Dear Jerxy: Diminishing Magician-Centrism

Dear Jerxy: How do I add more “audience-centric” elements to a routine? Since magic books (besides yours) weren’t written with this concept in mind, is there a process you use to take a standard trick that’s intended to be a demonstration of a magic ability and make it more audience-centric?

Signed,
Seeking Audience-Centric Knowledge

Dear SACK: I will get to your question in a moment with three techniques I use to make a magician-centric trick less so. But you’re giving me a good opportunity to address the “audience-centric” term that I first threw out on this site six years ago.

I’ve used this term in two different ways, and I think it will help for me to clarify those two ways, at least until I come up with a different term to differentiate them.

Sometimes I use “audience-centric” to describe one’s approach to magic as a hobby. And sometimes I use the term to describe a type of presentation.

Approach

The audience-centric approach to magic as a hobby involves showing magic to other people as the end goal. It’s concerned more with presentational elements than methodological elements. The question at the heart of audience-centric performing for the hobbyist is, “How do I best find opportunities to give people as many different types of positive experiences with magic as possible without overwhelming them, coming off weird, or showing them so much that it takes away from the specialness of the interaction?”

The magician-centric approach to magic as a hobby involves a focus on anything the spectators don’t experience directly: creating new sleights, practicing incredibly difficult techniques for hours, learning magic history, building gimmicks, watching magic, etc. This approach prioritizes one’s interest in magic itself and its inner workings, rather than one’s interest in performing for other people.

People assume a value judgment when I use these terms, like, “Ah… I am the noble audience-centric performer, sharing the joy of magic with the people! And you are the lowly, self-centered, magician-centric hobbyist.” But that’s not what I mean. Most people with an interest in magic are some measure of both of these things. And both of these approaches can be done lazily or in a way that they contribute something to the art.

The only mistake I think people make is when they are the sort of person who is solely interested in just one of these approaches, but they feel obligated to engage in the other approach as well. If your focus is solely performing for others, you shouldn’t force yourself to spend hundreds of hours on a pass because they say it’s an important sleight. It’s just not worth the time investment for your priority. And if you just like reading up on the techniques and practicing tricks for your own amusement, you shouldn’t feel obligated to go out and perform for others. If you don’t have that inclination naturally, you’ll probably be doing more harm than good by forcing yourself to perform.

Presentation

This is what the original email was referring to.

In Magician-Centric presentations, the magician is the one who is causing the magic through his skill or ability (this ability/skill may be played as a “real” or supernatural). A magic trick with no presentation is implicitly magician-centric. If I take a sponge ball and split it into two, barring any other explanation, the implied power behind that is coming from me.

In Audience-Centric presentations (aka Story-Centric, or Experience-Centric) the magician is not exhibiting a power, so a story needs to be generated that explains the phenomenon we’re witnessing. And in the process of crafting that story, the audience’s role should change from just watching a demonstration or a “show,” to one where they’re playing a more active role, even if the magician is still guiding the experience along.

Now, again, I’m not putting a value judgment on either of these things. But audiences sometimes do. A magician-centric presentation can appear—from the spectator’s perspective—as a way to boost your own ego, regardless of whether that’s your motivation or not. This is especially so if they think you’re trying to claim you really have whatever particular skill you’re demonstrating. Coming off cocky in life is not a great look generally and it’s particularly bad if they think you’re trying to come off as cool or powerful by acting like you have a skill you don’t really possess. So the magician-centric thing can be a bit of a minefield.

But for me, the bigger issue with magician-centric presentations is that they’re sort of limiting. It can feel like the same story told over and over again. “People can’t make bills float. But I can make bills float. Watch as I make this bill float.” “People can’t read minds. But I can read minds. Watch as I read minds.” “People can’t ____. But I can ____. Watch as I ____.” At its heart, that is the basic magician-centric story. If you have a constant stream of new audiences, that might not be an issue. For an amateur who performs for the same people frequently, their audience can get quickly tired of that. I’ve found that audience-centric presentations keep them engaged far longer.

But as the writer points out, most magic books are written, and tricks explained, as if—of course—you’re going to want to take credit for the magic. So most effects are built on that premise. SACK asks if there are audience-centric elements that can be added to a trick. But that’s not really how I think of it. You can either shift the presentation so it’s audience-centric or not. I don’t really have a process for that. It’s more of just an intuitive leap I make with a different story for the effect. But often tricks don’t immediately lend themselves to an obvious audience-centric presentation.

