Hey as we know magic involves patter and blah blah blah(the interesting and enhancing talking part). Be it card tricks or stage interaction.


Im sure we do perform to many people to friend family and even to friends of friends of friends.


Im facing this big problem. When i use the patter for my commerial shows and use it on friends of friend or people who know you are a magician, they will tell you to "SHUT UP" and just do the god damn trick.

Thats what ive experienced. Any of you guys got that too?
How to solve this problem!!

Just smile at them and continue the patter!

Just because they told you to shut up, doesn't mean that you should listen to them and spoil your trick.

if you let that to handle, if its your frenz, then they just joking. If its not, means they potential heckler.

In this kind of situation, either you don't bother about him, or walk away. Divert your focus to the other who doesnt meant to say shut up to you, can look at their faces and you know.

When this guy, say cut the crap, just do it.. You should actually tell the people beside him saying, the storyline goes along with the magic, I doubt you wont want to listen to it, normally some people will nod their head and go on, then focus on this set of people but isolate that guy. Then he have no choice but to follow on, if he start getting rough or wat, tell his frenz that is more supportive towards you and say, you mind helping me in this? Give the person an innocent and helpless look. Normally gals or just frenz will tell his frenz to shut up and see.

If its a group of people that just wanted to spoil your image and ask you to shut up, group of frenz, those people, once they say that, just tell them, oh, then I cut it short, saying have a good day and good bye. Leave them dumbfound and walk away. Basically, don't do the magic to them as they are potential heckler that can ruin your show. They might come forward or shout saying you su**s or what, don't get intimiated by them, walk off and do magic to other people.

This concept is actually adapted from Nique Tan's book, working with crowds. You might want to get the book and read up on it.

But you are entertaining your audience, not entertaining yourself. (although they might be a bit rude.)

I don't think they are hecklers, because sometimes I think presentations can be boring and even lame. I believe you must be talking too much. a too lengthy script may be? I have heard this comments b4, so they aren't rare. :)

I agree with Icy. Keep it short and simple. You already mention you are using the same patter from your commercial show. But, those are your friends, you should perform to them as casual as possible.

Different situations call for different approaches.

That never happened to me before. How can they be so rude?! =(

Like what bigbadwolf said, try to keep your patter as casual as possible.

One trick will be to start with the patter before bringing out your "magic item".

Let's use Fraud for example. If you bring out the dollar bill and then start your patter about moving inks on bills, it is likely that the audience wun pay much attention to your patter. Their eyes will be on the bill, and they are waiting to see the effect. In other words, the bill will make them impatient, they would wanna see the effect asap.

If you start the patter casually without bringing out the bill first, then all their attention will be on your patter. The best part is they wun even realise that you are using a patter for your magic trick. I'll be telling them the real reason why Singapore develop the plastic bills. This will be the main patter for the effect. After the patter I'll borrow a dollar bill and say" I'll show you want I mean."

They won't ask you to "Shut up", cos you are not even giving them the idea that you are going to perform a magic trick.

If your patter is in the middle of your routine, try to keep tha patter short and to the point.

You have some cool friends

Haha, thanks guys , but my problem is that not that my patter is not good, is just that my audience just wants to see MAGIC lol.And my audience aint hecklers haha.

Actually if your audience is listening to your patter with no action than isnt that considered dead time? sometimes i watch others perform, i get quite annoyed when the magician just keeps talking, and the hands keep squaring the cards and dribbling them. It's like the story does not really interest you and you just want to see some action, but on the other hand you know how important the patter is and how it is actually related to the effect.

But as a layperson, if you just keep talking, they will feel the need to look up at ur face, and it would be rude to keep staring at your hands. But as a spectator, i want to look at the hands to catch any sneaky moves. So if you keep talking with no action, it creates a sense of discomfort in the audience cause they wouldn't know whether to look at your face or your hands.

currently i don't do any effects that has a long patter but little action, but one thing i learnt is that when you are going on and on about your story, it is actually a excellent time to do some psychological convincers.

For example, if you are doing a colour changing deck, and you're talking about how this and that happened, at the same time, yours hands can be doing something to show blue deck blue deck blue deck again and again. If you are doing triumphs, than do something to show that the deck is really all messed up.

If this is the case, the audience is looking at your face while you're talkin, not being rude. And at the same time they are glancing at your hands doing something interesting.

I mean, this is also a great way to do your subtlties, rather than saying 'look this is really a blue deck' or what ever.

ZiAn

Actually the patter is used to cover the dead time. If you just keep quiet and take out your next props, or wait for the audience to inspect the props, then there will be dead time.

You can try bringing the cards nearer to the face level while squaring the dribbling the cards. Then the magic will be frame around your face and the audience can look at your face and the deck at the same time.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Hmm... maybe your patter is really quite boring or not in context of the situation? I'm not sure, correct me if I'm wrong.

Patter, most often is to give meaning to the effect, so unless you are taking a bit out-of-point, I don't see why they should shut you up.

Anyway, you can say," Hey, can you show some respect and let me finish first? You so good, you do lah!!"

Maybe they watch you too many time?changing your audience offen is a good idea?
"Jerome i have enough of your pass la!Dont show me magic i dun like to be trick"HAHA

Oh my. Lols. Hope I don't have such audience. But my friends who I perform to are nice people. They respect me and themselves. So I don't think I will experience such problems. Even if I do, I will just take it that I'm deaf and ignore them. Don't let one audience spoil your whole effect=)

I have experience this before and really thought about it deep. From my point of view firstly is probably your age group you're perfroming (teenager) don't like you to talk aot of BS and go direct with the trick but this is normally with the guys secondly is you have to rethink your patter and see whether iszit a interesting topic or patter if nt your gotta change it or modify it in a more interesting topic. lastly is may also due to you doing too much magic to the same group of people.

Goodness your friend is mean!
Never had this situation before!

Perhaps what you could do is to....
SCOLD HIM.

I'm just kidding.
But if it were me, I'd take him to a side and slap him like David Stone.
wait I'm just kidding.

But seriously, I never perform the same effect twice.
So even if someone drags me to his friend and say...
"show him the card trick you showed me!"
I'd just do another routine for BOTH of them.

R™

I think it's important that you assess your audience before deciding what kind of patter you want to use


For example : Guys are visual beings, so cut the excess patter and just say what is absolutely necesscary. They respond far more to visual stuff so lean towards that side.

Girls are more interested to hear what you say so mentalism and mind reading works stronger with them .


If you are performing for groups , assess the male to female ratio before carrying on. your goal ( to quote david stone ) is to either break into the bubble by winning over the leader , or to gain the acceptance by majority.

So if they are more males , perform more visual tricks that will gain their acceptance.

the opposite for females.

And also most important , take note and assess who are those in the group that are more likely to accept your patter rather than those who don't and go for them.

Regards


Roland Lim

Sheeke,

I think there are two ways you can interpret this.

1. Your friends are really enthusiastic about the magic effect and nothing else.

2. Your friends are honest about what they think about your patter.

Both are equally likely, but the only thing you can do is to assume the latter and try to improve on your patter.

I've seen magicians who talk too much and bore their audiences who are just waiting to see what they came to see - magic! Some magicians talk too little and it becomes a simple performance display of skill with little entertainment value. Some magicians have too corny a story-line to bear, others are just plain boring.

See what can be improved, and all the best!