Thinking in terms of a complete show
will help improve your performance
By Bobby Warren

When I first started performing magic shows, they were basically of the dealer-demo ilk. Every show was different. I would put together a list of 10 effects and that was my show. Early versions included Ring on Chain, Jay Sankey's Killer Key, the Crystal Tube, an appearing mini-silk streamer with help from the good folks at Vernet, Cut and Restored Rope and The Professor's Nightmare. Sometimes I performed Lollipops, What's Next and a sponge ball routine.

I had fun. The children at the birthday parties had fun. The parents appreciated it. But, I really did not have an act. I had a string of effects, but really nothing more.

As I looked back at the lectures I attended, for the most part, they were a series of really good effects strung together -- a greatest hits, of sorts, for each of the lecturers. However, figuring out how those effects fit into a show and an act was never really explained.

Things started to change after I began writing for The Linking Ring. As I interviewed people like Boris Wild, Mac King, Richard Osterlind and others, I would always ask for pointers. After all, I am a journalist; I am naturally inquisitive, and if I have the chance, why not. All of the magicians I have interviewed have been very generous with their time. A number of years ago, our own Samuel Patrick Smith had given me a book he wrote about being a performer and putting together a show. I forgot I had the book, until he reminded me about it last year. I learned from his book the importance of being a professional and how practicing and rehearsing, which are different, both play a part in the growth of a magician.

I remember Richard lectured me, in a good way, about always changing my act. He told me to stop it. He follows the outline for a show in Tarbell's, which draws from the days of the vaudville shows, and it features five routines. Because he has a Q&A routine he can do for 20-30 minutes, his five effects can cover an hour or more. My showmanship abilities have not yet reached his level, and the longest piece I do is about seven or eight minutes.

But what Richard did for me was to get me going in the right direction. I then met Floyd Collins, who introduced me to Dan Harlan, and I learned of Dan Harlan's "Triple Trilogy" for routining a show. It features three acts of three effects for a total of nine.

Dan's Triple Trilogy works for me. I like it, and I used it to design the various shows I do. I have different routines for church shows, birthday parties, senior citizens shows, mentalism shows, corporate events, and Christmas shows. There are a lot of similarity in the shows, though I will switch some of the effects depending on the venue. For example, I really like Dan's Crazy Eights. However, I don't perform it for large audiences or seniors because it involves having to read from a piece of paper about the size of an index card.

Understanding the elements of a show really helped me improve as a performer. Hindsight is 20/20, and what I have discovered is that in my journey as a magician, I devoted more time to learning different sleights, reading magic books, attending magic lectures, and watching magic DVDs than I did to developing a show and learning what it means to be a performer.

My whole mindset changed when I decided I was going to put together shows instead of a series of effects. Floyd really helped provide some guidance by suggesting how I might arrange a show from the effects I was performing. What it did was change my focal point. My typical consumption of magic was to buy any effect, DVD, book or lecture notes that I liked. However, now that I have a number of shows with clearly defined effects, I have changed the way I look at purchasing new materials. First and foremost is will it have a place in a show? If it does, I make the purchase. If it does not, then I really will scrutinize the purchase. After all, I am a working magician; I am not a collector.

I own hundreds of effects, dozens of books, dozens of DVDs, dozens and lecture notes. Perhaps at my fingertips, I have access to more than one thousand effects. Yet, I only have slots for nine of them in any one show. I have not abandoned buying magic, but I have come close to eliminating those impulse buys where I have to have an effect because it blew me away. No matter how impressive a magic effect might be, it really needs to serve a purpose.

I continue to look to see what is out there. I was recently in Daytona Beach, Fla., and I stopped in to see Harry Allen and Irv Cook at Daytona Magic (I worked for them when I was in high school in the late 1970s) to pick up a Mismade Flag effect for my children shows. I had a vinyl version, which was OK during my dealer-demo days, but now my style is just a bit different. The old version will likely make its way to my 12-year-old niece as she develops her magical abilities.

My advice is once you have more than enough effects, start looking at how to put together a show. Talk to other magicians, solicit their input, but remember, the show is yours, ultimately you have to decide what you will perform and when it will appear in your act. Once you begin to think in terms of shows instead of effects, you will be well on your way to becoming a much improved performer.