Tommy Wonder has therorized that the "magician-in-trouble" scenario runs the danger of defrauding the spectators. (I hope I am paraphrasing his idea fairly.) For example, in his version of Wild Card--called "The Tamed Card"--something seems to go wrong for the magician, but rather than allow the specator to invest emotional energy in him, perhaps sypathizing with him and feeling cheated later, Tommy Wonder tries to create a distance by teasing and blaming the spectator a little.

How do you all feel about this scenario?

I think many "sucker" effects, for eample the die box, rely on this scenario where something seems amiss for the magician. Michael Ammar as well as many magicians here at the Magic Café' have suggested taking the "sting" out of sucker effects.

But there are other examples, like Tommy Wonder's effect, which are not "sucker" effects per se, but which might attempt to fool the audience emotionally as well as magically. I don't know if anyone ever really believes the magician has made a mistake in, say, the "mismade flag" plot...but perhaps in the Magician's Insurance Policy effect the audience may be emotionally misled in certain presentations.

Should the audience feel "in the know," that this is a humorous situation, just an act, thinking, "he's not really in trouble, and I'm in on the joke." Or should the audience feel suspense, wondering if there is real trouble, and either sympathetic or antagonistic to the magician?

Do you use the "magician-in-trouble" scenario, and if so, how do you play it?

alan

I do not. Nor do I use premises or routines that attempt to make the spectators look foolish or incorrect in their assumptions, such as the classic CSB routine, where spectators are asked to guess where the coins are, and are continually proven wrong. My CSB premises are a demonstration of magical properties of metals, not a "look how I good I am at fooling you" debacle.

I find that feigning failure or setting up spectators to be the punchline of a routine creates animosity. It also creates an atmosphere where the spectator feels challenged or belittled by the performer. If I'm doing a trick, and I start to pretend that it has gone wrong, weaving an intricate tale of what must have happened to "derail" it, the normal adult spectator will pick it up on it, perceive the falseness and childishness of it, and will most likely be insulted or annoyed by it. Whether or not he or she chooses to express those feelings to the rest of the audience or to me is inconsequential. The damage is done at that point.

I like to be in the same mental place as the audience when I perform. I try to show that I am just as surprised and amazed as they are, while still demonstrating that I have a level of control over my magic. I shoot the breeze with people, and talk with them. I do not try to show how clever I am, either with magic or with my acting skills, at the expense of their sensibilities, intelligence, or self respect.

Best,

Mike

The whole point of a "sucker" trick is NOT to make a member of the audience the "sucker" but, rather, deflect that onto yourself.

Nothing wrong with the die box and other so-called "sucker" tricks, if that is followed.

As to the "magician in trouble", it is basically flawed, since -- if you are a real magician -- you are omnipotent and couldn't get into difficulty.

If you aren't a real magician, then you are just a person with a bunch of tricks.

The sucker effect is viewed by the overly sensitive politically correct crowd as... "I'm smarter than you gotcha' moron" trick.
If your audience feels that way after you do Die Box, you did the trick wrong or your personality is too harsh to begin with.
When you open all four doors to reveal that the dice is gone... it vanished!
It's not, "tee, hee sucker's."
It's, "where is it... I thought I... could it be... in the hat?"
The audience must discover the dice.
This brings the entire audience out of the we gotcha' mode and into the wow.

I like the way you put that--"fool the audience emotionally as well as magically." I think that's a pretty good definition of theater.

Applied in a more subtle way, "Magician in trouble" COULD be good theater--it can introduce conflict, tension and surprise. Copperfield's "Death Saw", Rudy Coby's "Puppet Boy" and Penn and Tellers' "Casey at the Bat" all use a degree of "Magician in trouble" to create some good magical plots.



In my performance, I am trying to create a character who is NOT omnipotent, but one who
does have unique abilities. I recently realized that I may have been inspired to try this approach by the comic books I used to read in high school and college. If you've read the "X-Men" comics, or seen the films, you know that these are characters with extraordinary powers, but with finite limits. The drama created by the superhero story (or most other literary fiction or theater) relies on the possibility that the heroes may fail; tension is created by their difficulty.

As theatrical characters, stage magicians have to be human beings, too (well, maybe not Criss Angel). And exploring the possibilities and limitations of being human is one of the best uses of Art that I can think of.

Peter,
The "Magician in Trouble" is great when used by people like Carl Ballentine or Johnny Thompson.
The entertaining scenario's are boundless. What if one developed a magic apprentice character who packed the wrong wand or keeps picking up the wrong wand, the wrong magic dust or had his bags switched with a mentalist at the airport (bet he didn't see that coming)?

