The Genii Forum

You professional guys please tell me how much practice and rehersal time do I need to put in before I show and effect to an audience.

The answer is "until it's good!"

That may seem a bit facile, but it's substantially the truth. And it largely depends on the effect, your skills, your standards and methods of rehearsing, and so forth. It helps to practice the bits and pieces separately sometimes, going over a sleight repeatedly, for example, until it feels natural. Then incorporate the steps and link them together. Then go over the whole routine from start to finish without stopping even if you make a mistake (because you'll have to keep going no matter what happens when you have an audience watching.) This is the real rehearsal part. Eventually, you'll achieve a level of comfort with the effect that suits you and the only thing left to do is to do it. Your audience will let you know if the rehearsal was enough! By going through this process a few times with different effects, you'll find a process that works predictably well in most cases.

Best of luck!

Michelangelo
www.illusionist.net

One rule of thumb I like to follow is not to perform an effect unless I can do it ten times in a row without failure.

I use a variation of this with sleights: I don't do any sleight in performance unless I can do the sleight ten times in a row without looking at my hands.

How do you know your practising correctly? How do you know your not making mistakes in practise? It may seem what your doing is correct until you perform in front of an audience. Usually I find mistakes in performance that must be corrected because I didn't know they were mistakes at home.

I should add I dont consider a trick good until I have performed it several time in front of an audience and made the proper changes needed to make it most effective

How do you know you're doing rehearsing correctly?

This is where you need to find a mentor. The demise of the brick & morter Magic Shop has also brought with it the paucity of places where you can connect with mentors. Magic clubs can only go so far unless you have real professionals who attend.

It's plain that an audience will let you know if you have NOT rehearsed enough, but evolving from mediocore to good requires an outside eye. I make my living acting, and consider myself a good actor, but experience teaches you that we are nowhere without the help of a good director. The director takes my talent and idea--what I bring to the table--and quite literally "directs" it. Separating the wheat from the chaff.

This is the same with magical performance. You're putting your raw talent and ideas onstage, but there needs to be someone out front watching and directing. Filming yourself can help somewhat, but it's one thing to identify problems but quite another to create and implement solutions.

I suggest trying to find someone you trust, who has a track record of performance knowedge, and ask them to help you. As you get better and better, your venues should improve, as will your available cash to invest in more advanced direction.

Everything has a cost, and good direction should be considered part of the mix. If you were to take what you spend each year on new magic, and spend it on professional direction, you would reap a ten-fold benefit--your existing magic would become new, and your newfound confidence and experience will generate new ideas.

Working in a vaccuum is difficult. Find someone to work with and things will start falling into place.

Fred Zimmerman

Thanks everyone for answering my plea.I want to be the best that I can be in magic.I want to entertain and make people have fun watching me. :whack:

People having fun and liking you is 90% of it.

Get a copy of Ken Weber's book, "Maximum Entertainment" and study it thoroughly. He will give you solid, practical, theatrical advice on knowing when you are ready, plus much more.

There is no way to practise being entertaining except through continuous performance. Only in fron of a lay audience can this be practised. Reading a book while educational cant make you entertaining

Practice your material until it becomes boring. Then practice it until it becomes beautiful.

Originally posted by Bill Palmer:
Practice your material until it becomes boring. Then practice it until it becomes beautiful.

This is a beautiful advice. You will be quoted, although you are probably used to that.

Bill:

I just pasted your quote into a book I am writing. A free copy awaits you whenever I get it finished.


Pete

I'm flattered! I also enjoy being quoted.

Thanks!

Bill, you hit the nail on the head. Well put.