man there r lots of heckers at my skool and 1 guy told every1 how i did tip of tonge cause he caugt me and now all of those people dont want to c my tricks no more. wat should i do to stop a heckler without useing violence? cause im not mean im nice.lol

Don't perform around a heckler that refuses to stop heckling. It's tough in school. However, if you are doing an organised show, just come up with a routine designed to make a fool out of him. Do something that allows your audience to see how it's done but not your heckler. Also, work on one effect that you can do perfectly even if your hands are being burned. Challenge him to catch you and blow his mind. My best advice though it to just not perform around this guy.
Also, practice more

Craig

Your magic isnt strong enough if he thinks that he figured it out.

Owwww my head. I feel your pain about the heckler, but PLEASE clean up your typing skills a little more. spelling errors are okay, but PLEASE dont use "c" for "see" and "every1" for "everyone" and so on. I'm an internet junkie, and most of my time at home is spent chatting...and THAT hurt my head. I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but it bugs me.
~Jonton

First of all they should never figure out the trick. Second you should be able to handle a heckler, if you can't learn, that's why you're being heckled. These are things you learn from experience and seperate the magicians from people who do magic tricks.

I agree with Charris. If you know that there's a guy who is a heckler in your school, DON'T PERFORM MAGIC ANYWHERE NEAR HIM! On the other hand, if it was a "first offence" by him then I guess it's just bad luck for you. I suggest the following:

Only perform to those who want to see your magic, and when I say that I mean those who like your magic because it is fun - not because they want to catch you out and ruin your reputation.

DON'T purposely try to do more magic tricks to the heckler in an attempt to fool him and get the upper hand. Just leave him alone.

Practise your tricks AND your patter. Make sure that you misdirect your audience properly. Good misdirection will leave your audience thinking "How did he do that? I was watching the trick the whole time."; Bad misdirection will leave your audience thinking "Oh, he must have put the card in his mouth when...". Even if the audience doesn't see how you get the card in your mouth, if they can work it out when it was, you haven't done your job properly.

If you perform magic the way you talk I can see why he punk'd you out.

If a heckler is annoying you, hand him a regular deck and ask him/her to do the same trick. They will be speechless.

Scott Romansky

A funny thing I do to make people laugh at a heckler is to get him to come up and put him sideways onto the spectators. Then perform some half-pass ludicrous cutting and say "so the entire deck's staying the same, yes?" and they'll nod or say "yes" and be laughed at by the crowd. I'll make a short video explaining what I usually do.

Hey magicdude give the guy a break. The reason he posted on the forum is to get help and get more experienced. If your not going to give the guy some help the dont post, I dont mean to hurt you but seriously lighten up were almost all kinda like brothers.

Anyway for your heckler. Learn how to do a watch steal. Learn how to do it fast and underfire. Steal the hecklers watch, and produce as everyone is kinda getting tired. Everyone will perk up and want to watch more. If you dont like watch steals and just prefer cards then buy Brain Tudor's HECKLER. It teaches nock em slights and effects combined to astound in one routine.
~Kyle~

I do tend to get a little frustrated by some of the posts, I think the point that I was trying to make was that many "magicians" shouldn't be infront of audiences. most of the people who complain about hecklers should ONLY be performing for friends and family. they are simply not ready for the real world yet. If you're being heckled, most of the time it is your fault, you screwed up the trick, you have a part of a trick where you do not talk enough, maybe you're just nervous and someone picked up on that. The first thing to do when being heckled is to know why you're being heckled, and fix it for next time.


But heres a little advice, not from me, something that Teller once said in an interview. He was asked why he doesnt talk while performing, he said that in college if he stopped talking while performing, eventually people would get tired of heckling him.

I disagree. This has been discussed so-o-o-o many times. In my opinion to make anyone look bad with magic is poor showmanship. The magaician's job is to fool, wow and amaze - not to show that they can do something that someone else can't.

there's always those self working tricks...

That's what a lot of the best paid pros do. I see it over and over - a moment of silence, often followed with a smile, is enough much of the time.

There are different kinds of hecklers. There are those who are just chatting with you out loud, which is annoying, but not mean. Sometimes, this is the type of person that you can talk with, give them something to do, jokingly request that they let someone else have their say, etc, and end the problem.

Then there are the jerks. These are rare (except in schools) and it is very hard to give good advice for dealing with these.

School is a horrible place to do magic, but if you can learn to handle it, you can learn good audience skills. I teach at a middle school, and I figure 80% of the kids in the building would fail miserably at performing at school, because of hecklers. Most of these kids are not unpopular. Hecklers are the kids who do not like others to be the center of attention.

The key to any performance is not simply to expect people to politely watch you because you like magic. Would you stop them on the street and ask them to listen to you sing? Why should you with magic? If you want to people to watch you, you better have a good show. Obviously, if you are new, you will not have a good show yet, so you may suffer for a while. All I can say is, be patient. It is not that bad when you do this away from school. Also, since you are just doing tricks, which is OK, only do magic for select friends and only do it when you are asked and do it where others can't come by and watch. Maybe you should do it at home.

As far as the "you should be good enough to never get caught," notion, that is unrealistic, particularly in a school setting. If you have absolute control over the audience, angles, etc, then maybe you can be perfect. But even the greats get caught. Gazzo, who works the streets in front of hundreds, surrounded, and who is one of the best, will get caught. I use the same size balls for the cups and balls he uses, 1 1/4 inch, and sometimes people spot them, particularly if you are surrounded. You live with it. Sometimes, people know about the TT. Of course, a spectator will usually yell out, "He has a fake thumb!" Gazzo would simply say, "Yea, and a fake hand and fake nose and fake feet..." or whatever. Most people do not know what the heckler is talking about, so they can't follow the point. Just go on. You have to control the situation.