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Performance Magic: What Moves You Guys?

posted by janrinok on Sunday March 30 2014, @07:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-see-it dept.

The Burnaby Kid writes:

Figured I'd toss this out there, since SN was asking for interesting story submissions. I'm a professional magician working abroad, and I've been indulging in this incredibly geeky performing art for almost two decades. One problem that happens a lot when it comes to magic is that the nature of secrecy means that we don't get open dialogue with the muggles we perform for, and that leads to us getting into this weird sort of insular and incestuous discussion with other magicians, which ends up warping our minds to the extent that we start doing moronic things like... oh, I don't know... referring to our audience members as "muggles". We get into some pretty weird debates, and I've been trying my best to argue for raising the bar, such as by suggesting that we need to be more sensitive about what you guys like, such as by making sure that if we pull out a deck of cards, we've got something to perform that can compete with Card Through Window. And yet... Maybe I've got it wrong? What DO you guys like? If you like watching magicians perform, what do you like about it? If you don't, why not?

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by lx on Sunday March 30 2014, @09:25AM

    by lx (1915) on Sunday March 30 2014, @09:25AM (#23100)

    Did you miss how the cringeworthy muggles remark was disarmed in the next sentence? I think that you're supposed to cringe at it. I certainly did.
    And yes magic tricks are a very geeky pursuit. Young Richard Feynman is the first example to come to my mind but there are many others.

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  • (Score: 1) by TGV on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:41AM

    by TGV (2838) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:41AM (#23112)

    Yes, that was a very odd attempt, but the incestuous bit did not help. Instead, it looked like a contrived justification for a sneer.

  • (Score: 1) by The Burnaby Kid on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:14AM

    by The Burnaby Kid (3353) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:14AM (#23836)

    Heh heh, yeah, I was going for deliberately cringe-worthy. I personally hate it when magicians call audience-members "muggles" (the usual term is "laymen" and I hate that one as well) and I wanted to pass it along, really as an attempt to illustrate just how disconnected we can be from our audiences' mindsets.

    Sorry to anybody annoyed by it if that wasn't clear...