Your know, I've taken a look at a lot of my old blog posts that I've deleted or I've half written and there seems to be a re-occuring theme. There's clearly something that's re-occuring in my mind that I've clearly been spending a hell of a lot of time processing. It's a tough thing to actually pin down, which is probably why I've never completely finished writing about it, but I'm going to give it a go now.
I was chatting with a friend not to long ago and we started talking about fears. Have no idea why this came up in conversation. To be fair I was probably just chatting nonsense as always. I think it had to do with being on stage and being unprepared. This is a personal nightmare of mine. I'm one of those people who has to have a plan when it comes to performing. I can improvise, but it has to be along the lines of a set plan. I can wander off the script, but I need to make sure I get back onto it otherwise I'm screwed.
So when it came to writing another post I thought I could write about being prepared etc etc (and I'm sure I will at some point), but my mind kept on moving to fears in general and this got me wondering what is a magicians biggest fear? It certainly isn't improvisation like I was talking about to my friend.
Now before anyone starts shouting at me "you can't generalise like that" - I know I can't. However what I can do is use the plethora of information I've gathered over my years of performing and having friends who perform to say what I think is a magicians biggest fear. And you'll probably agree with me.
In my humble (yet probably correct) opinion, magicians biggest fears aren't things like awkward guests, hecklers, working with children etc. Oh no. This is more insidious. A magicians worst fear is failure.
You're probably wondering how I got to this conclusion. Why are magicians afraid of failing more than anything else? And is it really something that effects magicians more than anything else? Well other than it being something that I know I'm afraid of myself, the biggest clue to why it's a big fear is the internet. How many times have you seen someone on Facebook asking about what to do when things go wrong? Or how about the number of adverts for tricks that say things like "fool proof" or "multiple outs" or even the more blunt "can't go wrong"?
It's everywhere in the magic community. It's a magicians worst fear that something will go wrong on stage. And quite rightly too right? It's probably the worst thing to happen on stage to a magician. Well if you think this way I have a message for you...
YOU'RE WRONG
Magicians have developed this fear of going wrong to the point where it takes over their performances. They spend so much time working out what will happen if things go wrong that they spend less time developing their shows. Planning for failure to the extent that so many magicians do can only lead to two things - a less entertaining show and a very worried magician.
Let's be honest. Things will go wrong in your show all the time. They do. It's just the way it is. Whether it's music not playing, an audience member not behaving, or a prop breaking these things happen. Recently I nearly injured an audience member when my roll on table decided to partially collapse, sending everything flying forwards stopping only millimetres away from a very surprised man (admittedly not as surprised as me in this situation, but I think we both needed brown trousers for the rest of the show). Things will always go wrong and this is just something you will have to accept. Sleights will go wrong, lines will be fluffed - whatever. But there's no reason to panic about it.
We've built up part of our industry in preventing these fluffs, but I say screw it. Let them happen. (Just pointing out before anyone messages me with insults - I'm talking about unexpected fuck-ups, if you don't practice and fuck up - it's your own stupid fault.) Things are going to go wrong and you need to accept it. Don't let the fear of things going wrong hold you back from doing something. Instead this is my advice for dealing with failure.
1 - Accept it. It's going to happen and it happens to everyone. Once you get this into your head it makes performing so much easier. There's a lot of pressure and worry that can build up that is frankly unnecessary. Do you know how many jokes comedians write before getting a good one? How many songs on an album are absolute bangers? If you are creative you have to go through a lot of shit to find the gold. You need to be prepared that what you don't won't work - and that is OK. Don't let it take up more time then it actually needs to.
2 - Own it.
Now there is a caveat with this one, but if you screw up, own it. If your prop breaks on stage, you can just try and ignore it, but let's be honest once the cats out of the bag - it's gone. There's no point in trying to ignore something that everyone can see. You might as well own it and take control of the situation. Whether it's making a sarcastic comment, joke, or just downright saying it's broke, by owning the situation you not only take control, you also become more personable. Audiences are very forgiving normally (unless you're on Britains Got Talent) and if you screw up it's better to address it in some way. Find your own style for addressing it.
