During my early teens I was obsessed as hard as it came to magic. I was quite talented as well, and it was all thanks to that first DVD Born 2 Perform. Then I fell out it. I had no money to gain new products, and I was actually bored of doing the same effects over and over.

I ventured deeper into hypnosis, now in my mid-teens I'm a Certified Hypnotherapist. Looking back, it was a mistake to stop practising magic. I want to have those crowds watching me, in an awe-struck state. Even more so, I'm curious as to how my fascination into hypnosis applies into magic craft.

I want to walk into the mall downtown, approach a set, and start doing wonders. I also want to be able to keep it up for a few dozen minutes, gathering more and more onlookers. I ask this to talented street performers, what material/artist should I immediately begin to study?

Do you want to be a busker, or an unpaid street performer? Basically, are you wanting to do this for free, or collect gratuities at the end? There is different material for either form, so which are you looking at doing?

As Paul said, Kozmo's "Tales From the Street" is a great purchase for anyone looking to do ANY type of magic on the streets that gathers a tip.

Are you planning on setting up the pitch at the mall? If you are, you probably won't be allowed to ask for gratuities at the end of your performance depending on the mall, but I don't think that they can stop you from gathering a crowd though.

You might want to pick up Peter Wardells's DVD "Crowd Puller" because that obviously deals with gathering a tip, or crowd in your case. If you are performing for gratuities, get Don Driver's "Building a Tip" DVD, it is great! Gazzo has a great book on the performance of street magic that has a lot of vital information on building and keeping crowds, getting paid, etc. It's called The Art of Krowd Keeping. Jimmy Talksalot has a book out called To Lure with Spectacle that talks about life on the streets, the do's and don'ts, etc. that I would highly recommend. There is a lot more material on street performing, but that should suffice for now.



Mike

Cellini has some popular material but I don't know much about it.

Nothing. A mall is private property and if you start building a crowd, security will be on you like flies on poop. The store pay exorbitant rents to the mall so that THEY can get the crowds into the stores, if you start building crowds in the mall area, you're busted. They will usually just ban you from the mall, but if you really get them angry (like arguing with security) they can, and WILL, arrest you for trespassing. Depending on the jurisdiction you are in this can be from a $100 to $1000 fine plus a jail term of up to one year.

think about busking someplace else besides a mall.

Thanks for all the replies, I'm googling those books right now.


I should point out, I'm not interested in busking. Simply for the fun and value of it...but that post brings up some important notes indeed. How often does something like this happen?

How often does what happen? People asking about mall performing? Or people getting busted for soliciting on private property. I think the latter is more common. Don't be one of them.