Rough Draft Week: Starcle Curve

In the last issue of the newsletter I wrote about The Learning Curve Universal Presentation.

This is an idea I had for using it with Dan Harlan’s Starcle trick. It gives the presentation a little more of a build and an arc, as opposed to the original. Not that there’s anything wrong with the original. This is just more my style.

So you tell people you’ve been learning the ancient Japanese art of paper tearing and offer to show them some examples.

You take a napkin and unfold it. Have a spectator write a 1 in the middle and a 1 in one of the corners. Fold the napkin back into its normal square configuration and tear out a 90 degree arc from the corner of the folded napkin that contains the center of the napkin. Unfold the frame and unfold the center to show you’ve torn out a circle of a napkin. Big fuckin’ whoop.

“That’s considered Level One Japanese paper tearing.”

Ball everything up and toss it aside.

You take a second napkin, and have the person write a 7 in the center and a 7 in one of the corners. Fold it up, as per Starcle, except for the last fold. Then with one straight tear you will tear out a star shape. Unfold the frame and center piece to show the two stars.

“That’s considered Level Seven Japanese paper tearing.”

Ball it all up and toss it aside.

“Would you like to see level 816 Japanese Paper Tearing?”

This is intriguing. They will want to see it.

Unfold a final napkin and have them write 816 in the middle and in a corner.

Fold up the napkin as per Starcle. Tear out the middle, allowing the spectator to hold onto and keep the middle piece.

You then unfold the frame, again showing a circle.

“I know, I know,” you say. “It looks like we’re back at Level One, but this is what makes it Level 816.” And you then unfold the torn out portion to show it’s a star.

I think this is pretty close to how I’ll do it going forward. But I’ve only had a chance to try it out twice, that’s why it’s in Rough Draft Week.

The first time I did it, it went quite well, but I wanted to prevent the idea that I had maybe switched in some pieces from the previous examples. That’s when I added the balling up of the old pieces, as well as the spectator writing the numbers on the napkin.

With that change, I think it’s..

Thanks to supporter PS for sending me on this path of a presentation for Starcle. He had written an email and mentioned the idea of doing Starcle twice. First just demonstrating your ability to tear out the star by itself, and then doing it again with the actual Starcle effect. That idea grew into the full presentation above.