Weekly Carry Challenge To Build Your Repertoire

Do you have any thoughts on how to build up a 100 trick repertoire? This has been a goal of mine since you mentioned it years ago but I’m having difficulty with it. I’ll identify tricks I like but never really master them well enough to perform. I’m wondering if you have any advice other than “keep better track of what you want to perform.” —GO

If I was building up a 100 trick repertoire from scratch—and I wasn’t in the situation like I am now where I’m performing for people regularly—this is what I’d do…

First, I’d start keeping a list of potential tricks to add to my permanent repertoire. I would put a star next to the tricks that I knew I currently had the technical skill to perform (that is, the ones that don’t include a sleight I haven’t mastered or some gimmick or other item that I don’t own).

On Sundays I would scan the list and see what trick jumped out at me as something I’d like to work on next. And throughout the week I would carry with me whatever is necessary for the trick and find some way to perform it that week. So maybe I’d have a particular gimmicked coin in my pocket each day and I’d be looking for an opportunity to (hopefully seamlessly) work my way into that effect with someone. Ideally not the same person each week.

If the end of the week was coming along and I still hadn’t had the chance to perform it, then I’d just grab someone and say, “Hey, I need to show this to someone before the end of the week for a project I’m working on. Do you have two minutes?” It’s not as nice as working it smoothly into an interaction, but it will do.

The thing is, it’s hard to consider a trick part of your “repertoire” until you’ve actually performed it for someone. Until you do, it’s just this loose butterfly floating around your garden. It’s kind of in your possession, but you need to catch that shit and pin it down. So the goal is to get one performance of it out of the way. Once you do, you can now consider it in your repertoire.

At one trick a week, you’ll have your 100 trick repertoire in a matter of a couple of years. Maybe a little longer, since you will end up trying some tricks and deciding you don’t want to add them to your repertoire. That’s a perfectly fine pace.

You should then practice your repertoire once a month to keep things fresh in your mind. That may sound like it would take a lot of time, but most tricks you can speed through in a minute at most if performing it for yourself. Some only need to be run through in your head because they don’t really require any moves.

Once you have your 100 trick repertoire then you just need to maintain it, continue practicing it, and swapping tricks in and out when you find things you like better.

Building your repertoire takes time, but in my opinion, it’s one of the more fun parts about magic as a hobby. It keeps you from just mindlessly reading magic books and watching video lectures. Now you’re taking in this content with an eye towards what may be good for your repertoire. And the process of building it gets you out and performing. And then once you have your repertoire established, you will find more opportunities to perform than ever before, because you have this wide range of options to choose from.