what words we say and how we touch our props, to the more subtle ones, like where our eyes and feet are pointed. When we give our favorite magic the rigorous attention to detail it deserves, we can polish a good piece into a truly magical effect that will live in the memories of our audiences for years.
One of the best places to start is with the script. Whether you currently script every single word, write a basic guiding outline, or tend to improvise your patter on the fly, please consider that the details of what you say during your performances can completely change how your magic is interpreted and remembered. Carefully write the ideal script for your favorite piece of magic—include in your script all the words (and actions) that you want your audience to be aware of. In a real performance, you may forget something you planned to say, you might add an improvised line, or you may go fully off-script altogether. But if you think carefully about the precise words you plan to say, you will be more likely to hit the words that emphasize the moments you want them to remember, dramatize the impossible conditions of your effect, and conjure up the feelings you want your magic to evoke.
Turn also to your physical actions. Every movement you make, with every part of your body, will affect how your magic is perceived. When you practice your secret moves, don’t only practice the moves in isolation. Practice them alongside what else you’re saying and doing. Can you think of a natural reason to glance up, ask a question, make a quip, or otherwise occupy your audience’s mind, while you execute a secret move? Secret moves should (almost always) happen during a moment of mental relaxation, when the audience lets their guard down because they aren’t expecting anything of importance to happen in that moment. For every secret part of your favorite piece of magic, think about how you can reliably create these relaxed moments in a way that feels natural and not forced or obvious—in other words, no one will notice those moments of relaxation because they simply feel like a natural break from the attention. Your words, attitude, body language, gestures, and actions can be carefully and precisely planned to enhance your magic.
I recently thought through these types of details for a one-coin routine I do. Even though I’ve performed it for years with great success, I thought of many places where a perfectly timed glance up, a precisely placed couple of words, or a natural motivation for a movement could improve the effect and make the whole thing feel that much more magical. As just a quick example, the beginning of the routine relies on a false transfer that I’ve practiced thousands of times. But now, I’m adding a conditioning movement just before the false transfer, glancing up just before the move with a comment that forces them to think momentarily, shifting my body’s weight and posture with the “coin,” and even incorporating a small audio illusion, all in an effort to make sure that false transfer isn’t noticed, remembered, or even considered. A lot of work for just the first vanish, in the first phase of a full routine—but I’ve seen firsthand that the extra effort makes a meaningful difference.
To learn more about how your voice, body, hands, eyes, and feet can work together, I can’t recommend Juan Tamariz’ Five Points in Magic enough. This fairly small book is the beginning of his great trilogy of magic theory. In it, he gives clear, practical details for how to synchronize and utilize all these parts of your body to aid in the magical effect.
Whether you read that book or not, I’d like to encourage all of my magical friends and family to put down that shiny new trick. Instead, spend some time polishing the magic you already love and perform, by applying a rigorous analysis to all those little details. You’ll feel a new life when you perform your old favorites, since you’ll have new ideas and efforts to focus on. After enough work, you’ll see the difference it makes for your audience. Most people only see live magic a few times in their entire life. Don’t they deserve our best?
“If we want to communicate with our spectators and if we want to convey to them the sensation of the impossible, we must rely above all on ourselves... We have only one way to transmit our feelings and thoughts to the audience: through our bodies.”