The heckler. Every magicians nightmare. He might be one of the spectators but we never know until we know.

I recently did some research on the heckler, and i would like to share it with everyone.

First of all is understanding the heckler. A heckler is a spectator whose goal is to wreck the magicians performance. They comment on every move you make. Revealing the method to the trick to everyone. They think they know everything. Why do they do so? Form my research, i found out that hecklers want attention. They are jealous of the spotlight the magician is having. They would go all out to say the dumbest things, do the stupidest act just to shift that light to themselves. Even if the magician says the most witty lines to counter him, the heckler's chicken ass never stops shitting.

So how do we deal with these "smarties"? There are sources which tell us to challenge the heckler. Use witty lines, make fun of the heckler or use sucker moves. Make him look stupid in front of all the audience. To me this may work. But only if you know your audience control very well and you are very sure of what you are doing. Basically, a master like slydini would do so.

Consider this, the heckler throws out challenge after challenge. You respond to each challenge, always proving him wrong, This encourages him to be even more aggresive. Sooner or later, one of the bullets will find its mark.

So if you cant challenge him, what do you do? The answer is simple and i would use this method. Just ignore the heckler. Our role as magicians is to entertain the crowd. By ignoring the heckler, we can continue with our performance. If we replied to everything the heckler has to say, there would be breaks in the performance and the rest of the audience might lose interest. Eventually, the heckler might quiet down. If its a situation where he can conveniently leave the group, he may eventually wander away.

After saying all this, hecklers out there are extremely few. There is a misconception among magicians. Most magicians classify spectators as hecklers when these people shout out, "He is p***ing the card." or "He did a d****e". These people are not hecklers. They want to see the magic, thus looking very closely. They saw you flash and there is no reason on earth why they shouldnt point it out. If you ever encouter this situation, it doesnt mean that you met a heckler. It just means that you need more practice.

Anyway, much of the iinfo here is from Strong Magic by Darwin Ortiz. I hope this info can be useful to all and dont be shy to use both methods. you never know which one suites you best.

I don't know how to handle hecklers well so whenever I meet a heckler, I use something thats heckler proof. I'll normally do a dark card effect and I'll try to get away as soon as possible. Sherman, thats an interesting post.

Very helpful Sherman!

There are a few of the COOL guys in my class who will heck till u become :angry: , well grown use to it.

Thanks for sharing this post! I learn quite abit from it. I'm really bad at handling hecklers.

Yea.. Hecklers are such a pain in the a**.. they make u ponder on the next effect that you have already planned them.

When the rest of the audiences are not affected by what the heckler is saying then it's no problem.. but when the audience starts to really listen to what the hecklers have to say then the problem arise..

Sometimes i do what Blackwing said, doing some heckler proof effect. But sometimes it wun shut the hecklers up. They can just come up with another ridiculaus explanation.

I tink when you're in these type of situation, you should just carry on with that effect that you're currently performing, and end the show right there. Because if the heckler gets out of control then it's really gonna be messy. Although i know there's always these urge in magicians to wan to do an effect that can impress even the hecklers. That often doesn't work because hecklers are not ready to appreciate what you're trying to do, that is to entertain them.

There are many kinds of hecklers. They don't appreciate magic at all. We must be careful of them. Some hecklers prentend to be interested to see your tricks but actually they just want to heck you. If you succeeded your trick, they'll ask you to do it again so that they can heck.Eg, ambitious card to mouth,after that they'll say do it again, now we look at his mouth. Even if they are fooled, they will just act and say rubbish. They are suspicious of every move that we do. They are never pleased until they can do what they request. If you are not even interested to watch, you ask us to perform for what. So that you can find out the secrets? IF you are unlucky,your audiences all turns out to be hecklers,especially singaporeans. Always show that a smiling face in front of any audience, if we get angry and fight back we lose. We shoudn't care what they say, if we have fooled them, we should be happy.

Normally I'll use some gentle heckler lines but for serious cases I'll use the following, I hope this will help those in need:

(After hecking, magician show a serious face)

magician (warning heckler): Thanks for spoiling the fun, but I'll appreciate if you can let others enjoy the show...

Usually after this line is out my audience will stare at the heckler and he'll either shut up or walk away, please take note that this is the last resort!

I believe some of you might not agree with the "magician show a serious face" point, anyway here's the reason:

*Client engage us to entertain their guests, if hecklers spoil the fun it is also our job to "remove" them...IT IS YOUR JOB to ensure the guests are being entertained!*

By showing a serious face you've pin point a message into all your audience at the table (or anywhere) that you're also human, you're working, he/she is spoiling the fun, and educating them to know when to "shut up"...normal when they know you're angry they won't do any stupid thing next, even if they want to complain they'll also have to think twice coz you have a valid reason to ask the heckler to "shut up".

If anyone need any other lines for different/difficult situation can contact me or post here to share, hope I'll be able to help...

-Alan-

I'd quickly whatever trick im doing, then...

To shatter their pathetic mindset that they know everything after watching 1 episode of 'Breaking the Magician's Code';

I show him a fool proof trick, ie. Lee Asher's Flipforce/Bruteforce.

Then i continue with a shot at the classic force, in any case if i fail, i'll just move onto a sucker effect; ie Card to mouth.

"Awww someone's trying to act like he's not impressed."

*P*** card to pocket*

"Watch this time it'll go in the middle of the deck, how about this, you shuffle it."

*Pulls card out and starts laughing with his friends as he SUFFERS in humiliation.*

Delete if you think its exposure. To me its more like practical help.

Sometimes, JUST sometimes, its fun to have hecklers, especially when we; magicians own them. That is if you know how.

Its just so fun to own hecklers, especially when you have other magic friends around, who're helping out in the dark, like stooges etc. Or you can do things like acting to do a suspicious move, but you actually did nothing.

*fake top change*

"You changed the card!"

*super stressful single lift"

"You took 2 cards!"

*Fake Ernest Change*

"My card is 2nd from the top!"

Use your imagination how to make use of these situations, and what to say to make them feel like a loser.

Or sometimes, just get away with a couple of self-working tricks if the heckler is owning you. Ha. :P

My style of dealing with Heckler is simple. Normally when i see them, i start perform rubberband tricks. And i fake a miscue and shoot the rubberband into their eyes purposely :D :D .

Hahaha, I like that!