I've been trying to think of a great example of this, and one springs to mind. I was lucky enough to be at Blackpool Magic Convention this year (that narrows it down to about 5000 that I could be...) and they had some amazing acts there. Some awful ones too, but the one that really amused me was Chris Cox. Chris has a great personality for magic and stage. He's really personable, friendly and a good magician. He performed in one of the Gala shows and his entire routine revolved around one person. And the person he got was either high, or drunk (or both). When getting this person up onto stage you could see the concern in Chris' face as he was worried this person was going to be trouble, but he persevered.
And the guy was hilarious. Couldn't listen to instruction, answering questions that weren't asked, just being a general nightmare on stage. It was a magicians worst nightmare (and in a room full of magicians this shouldn't have been too hard to find someone co-operative). Chris really struggled at times to rein in his drunk (but very friendly and pleasant) audience member and as mentalism goes, this guys antics were as close to fuck-ups go, without the obvious "is this your card... no" shit.
But you know what, Chris dealt with him perfectly. He saw what was going on, saw that it was going downhill and owned it. And this made it fucking hilarious. Chris' reactions to the person as well as just the general chaos of a man who couldn't understand simple instructions made the entire performance incredibly memorable. I'll be honest. If he had got a fully compliant volunteer his trick would have been impressive yes, but it would have probably mixed in with all the other performances that night. But thanks to the fuck up it became a talking point. Him owning it and not trying to ignore what was going on actually made the act 10 times better.
So next time you have a fuck up - own it. If you ignore the obvious you only look like a complete idiot or very pretentious. (Having said that, the caveat I mentioned earlier is that if the fuck up is un-noticable i.e. you know there's been a mistake but the audience won't, then you don't need to announce it or make a comment about it. In fact this will be counterintuitive. Only you know how the show is supposed to go normally. If you announce a mistake that's not noticeable it can detract from your show. If you have a failure, don't panic. Move on if you can, and if you can't - own it as above)
3 - Learn from it.
I'm a great believer in running through tricks with people. You may feel like you've got everything down and all sides covered, but until a real person sees it you'll never know. Having that first audience for a trick is really helpful. They can see what you can't and can give you objective advice. Yet you could always ignore this advice. You could think that you know better and maybe sometimes you actually do, but 99% of the time you should take on the advice that these first audiences give. And failure is the best of these audiences that you could ever have.
In my previous work I was heavily involved in H&S. There was a culture that we were trying to develop of reporting every little accident in the accident logs. It was annoying, tedious and a pain in the ass to try and get everyone to write things down when bad stuff happened, but it was important. Suddenly we had a record of accidents and we could start to detect patterns. Do a lot of people injure themselves lifting boxes? Well we need to do something about that! Or we've had 5 accidents this year from faulty electrics, maybe we need to add more inspections in (all made up examples - I don't want to get sued by my former employers but you get the point). The point is when you have a failure you can learn from it. It's not about punishing yourself or getting people into trouble but instead it's an opportunity to learn. Like an autopsy dissects a body to learn how it died and how to prevent it again, you can dissect your failures and learn how to avoid them next time.
It might be that on your way home from a terrible gig you think of a perfect line to deal with that heckler. Write it down and use it next time something similar happens. Or if you find that a prop breaks in the same way repeatedly, look at ways to put less pressure on your prop so it doesn't break or reinforce it so it doesn't break there again. Either way you need to make sure that when things go wrong you learn from it. That way when things go wrong again in the future you have either the tools to cope with it (heckler put downs, comments, added bits of improv etc) or it's less likely to happen again.
So when it all comes down to it, it's just important to accept your failures, learn from them and move on. Don't beat yourself up about them - failure happens to everyone. It's how you deal with it and learn from it that will turn you from being an OK magician into an amazing one.