Mark,
You must remember you are performing for the Magic Circle. All magicians have their likes and dislikes. If you are trying to impress knowledgeable magicians, you must create something that will "blow them away".

Example: Paul Gertner blew Dai Vernon away with his ring on glass stem.

Good luck at your venture, you have made a real challenge for yourself.

Bill

Of course you don’t present magical effects as puzzles. However, I do maintain that some people regard all effects that they can’t explain as puzzles. I am such a person.

Even if you frame an astonishing effect in a theatrical presentation with an emotional hook, a few seconds after the astonishment passes, I’m going to start searching for methods. This means that I am interpreting the effect as a puzzle. For people like myself, you can only delay this search with good presentation, you can’t eliminate it. I was this way long before I became a magician. In my youth, I became obsessed with cause and effect. I wanted to know how radios, televisions, stereos, planes, etc… worked. While I did read fiction as a child, the bulk of the books I read were about physics or about how machines worked. This drove my career choice as an engineer later in life.

You can’t change this type of spectator. They are going to regard all your effects that they can’t explain as puzzles after the show. Most of the time, they are even going to regard them as puzzles during the show.

Granted, I would rather hear, “That’s amazing” than “That’s clever.” However, the phrase, “That’s clever” doesn’t necessarily indicate that the speaker knows the method for any effect, so the comment needn’t be interpreted in a negative fashion.

Re-read the original post. He said that the comments were coming from non-magicians.

Mithrandir said:


What Hugard and Braue may have overlooked is that some of us who can "make people laugh effortlessly" are acutely aware of what we do that makes them laugh and work on it enough so that it appears to be effortless. It takes a LOT of practice to make them laugh effortlessly. And it takes a specific mindset. If this is the direction you want to go, Steve Allen's book How to be Funny is one of the best inspirations I know.

I have many friends who fall into the second category. Most of them fail miserably at entertaining ( and I don't necessarily mean take "entertaining" to mean making people laugh ) because they simply do not "connect" with the audience. People who project being self-absorbed to the audience will often bore them to tears. When this type of magician finds himself in a "real world working situation," he quite often learns quickly that an engaging smile and a nice chuckle will take him much farther than a perfect pass and an excellent top change.

Regarding the third category: maybe there are a lot of magicians who fall into this category, but I see far too few of them. I see more of a fourth category. That is the absolute PEST who inflicts magic on people whether they like it or not, and whose idea of humor is somewhere between the knees and the belly button. These never last long.

Now, how do you avoid the "that was clever" comment? There are two elements to this. One is that you must entertain the audience. This doesn't just mean that you must make them laugh. You must engage their attention in a positive manner and keep it.

And you must know when to stop. This is one of those cases where less is more. Always leave them wanting more.