To say a certain kind of plot or story is wrong or bad is simply ridiculous. There are only a few stories in the world, and everything depends on how well and freshly they are told. Either the performer knows what he is doing, or he doesn't. The "magician in trouble" scenario he sets up either works or doesn't.

We don't blame a joke for not being told well.

The "magician in trouble" plot is simply good theater. Whenever a card is chosen, the choosing spectator becomes the antagonist to the magician as protaganist.

The troubles that the magician gets into are simply the complications in the plot that the hero must overcome. It is the job of the magician to construct his performance so that the audience wants the magician to win in the end, and enjoys playing the various parts assigned to them.

The magician must manipulate the spectator's feelings as well as actions, and draw them into the fun of participating in the theatrical game.

If the spectators do not enjoy the roles assigned to them, or the machinations of the performer, then the magician is simply not a good performer. He has not constructed his routine and persona, and that assigned to the audience in the right way.

I believe there to be varying degrees of "real magicians". A truly omnipotent magician would be found at only the highest level of the classic battle between good and evil. I personally, don't want to be there... too much responsibility.

My character however, is not merely, "a person with a bunch of tricks", but rather someone who is more of a professor, with a zen-like knowledge of things that tend to confuse the average person. The goal of my character is to share the experience that goes with this knowledge.

As a result, I am in a sense, playing with fire. Things can occasionally go wrong, proving that magic itself is a far greater entity than any one magician. The ability to come away with minimal damage, and hopefully, a great understanding and respect for magic is the entire premise under which I work.

Within this is dramatic structure, built upon the basic antagonist/protagonist theme... and this manifests itself in many, many forms. The denouement offers bits of basic wisdom, such as, learning from one's mistakes, or making the best of a bad situation... life's small, but important lessons. These are not laid out in black and white, but simply implied by the cause and effect process.

The "Magician in Trouble" scenario is classicly good theater. One-upmanship against the audience, is not.

I agree with Mr. Haydn here.

I use the thing, though I never classed it as "magician in trouble senario" until finding the magic Café. As above posters note, I call it drama.

I must disagree with Mike and Mr. Marucci, also. One of the things, seemingly that is so enjoyable about my performances (again this is just what people tell me) is that I'm NOT in full control of the situation at all times. After all, have we ever seen a fantasy novel with an *omnipotent* wizard? Where's the fun in that? Here, Frodo, I vanish the ring, and it appears right inside the cracks of doom, because I, am infallible.

No thanks, not for me. Obviously, though, it can be done badly. If you act like you're in a fix, and then say, ahahaha, you're stupid...then you are simply showing yourself to be an ass. I believe this is why Wonder has issues with the concept.

I think Jonathan Townsend says it, with this quote,

"A magician looking for pity is bad. A magician getting messed with by magic is wonderful."

I think the biggest problem I've seen with magicians using the "magician in trouble" is that most of the ones I've seen do this are terrible actors and are totally unbelievable.

The absolute classic example for me--though there are many--is the Insurance Policy plot. If you show the policy near the beginning of the effect, there is foreshadowing (or at least the suggestion) that something could go wrong. As with some of the dramatic concepts mentioned above, the trouble or temporary setback is part of the premice, involves the character, provides conflict and suspense.

But...

Does the audience need to suspend emotional disbelief in scenarios like this? Or are they invited to play along?

If you are a great actor and really act like you are in trouble, will the audience feel emotionally cheated? (Because in some of these plots, the audience is not invited to think a character magician is in trouble but YOU an actor playing a magician is in trouble! Imagine that you go to see a play and one of the actor's seems to be struggling to remember his lines...and you FEEL his embarrassment. Later you discover, it's all part of the play. I think this is what Tommy Wonder was driving at in the conflict of his "Tamed Card" effect. But he solved the problem without coming out of character, by creating a little emotional distance.

Part of my question involves the dramatic technique of "coming out of character," which can be very funny. Much of Bill Malone's humor involves the ways he comes out of character and breaks the performer/audience wall--called the "fourth wall" on stage. Shakespeare's plays are full of "asides," when the character speaks directly to the audience, breaking that wall. All this is just to say that stepping out of character or including the audience in the act may be a viable alternative. It may be that you can create humor or dramatic irony by coming outside of the box and breaking that fourth wall--without being a poor performer or bad actor.

just trying to stir up the discussion. all my best

alan

We might agree that it is unlikely for someone to carry an insurance policy on their person. Perhaps it's worth updating the thing to a wallet sized card?

No ideas about stepping out of character. It's probably important to have a character and make the performance work up to some point before breaking character would be noticeable, much less useful.

Wallet sized? And here I was trying to think of ways to make the policy sheet even bigger, so the students in the back rows of the lecture halls could see it.

