Housing My Repertoire: Part Two - Rotational Housing and Homeless Tricks
/Rotational Housing
In addition to the Houses I mentioned in Tuesday’s post, I have three Rotational Houses as well.
A “Rotational House” is a location that houses a single trick, but I have many tricks that could be held there. So I hold a trick in that location until I perform it, and then I rotate in a different trick.
Here are my current Rotational Houses:
The coin pocket in my pants, which holds any small gimmick (And today holds Double Deception.)
Inside whatever book I’m reading, where I keep a trick as a bookmark. (Which is currently Random Card Generator.)
Under the cellophane of a deck of cards in my messenger bag, where I keep a single gimmicked card. (Which today is Twilight Angels.)
Now, obviously if there’s a trick I’m really excited about performing that uses a small gimmick, then that’s the trick I’ll put in my coin pocket that day. But if there’s nothing particularly calling to me, then I’ll just put the next trick in my “coin pocket rotation” list into that pocket.
Sometimes I’ll bring a trick out and perform it that day, sometimes it will sit in its “rotational house” for weeks before the opportunity comes up to perform it. That’s fine.
The goal is simply to have a system in place where all the tricks in my repertoire are in a position to be performed at regular intervals, without me having to think about it.
That’s the whole purpose of this “Housing” concept.
If this isn’t clear to you— if it just sounds like, “Have a place to put your tricks” —and you’re thinking, “So what?” It might help to understand my thinking by looking at a “homeless” trick.
Axel Hecklau has a great cap in bottle trick that’s been out for many years now.
But this isn’t a trick you can just have ready to go and do at any point in time. You have to prep the bottle and the cap.
So, maybe you prep the bottle and cap and then the trick “lives” in your refrigerator?
Well, you can’t really do that because if someone decides they want a Coke, they’re going to notice something weird going on with the bottle.
“Well, that’s okay. I live alone. No one really goes into my refrigerator but me. Even if I have people over.”
Okay, fine, but still this preparation won’t hold up to just being stored in your refrigerator for a couple of weeks or months.
So that means it’s a trick I can only do if I think to myself, “I want to do that cap in bottle trick this evening. I’m going to set that up so I can do it tonight.”
I don’t think most magicians would see that as an issue.
I see it as an issue only because I’m trying to construct a Carefree Repertoire. And that means a repertoire of tricks that are staged somewhere and ready to perform whenever the vibe is right. So all the tricks are ready to be deployed now or 8 months from now, so long as I’m in near the area where that trick is housed.
That means there are a lot of tricks I like that just don’t fit into my current performance philosophy. So I don’t bother holding space for them in my repertoire.
Outside of tricks that are crafted for a special occasion or with one specific person in mind (which wouldn’t be in my regular repertoire to being with), everything in my current repertoire is prepped and ready to go whenever I want. It’s very freeing. It means when things feel right, I can go into whatever trick is right for the moment.