HI everyone!
There may have been a thread posted in the past about hecklers that people have confronted, but I couldn't find it, so here's a new one
Tell us about your worst hecklers, and how you handled them. Where you calm cool and collected no matter how they reacted, or did you snap and tell them off?
Definitely my two worst cases, was I was doing a standard ABR for a group of friends at my college, and their was this one dude. Every time I swing cutted the deck, or did any "non sleight" or any move that would be impossible to detect by a lay person because of it's simplicity, this guy would say "i just saw what you did, and he must have said it a dozen times thru out my performance, i tried to ignore him, but he was rude and was interrupting my show, and my other friends were trying to enjoy it.
As it turned out, he didn't know what the edited i was doing, in fact, he just assumed I was doing a more here...or there....(I mean, duh half the time I was, but seriously folks for most lay people, a sleight wouldn't even phase them, it would go exactly as you would want them to see it go.
I know there is nothing wrong with my performing style, I've already performed for well over 500 people, but some people....darn..
Afterwards, i took him aside and basically explained to him how I felt, and how he should have been more respectful, and he understood me perfectly.
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I remember I was performing once and the "annoying kid that everyone hates" was in the group. everything was going fine, but as I went into the trick, I realized that this kid was doing the "I'll kneel and see what is happening from below move" (I was doing an ACR, so that move really doesn't work). so momentarly forgetting that he was kneeling there I did a pass and he saw it and was like "OH I SEE WHAT YOU DID, YOU BLAH BLAH BLAH" etc.. and then he went around telling the group 50 million times what he saw (it was a small group, like 4 people).

but I dont usually run into heckler problems. I can tell who and who not to perform for. If you get beyond secrets by jay sankey it will have some good advice regarding the "who to perform for" issue.

conman54 -

Don't you hate it when you get people who try to move like that to see more and you are performing somewhere where you can't really do much about it? I had someone do that to me this week while I was trying to perform a ctw, and he moved to the side and I tried to turn and control him where I wanted, and my angles, but I couldn't do much about it. So he might have caught me, im not sure. Luckily, the guy is a friend of mine, so the performance went fine except for him lol. I was lucky he was a friend of mine, and that it was just a sleight type trick.

I was once like that.... A guy was doing Here then There with people and i tried to look under. Didnt see anything though. Yeah i was like that...
The hecklers in my school are my friends. They always bend, rip cards. They say that the trick is simple and easy. I try to show magic but they always seem to mess me up. Luckilly thats only 2 people.

Dude do not worry about hecklers they are just trying to take the crowd from you ignore them first.
If theypersist just ignore them again and if you think you can out heckle him try it but wacth out some of them are fast on thier feet.
Plus if its not a public show you can usaully have him removed if he doesnt get his act togther since people paid money to wacth

Yes, I agree, but many people on these forums are young teenagers, and therefore don't get paid for doing magic, but rather they work on the streets and YouTube. Unfortunately, I fall into this category, seeing as how I'm not even old enough to legally work yet. Someday...

So after you ignore them the first two times, basically, they have already stolen quite a bit of your audience. That is simply something that you can't do. By allowing them to constantly heckle you, you give up your audience. Also, trying to out heckle a heckler is a very foolish idea. As the two of you will just continue going on and on. It's not worth it, because again, you loose the audience.

Instead, you must get the audience on your side. People want to see magic, and they will deal with the heckler themselves, if you handle the situation professionally.

I forgot about this at first, but on one of the Podcasts, Tyas gave the five steps to dealing with hecklers, so I thought I would post them.

1. Acknowledge the heckler. This means asking them to please stop, if you didn't already know this.

2. Ignore. Pretty self-explanatory.

3. Out-heckle. I hope nobody ever gets to this step, unless of course you're Gazzo, who can out-heckle nearly anybody.

4. Educate the audience. This means to tell the audience that you can't perform with this person around, and that they're a great audience, and so on and so forth. This gets the audience on you're side (which is a very good thing).

5. Have heckler removed. For this step, which hopefully will never happen, you take the heckler outside (if you're indoors, of course), ask them to leave, and give them their money back.

I think my worst experience with a heckler is with the STS. I can't go into detail with it here, due to exposure, but if you have the PO Forums, it's in there.

I cant remember which pod cast is but yes I do agree
And also Gazzo is the best heckler ha

best way to deal with hecklers...those who have liquid metal...the 'fork you' fork.
have not used it yet but one of these days, one of these days <shakes his fist dramatically>