Hey all,

No, I didn't stop visiting the Café, but I did go to Mexico and get married and had my honeymoon! While we were in beautiful Puerto Vallarta, we had an awesome night with our family and had some drinks and went out to the famous Senior Frog's. After a couple hours of fun I busted out the tricks for some of the staff. Whenever I partake in the consumption of alcohol, I stick the the very same easy tricks. Anyways it was very fun to have to perform more tricks with the obvious language barrier. I relied much more upon hand signals.

The next couple days we were at a market and there was a vender selling a deck of Mexican soccer playing cards. We began the bartering process and I pulled my own deck of cards out of my pocket and proceeded to perform 2 card monte... This is when I realized she knew absolutely no English besides the basic "hello" and price bargaining. This became very hard because I have practiced this SOOO much and rely so much on my patter and misdirection, especially for my top change. Anyways, I ended up doing the trick and blew the lady away when I pulled the two queens out of my back pocket. I am pretty sure she called me the diablo blanco! =D

Has anyone else ran into these great experiences?

Zack

Yeah man, I get tourists at the restaurant from everywhere in the world. Magic is its own language, and since what I do is all pretty visual stuff I don't have much of a problem entertaining. Although sometimes my sets are shortened drastically when I can't really talk.

I had a similar experience in a restaurant in Yokosuka, Japan some years ago. Other than my companions I was the only English speaking person in the place. Like you I started to show off my stuff. Lucky I had a mouth squeaker (thanks Bob Little) and accompanied myself with squeaks, whistles and whatever noises I could create from my little toy. The magic went over well.

Lucky for me most of the stuff I do is not patter reliant. I tend to work very noisy venues where it is difficult to hear at best. I know my jokes and witty repartee are killer and only wish someone other than myself could hear (and understand) them!

If the trick is visual (as it should be!), and easy to follow (complication is not magic its confusion) then a bit of miming ability is about all you need.

I watched a Polish kid (speaking only Polish and a bit of Russian) work (busking) the streets of Barcelona Spain performing some killer magic. He didn’t say a word but kept music going in the background. He had a couple of routines that required audience participation. He managed to get people up and doing what he needed them to do without using a word. Talk about audience management! The most amazing part is that his hat lines (the pitch for donations) were all done in mime. People gave!

I guess it isn’t what you say, it is what you do!

As a working professional, both as a Translator / Interpreter and Magician, I've had these amazing experienes many times. Some of the most funny ones were some situations where I needed to work my miracles while talking to three different people, each one of those barely knowing the other ones' languages. Picture me doing a gambling demonstration in English, Spanish and Italian at once during a business cocktail!

It is definitely difficult, but it was triple as fun because I luckily could come up with many funny patter moments.

As for situations where I don't speak a bit of the audience's language, I tend to do simple and visual magic (Linking Rings are the best!) and invite audience participation, too. I often practice those skills by working noisy venues, such as night clubs. There, even though people know what I am talking (That is, if they can even hear me!) sometimes it fits way better to get my magic "into the groove" and try to synch it with the music. In such places, D'lites and my luminous dancing canes are absolute killers.