I performed Vanishing lifesavers for my group today...and I couldn't make the lifesavers reappear (haven't learned how to yet...maybe I should've just waited..didn't expect to make them reappear...I mean like..when I showed mom..I never made them reappear)....they mobbed me trying to find out where the lifesavers went...and they stripped me of tricks bag and went throught that...they made me empty my pockets...went through all the zippers of my bag(luckily only the vanishing lifesavers tube and a deck of cards) and tickled me silly....man...and this is my youth group which I was using magic to share a lesson...as a visuallization....what could I have said to have prevented such a mob?

"God took them maybe?"

Oh....in any case...having 12 people surrounding you and going with a tickle torture..is not fun...well..I was laughing so hard...but you get the idea....couldn't run as I was backed into the wall. (I'm sure it was in good fun...but it was a little too much I think...) *EDIT* Oh yeah..they claim that they wanted to eat the lifesavers...*SIGH*

What are you five?

Anyway, you are not really asking a magic question here. You clearly are not ready to do magic for groups yet. This mob did not do this because of your magic, but because it was you. They knew they could get away with it. Do you look like Paul McCartney?

I am not five..I'm 19.

Clearly you are correct as I'm not sure how to be in control of such a situation...I really freaked out. What could I have done to be more prepared for groups? Actually this is the 2nd time I performed for a group. I performed card tricks the first time at an auto repair center and everything went fine. This second time went very poorly.

First of all, I knew you weren't five, that was a joke. But this is not really a magic question. There is no hard and fast rule that says, "If you do X, then people will tickle you to death."

Something else was going on, or these people knew you and for some reason felt that tickling is an appropriate response to things you do. Which is weird. I would not perform for them until you figure out what happened.

Next time make sure you know your effects inside out, and I suggest have a routine set, so that you can avoid distractions and move on smoothly. If you keep baffling them etc, then that should keep their attention away from searching you all over. If this group is not willing to take you serious as you perform or repeats their actions, I suggest move on to perform for others. I had a situation sort of like this happen once. I did an entire d-lite routine for a very large group of children/pre-teens. Now some of them knew of the trick already and knew how it was done. I of course started to leave after I was done and wasn't greatly pleased, but I was happy with at least performance experience. Now these children weren't satisified, they started to shout I bet it's in your pockets. I kept going and they as a mob chased me and kept chasing me. There was like 15-20 of them. They were grabbing me everywhere trying to find what I made the dlite with. I kept running and dodging...they knew this area better than me and they were ready for me around a corner. They all jumped on my arms as a group and a few opened one of my pockets and actually grabbed the dlites. I was able to grab their hands and I had to snap back their fingers to get the dlites back (not too hard) Then I sprinted off and left. I sure learned a lot from that. Just remember always be prepared when you are going to perform!

This might be long, as it records my learning process for moments such as these.

I will never perform again for people who reach out and grab anything of mine. Even if it is something that I can get away with them grabbing. It's just not polite. Also, to me, they are ruining the magic for themselves. It's like reading a great that you absolutely love and then going back and analyzing each and every sentence. It's ruining the art of the writer, and ruining your enjoyment of such a fine literary experience. It's the same way for magic. Them reaching out for your working material is ruining their experience, and other people near you, and they are pretty much destructing your art.

If you feel strongly about performing to them, which I'm sure you are as it sounds like you all are close, I suggest doing a few self working, doesn't matter if they grab the paste board, card tricks. If they reach out at all, warn them by saying that you will not perform for them again if they reach out.

From now on, when someone I know reaches out I will merely stop performing. Even if others want to see more, I say that I am done. I'll perform again when the person finally leaves. I will never put the blame on the person though. That would be just as rude as what they did. If it's strangers I'll tell them to have a good day and leave. It doesn't matter if I didn't finish the trick, they finished it for them, for me, and whoever else was watching.

Tuesday night a really good friend of mine grabbed my cards after I did a trick. He just couldn't believe it. Instead of enjoying it, he grabbed and grabbed until he got the card. He literally would not give up. He reached out persistantly until he got it. He held the card for not even a second, said, "Oh, it's two cards," and threw it down. He didn't notice that when he threw it down two cards did not get thrown, but only one. And I didn't put up any rebuttal. I didn't let him know that it really was only one card, and that I simply forced it to be picked, and then psychologically made him believe it was free choice by saying over and over, are you sure this one, you sure you don't want to change your mind? If someone wants to destroy what has been set in their mind, let them do it however they want. If they are wrong, let them remain ignorant to what happened. Some people like to be astonished, it's a truely beautiful thing to them, other people take it as some sort of personal insult.

Saturday night there was an absolutely brillant group of people I performed for. I did gimmicked tricks, tricks that required utilities, tricks where you should never have the audience touch the cards. After doing fool proof tricks and not having them ever even move toward the cards, I began doing the other tricks. Eventually I found the one person that was most astonished. I would let her assist in the tricks where you normally don't let the spectators touch the cards. There's one utility trick I do with a two cards as one. I had her pinch the card in the middle and flip it over for the revelation. That whole group genuinely felt that I could do magic by the time I left. If they asked, I would have said it was all tricks, but they never did. They enjoyed what happened, and that's what is important. Those are the perfect spectators to have. If I ever see them again and they want to see a magic trick, I'll do anything I can to show them. I'll go buy what I need if I have to, as they are who deserves to be performed for, and, really, they are the type of people that I want to perform for. They never even freaked out, yelled, or gave some brillant, camera wanted response. They always pretty much just inhaled very deeply, and just stared for a second to take it all in, and then smiled or laughed like they were a child again. It made me feel the same way. I began smiling and laughing at the end of a trick (and not at their reaction, but at the end result of the trick) even though I had performed, rehearsed it, and knew exactly how it worked. Their seeing magic and taking it as magic somehow started to convince me that I was doing magic. That's when I really learned that in some special way I was doing magic. It will be worth it for you, me, and everyone else, if magic is performed exclusively for people will accept the art for the reasons it was created, just like a painting, a book, a poem, and a flower.

a little tip is to tell your audience (not literaly say it) through your script and your behavior that the reson you are doing this is to entertain them and not to fool them, proove that your smarter than them, present them with a puzzel or make them look stupid.
this way they will hopefully try to enjoy the magic more and not try to find out or proove how it was done.


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