That’s fine. I still use magician-centric presentations all the time. I just don’t do too much that are really a straightforward demonstrations of my “abilities.”

The three most frequent techniques I use to tamp down the “ain’t I hot shit?” aspect of a lot of magician-centric presentations are these.

Magician-Centric Diminishers

Remove Certainty

Compare, “I’m going to read your mind. Think of a two-digit number.”

to

“Can I try something with you? This may be a giant waste of time. But I’ve been trying to learn this way of transmitting numbers ‘telepathically’ that I read about in this old book at my grandfather’s place. I think I have the idea down. And I’ve been getting pretty close. But I haven’t quite nailed it yet. Can I try it with you? It seems to work better with certain people.”

You “sense” their number, but you’re three off.

“Shoot. One more time?” And this time you nail it.

In my experience, the second way will get people much more interested, much more on your side, and much less likely to ask themselves, “Did he see the number I wrote down?”

Certainty is generally not that interesting. “They were the best baseball team the world has ever known…. and they won the championship!” is not a tagline you will find on any movie poster.

You can read more about the concept of removing certainty in this post.

Don’t Call Attention To It

The other week I was showering with a lady friend of mine. At one point during the shower the soap fell out of my hands and onto the tub floor. Without much thought I kicked the bar of soap. It traveled across the bottom of the tub, hit the curve up the side, and then shot up a few feet where I snagged it out of the air with one hand and went back to lathering myself up. The woman I was with was astonished by this little feat.

In the moment, it seemed like the most casual off-hand stunt. Now, the truth is I’ve been doing this for years, any time I drop the soap and I’m too lazy to bend over. I hit it now more often than not, but nowhere near 100%. I didn’t do it thinking, “This will impress her!” It was just a reflex.

Now, imagine it hadn’t happened in that way. Imagine I said, “Hey, watch this!” And I set the soap down. “How amazed would you be if I kicked the soap, it went across the tub, up the side, and I caught it in my hand?” Then after making sure all her attention was on me, I did it and took a bow. Suddenly this nonchalant cool moment becomes a desperate attempt to be acknowledged. This is what so much of magic feels like.

Just doing the thing without shining the spotlight on yourself beforehand is a solid way to come off as someone who doesn’t need the validation.

This sort of thing really only works for quick moments of magic. If you want more information search for posts about the Distracted Artist style on this site.

Go Absurd

The final way to take the sting out of a magician-centric presentation is to choose absurd material. If I tell you I can read your mind, or I have an incredible memory, or I can cheat at gambling and you won’t be able to catch me…. the audience may wonder, “Am I supposed to believe this? Is he really doing it? Is he pretending to do it? And if so, why is he pretending to have these skills? Is it just for fun? Or does he want me to be impressed? Do I need to pretend to be impressed?”

If your skill or ability is useless or absurd then that softens a lot of the negatives of a magician-centric presentation. (You do lose the benefit of a relatable “power” to demonstrate. But that’s just the particular trade-off of that comes with this technique. In some situations the trade-off will be worth it.)

In Manuel Llaser’s Penguin Live lecture, he does a trick where a card is selected and lost in the deck. The deck is placed on the table. He then spins a yo-yo on it’s string, and when it’s at the bottom of its descent he lets the yo-yo roll across the table, where it hits the deck and cuts the deck right at the spectator’s card.

This is a magician-centric demonstration of skill, but it’s a pretty useless one. And, in fact, the sting is taken out of it even more if you try to play it up as being something super impressive. “Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. And that’s why, for three hours a day, every day, for the last 10 years, I’ve been hitting decks of cards with a yo-yo to get it to cut at exactly the card I want it to. Some might say that’s a lot of time, but is it really? When the outcome is something so useful? To me it seems like time well spent. But here’s the deal, if I show you this, you have to promise you won’t fall in love with me. Okay? Yes, it’s very cool. Yes it’s impressive. Yes, it’s wildly sexy. But that’s not why I do it. This is about the art for me. Not pussy.”

Now, of course, any one of these approaches done consistently for the same audience would be weird and tiring. The idea is to mix it up with different variations on these themes and (for me) to focus on audience-centric presentations the majority of the time. That’s a solid way to keep your performances fresh long-term.