Thanks for sharing.

I think we are going to off topic. We has to stop now. Hope to see you soon.

DK

I just thought I would like to hear how I handle choosing volounteers.

For my first effect, I do a jumbo invisible deck, and I have an auience member upstage. It is easy to get the spectator upstage, for one simple reason. My presentation. I present my invisible deck as a game, in which if the spectator can name one of the 51 face up cards they win. I use a cash prize, and tell the audience before I even pick someone, that they have a chance to win £50, before they even know the routine. For some reason, this makes them more willing to volounteer, so maybe offering a prize in the routine you first use an audience member for, will act as an incentive. They then set an example by getting involved, and when the audience see nothing bad happenin barring them losing, they tend not to be so nervous about coming on stage.

Other tips include trying to not use very shy volounteers, and be commanding. Make sure you don't give the audience member you ask on stage a chance to say No. This is really important, as soon as one volounteer says no, and you say ok to that, the rest of the audience will also think it is kosher to say No, and if you do have a nervous audience this can result in no volounteers, you end up having to be very forceful and it turns into a game of you against the audience. I must admit that although a few of these situations have happened to me when I first performed it has never really been so bad that I had no volounteers.

I hope this made a little bit of sense
Nick