The Traditional/Social Performing Divide: Part Two
/Today I want to try and answer the question posed in the email in yesterday’s post that asked why some performers think, “The audience won’t notice [or the audience won’t care] if there’s something off about these gimmicked receipts [or whatever the prop may be that you’re using].” And why other performers can’t even introduce these things into an interaction without the person for whom they’re performing questioning them.
Yesterday we looked at how something you say can work just fine in a traditional style of performance, but would stand out in a social/casual style.
I’m going to work that around to the props you use as well. But first, another example of the Traditional/Social divide…
Copperfield has a really beautiful illusion where he plays his most believable role ever: a pervert staring through the window at two women in bed.
Imagine this trick didn’t have to be done on stage. Imagine it could be done in your home. You tell everyone to come to your place at 8 pm because you have an illusion you want to show them. Your friends show up and your present this amazing piece of magic to them. The girls disappear and reappear on the bed. Everyone is blown away seeing this happen right in front of them.
Now imagine you decided to perform this trick in a less formal way. Instead of putting on a “show” for people, you just want to have this moment arise more organically. You want to be hanging out in your bedroom with some people and then you make two of them vanish and reappear on your bed. What a crazy moment that would be.
So you invite a few people over and at one point you think of an excuse to have them follow you into your bedroom. The group includes the two people working with you on the illusion and then a couple of other friends who are the “audience” for this trick.
As a group, you walk into the bedroom.
What happens next?
What happens is that your audience takes a look at the structure in the GIF above and says, “This is your bed? What the fuck? You sleep on this? How can that be comfortable? Are you insane? Are you poor? Do you need money? We can get you a proper bed. We care about you.”
Now, for the first performer, this is a brilliant trick.
But for the second performer, they can’t even start the trick without someone questioning it.
This isn’t due to the quality of the performers, but due to the style in which they’re trying to perform.
Social performing is not just doing a trick in a casual setting. If that was the distinction, there would be nothing to talk about with it. Social magic is about blurring the lines between the performance and your everyday social interactions. It’s a more naturalistic type of experience. It’s still a piece of fiction. But it’s a style that’s akin to a mockumentary sitcom or a found-footage horror film. And if things feel false or contrived in social magic, it can stand out significantly.
The traditional style of showing people magic involves giving them a little performance or show. And in a '“show” people expect some artificiality.
So if you’re doing a “performance” and you pull out five receipts, it doesn’t matter if that feels contrived because a performance is a contrivance. The power of the method behind EDCeipt is that you could literally say, “Here are five fake receipts. I want you to think of an item on one of them.” And you would still fool them.
But if you tried to do a more naturalistic presentation where you “just happen” to have these five receipts on you, you’re likely going to get called out.
The strength of using receipts in a binary sorting trick is that it contextualizes a list of items. The strength of ProCaps is that it contextualizes a little cap you’re using to cover coins. It makes these things feel familiar.
But don’t confuse an object feeling familiar to an audience with an object feeling innocent to them.
Familiarity may help things feel more innocent, but if you have an object that plays a big role in the mystery you’re showing them, that item is going to be suspect to people even when it is the real thing.
The takeaway here is just to be cognizant of the style you want to perform in and then choose the material that supports that style.
With traditional magic, you have a little more latitude in regard to the objects you use when you perform, because—for better or for worse—they will be seen as props. Even if they’re “everyday objects,” people will still suspect there’s something special about them. The very first thing someone says in the first demo for EDCeipt here is, “Are those real receipts?” He is then clearly eyeing the receipts and reads off some information from one of them. This is before Craig has even asked him to look at the receipts. So to say they won’t possibly notice the location or the pricing is just nonsense. Some will notice, and some will find these things odd. Some will find the Tyvek receipts odd. Some will find the fact you have five receipts on you in the first place odd. But what you’ll find is that a lot of people don’t really care because they understand this is “theater” and these are “props.” And whether they buy into them as being real or not, it doesn’t prevent you from doing something they can’t explain.
With a naturalistic style of performance, people are unforgiving of anything if it doesn’t ring true. You can’t ask people to get more immersed in the presentation and use props that are too suspect. That breaks the spell.
In the previous post, Edward H. asked:
“How do people get their spectators not to notice these things? On facebook they said people don’t look at the receipts that closely but the trick REQUIRES them to look at them closely. Am I being gaslit? I’d accept that maybe I’m just a bad magician but I’ve had people comment on some of these issues before I’ve even really started the trick.”
I don’t think you’re being gaslit. Nor do I think you’re a bad magician. No matter how good you are, you can’t get people not to notice objects that don’t match up with their understanding of how those things look and feel. In fact, the more engaging a performer you are, the more attention people will give to the objects you bring into the interaction.
What’s more likely is you’re trying to fit a trick into a style with which it doesn’t mesh. If you really like the trick, I would go with a more traditional style where there is less heat on the “normality” of the objects in question. You’ll probably find you have something that’s still fooling. And then it’s up to you to make it entertaining in that style.