But it would be better for magical realism. I'm a big fan of magical realism.

alan

Dai Vernon’s Triumph is based on the magician-in-trouble premise, but presented as a story about "how a third party made the trouble in the past and here's how he did it." Thus the trick doesn’t come across as a sucker effect.

“Card on Forehead” is unquestionably a sucker effect, and yet it has a place. I once saw a teenage boy heckling a restaurant magician ("heckling" is probably too strong, it was more like "teasing"). The boy was with his family. The magician read the situation correctly and did the bit with the boy looking through half the deck while he looked through the other half, repeatedly showing him cards. Not only was everyone at the table laughing, or at least very amused, but at the end the teenage boy was laughing too.

Previously, I’d have called “Card on Forehead” bad on principle, and yet I'm positive the teenager was happy to be the center of attention and he didn’t feel like a fool at the end of the trick at all. The magician who performed this was a full-time professional with decades of experience and he has a degree in Theater (or is it “Theater and Communications?).

You have to know the rules in order to know when you’re breaking them. Otherwise you’re just fumbling around in the darkness. Thus I think the concern with sucker effects is valid, but cannot be universally applied.

With regard to the insurance policy plot, it's important to appear "natural" when performing, but I don't believe it's always necessary to be "real" when presenting a tongue-in-cheek plot like that. A ridiculously large policy seems ok to me.

I may have stepped into this topic too strongly, or at the very least wasn't too clear in my original post. I'd like to restate my position in a more accurate way.

I don't do the "Magician in trouble" scenario because it goes against the grain of my personality, and because I don't personally care for it for the reasons that I expressed previously. However, the plot/premise does have its strengths for performers who's personalities are complimentary to it. Bar rooms are a funny place. A great deal of posturing and social interaction goes on in a relatively small dynamic. My experience has been that sucker tricks do not have the desired effect, and serve to create walls rather than to bring me closer (emotionally) to the audience.

Best,

Mike

Yes! "Tongue-in-Cheek": breaking through the fourth wall, stepping out of character, giving an aside, providing dramatic irony, creating satire, parody, or burlesque humor. These seem like viable options.

So does Dai Vernon's distancing of the "magician-in trouble" scenario by framing it in a story. The narrative frame also works for Color Monte or Copper/Silver/Brass or other "challenge" scenarios. Great!

Cardini often seems to have been surprised by and in conflict with the magic. The magic itself seems to be a character that he is interacting with. Things seem to go wrong. The audience sees things that he doesn't or sees them first. It's great entertainment!

Thanks for all the great options and examples, friends!

alan

Jonathan has put his picture up! One less layer of mystery to penetrate...

Best example yet!

The card tricks Card in Hand and Design for Laughter both have magician in trouble scenarios and they both play well consistently. The magician in trouble scenario is an easy way to emotionally involve the spectators which increases their attention, stirs their feelings and draws them in, and provides a subtle misdirection as the spectators either start to feel for you, or to hope you fail.

The final revelation, I think, doesn't create feelings of being a sucker among the spectators; it just blows them away. The magic is so strong and unexpected that the spectator struggles to figure out what just happened rather than feeling like a sucker.

Other effects framed as sucker tricks, like certain CSB or chop cup routines, aren't about the magician potentially failing rather they're about the spectator being wrong.

An old friend noted that comedy is someone else getting hit by a bus. Tragedy is stubbing my toe. Seeing others, like magicians, potentially fail is attention getting and sometimes interesting but the feelings associated with a spectator failing and being wrong doesn't offer that same attention getting interest nor drawn in emotion. I think after being called out as wrong, the spectator disengages thereby reducing the potential reaction.

I never open with a magician in trouble effect, but would close with one as the astonishment created is so very strong and I like when the spectator leaves with his brain humming.

For me... "Magician in Trouble" is the crux of my stage act... the lout I play, "Tobias the Adequate" treads that line between comedian who maybe knows some tricks and magician all through the show, getting himself into trouble and out again, in, I hope, and amusing manner.

Not to fanboy too hard for Whit Haydn, but his Mongolian Pop Knot routine has proven invaluable as a base for that. The constant back and forth of 'magician in control' and 'magician not in control' is a perfect example of this sort of plot in action.

Oh, and in re: Insurance Policy... I've been working on a prop book labelled MAGYK FOR THE SIMPLE as a utility piece / running gag for my show... why not make a fold-out page with your card as, say, page 435 in the book?

You're a magician: Therefore you can have a magic book handy.

You're in trouble: Why not go back and check 'your notes' (ie: the instructions)

And pulling an oversized 'page' open to reveal the proper card is a good way for the magician to save his skin in a tight situation,yes?

Just sayin'...

Tobias!