If your doing a trick as school (even thou its not the best place to preform, but some people don`t have anywere else to preform, like me)

And your doing a trick. Lets say, the penguin monte. And suddenly a heckler tries to grab the cards, Quickly do the appearing cane and poke them away! Just be careful not to poke anyones eyes out! Do it sitting down with your bag on the chair and open, with it in there, and just before you do the part of the trick that is the most vunreble, slip your hand in your bag, ready to do it. Dose anyone think this would work? And dose anyone else have any tricks like that to stop people from going near your props. One thing that works well if someone is moning you to tell them how you did it, is open your eyes really wide, and mumble

I dont really think that appearing cane is a good idea becuase thats more of a stage prop and if you do it close to people it will most likely expose the appearing cane. I dont have any props that can help but its always good to have good audiance managment skills which im getting better at.

not a good idea...


just...dont let them see the props. If your forcefull, they wont try to look.

uh, so what are you supposed to do? palm the appearing cane while you do everything? and if you dont do that are you supposed to have everyone stop moving while you reach in your pocket and get it? it just isnt practical. besides, if you do your stuff right, itll never be necessary anyway.

That's a very dumb idea, sorry! Don't show tricks to people if you don't have good audience control.

I don't like doing tricks for teenagers but there are ALWAYS times when you know the person or people you are dealing with won't heckle you.

Bad idea. I hope this was a joke. You should never try to hurt, injure, or heckle your spectator. Instead, just say no, and move on to another more amazing trick using a normal pack of cards or something. Or, shove it in your pocket really quickly, and bring out examiniable versions os the gimmick (if that is possible).

- Peter

Always remember, you are in control. No matter what happens, you are always in control. Think about that for a second...no I am serious, think about it. Let your audience examine everthing that you let them, and not examine everything you dont. If someone grabs, it means you did a poor job of convincing them of what you were tying to put on.

This goes right into you patter, techinique, and missdirection (if needed.) I will take the example of the Color Monte, but this idea can be applied to any effect in my mind. The story that I use, like many others, is how I got swindled by a guy on the street. I take the audience through the story. Magic is just a story that has pictures and thats all. The story has magical moments, like when the colors are on top, in the middle and on bottom and such, and then the kicker ending, but it is still just a story. Take them on a journey. If you cant do that, then get out of magic.

The point is, practice more. Practice more on your techinique and practice more on your patter. edited, write out your patter to make it flawless and in the end you will be more seemless with your presentation which in turn will not make your spectators think "Oh crap, he just did a move, I had better call him on it!"

A great quote from my high school drama teacher is this "If I must screw up, I will do so with energy and entusiasim." What this means, in my opnion, is that your audience will enjoy your preformance more if you dont worry about moves, patter or what you are doing physically, as long as you are having fun telling them a story. How many times have you seen an actor, singer, etc do what they do but they have that uneasy face on them. A face that says that they are worried about what they are doing. Like they havent rehearsed the act enough and you actually feel bad for them. Why? Because they are focused inward rather than outward. Now have you seen a singer, actor, etc doing what they do horribly , but are loving every second of it and having a blast? You settle back in your seat and ride with it. It might not be the best thing ever, but at least they are focused on giving you a good time. This bit of advice has gotten me through many a bad situation in magic (being heckler or whatever.)

Yes you will get hecklers. We all do. Saying you are going to do the "Appearing Cane and push them off" is not only impracticle, its down right stupid, childish, and unperfessional. There are many other ways to deal with hecklers (did you see what I did there...I didn't say "Stop Hecklers", I said "Deal with Hecklers.)

But going back to the start of my post, you are the one that is in control. And hey, if this guy keeps pestering you, you have the control to simply walk away.

-Craig

If i do for instance the Brainwave if someone says, letme see those cards, I say...i'll give you the deck for ten dollars...
And if by some chance they buy it, then switch it for a real one and screw them out of their money, or just give them the deck...they are like 7.50

guys, the appearing cane thing was a joke!(I hope ) But if you have good audience control, they shouldnt be that close to you.

if you are violent or disrespectful to ANY spectator, even as a joke they can tell others and it spreads fast, and then...you have lost A LOT of future paid performances.

Ask the heckler to show everyone a trick then since hes so good at figuring out all of our tricks. This should work, or if they ask for a deeck of cards let them make a fool of themselves.

I'm not a professional and haven't had that much sucess in dealing with hecklers. However, I got some nice advice from others in how to deal with them. Include them in your preformance rather than yelling at them to go away. Joke with them and keep your self-confidence up. However, if the heckler is really ugly you off with ripping the deck from your hands every now and then, just explain to him that he's spoiling the fun for all the other spectators.

Ofcourse, if nothing works, you'll just have to explain to the audience that this is something that happens now and then and just walk away.

Personally I usually preform in school where I feel like I know a little about virtually every person, and because of that I can choose my audience carefully. You can quite often notice a potential heckler just after one trick, and when I do, I usually just don't do any more routines unless asked to.

or instead you can just say: what is this show and tell?

I usually just put the prop away in my sidebag after performing the trick almost immediately... Nobody has ever tried to go in my bag.