Scripting Magic Workshop

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Lisa Cousins
Posts: 429
Joined: January 17th, 2008, 12:00 pm
Location: Hollywood

Scripting Magic Workshop

Postby Lisa Cousins » January 25th, 2008, 11:46 am

From the earliest days of the Genii Forum, I was always impressed with the care and attention Pete McCabe gave to the scripting aspect of magical performance. Many magical performances have some unstated yet quite felt tone of "What I really want here is to show you this cool magic trick, but I feel obligated to be saying something." The talking feels tacked on and awkward, an apology for doing the trick, as if the trick wasn't enough in itself, and needed this justification.

But Pete's approach to the magic script showed that the talking part could serve to make the magical performance a more complete and satisfying entertainment. I was so glad when I learned that he had taken the time to gather his thoughts, as well as the thoughts of an excellent variety of magic thinkers, into a single state-of-the-knowledge volume.

I flew to Hollywood to take part in his workshop, which was held at the Magic Castle on Wednesday of last week. After Pete gave an overview of the contents of the book, we were invited to start in on some brainstorming, and nine of the attendees participated in this. The brainstormers were (in order of chime-in): David Regal, Jonathan Levit, Shawn McMaster, Damien "mrgoat" Jennings, myself, David Groves, Joe Skilton, John Carney, and Mike Caveney.

What a group. I'm thinking that Pete should establish an on-going scripting magic session, where people could drop by to discuss their scripts. I mean, we saw Jonathan Levit's trick title go from brute-force to elegant in a single bound. Good things could happen.

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