Practical material performed and explained.
Really liked it!
However,
It's very
annoying when he asserts,
"If you are doing a magic show,
and you do a piece of mentalism,
it doesn't matter how strong it is,
your audience will assume it's just a trick.
So bear
that in mind, if the context is that you're a magician, they'll assume that all your mentalism
is magic tricks."
This is simply NOT TRUE.
I have heard so many spectators of
"magic shows,"
talk about "that mindreading bit" or "...but how does he know what people are
thinking though?"
SO.
MANY.
TIMES.
In fact, I could mention videos on Youtube
of David Blaine or Derick Dingle or Kreskin,
where Barbara Walters or a random street
spectator,
without any prompting, separates the magic tricks
from "the real mindreading."
I emphasize WITHOUT ANY PROMPTING.
Is it logical?
No.
Is that how I think?
No.
But that is how laypeople think.
They see a magician do ACR, then Card thru Window,
and then, ALL ON THEIR OWN, they say something like, "Okay, the card tricks I can understand, but
that mindreading thing, that was real."
So Marc Paul, you are wrong about that.
The
most famous (to laypeople) mentalists of all time,
Dunninger, Kreskin, Berglas, Derren Brown,
have all done what clearly fall into the "magic trick" category.
They do a magic trick, and they
don't apologize for it, they don't justify it, and they don't even say, "Okay, here's something
different from all that real mentalism.. this is different." They simply do a magic trick.
Kreskin did the ACR (and a really bad job of it, btw) on the Tonight Show as I recall.
Dunninger did a lot of mental magic.
Berglas vanished cigarettes and floated a table,
and Derren (as a mentalist) does the floating table in his stage mentalism show.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your comments and opinions. The audiences that I work for are mainly UK based and in the corporate market. For my audiences I absolutely stand by what I said.
In a lecture all I can do is share MY experience of how things are for MY markets. Of course, it may be different for you. I've been working as a professional magician and mentalist for 25 years and MY experience is that mentalism IS weakened by being performed as part of a magic show. Will it still be impactful, will it still create great responses from your audience, of course it will. BUT if I perform a show that is mentalism only then my experience is that these same effects will be even MORE impactful and have an even GREATER response. It's all about context. When the theme and context of a show is consistent the impact on an audience WILL exceed the sum of it's parts. Of course this is my view and how I've found it works for me.
I hope you found the above helpful in explaining my position and the reason for my opinion.
All the best
Marc Paul
Great lecture, but one pet peeve...
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