Fish Tricks, Snakes, & Show Mastery

I wanted to slap my head in frustration at myself.

I was in the middle of a mentalism show, performing a Russian Roulette-type effect with 6 paper bags and an egg.

I was using the PATEO force to get down to the final bag with the egg in it, with the big reveal that there wasn’t anything dangerous in the bag. I thought it was a nice spin on the usual danger-type effects.

But here’s where I goofed. In the opening stages of the PATEO force, I pick the first two bags and let the audience member eliminate one. That’s to show the audience volunteer how the game works.

Then she picks two bags and I eliminate one, and we go back and forth until there’s just one bag left over.

It’s a lovely force, one I’ve become quite fond of in the last few years.

During the opening phase, when I pick two bags, I only have to do one thing: pick two bags that DON’T have the force object inside.

That way, the audience member can choose to eliminate either bag and the whole thing proceeds smoothly.

But on this day, I had a complete brain fart.

The bags were labeled one through six. I picked bags two and three. My force item was in bag number three. I had put the entire routine in jeopardy by allowing the force bag to be in play.

What was I going to do?

Sometimes in magic, we make mistakes. If any pro tells you they never make a mistake, they’re lying. Mistakes are part of life. They happen.

In my case, I was battling lingering COVID brain fog during this show. And I was debuting a couple of brand-new routines. So my mind was elsewhere during the egg PATEO routine. I’d done that routine plenty of times before, believing that my innate auto-pilot would carry me through the routine.

That was my mistake.

When you’re performing, it’s important to be ‘in the moment’ for every part of the show. That doesn’t mean you can’t improvise or take advantage of opportunities the show gives you.

Doc Dixon and I used to joke that we could each do our anti-bullying school show on auto-pilot while we do our taxes in our heads. That simply meant we knew our shows so well inside and out that we could take advantage of interesting things that happened during any given show.

But we were always ‘in the moment,’ ready for any opportunity. Or ready to handle any disaster.

When I was doing a lot of birthday parties, I used to produce a live fish in my show. (You can read about that routine HERE.) It was always a huge crowd-pleaser. To open the piece, I told a story about wanting a pet snake as a kid.

One show in particular stands out. I was performing outdoors, with everyone seated in front of me on the grass. As I told the story about the snake in preparation for the fish trick, one young child in the front row suddenly pointed at the ground in front of me and shouted, “Hey, he made a snake appear!”

Confused, I looked down. Sure enough, a small garden snake was near my feet, moving toward the kids. I happen to like snakes, so I picked the little guy up and held him up.

Everyone applauded. I took a bow.

It was a glorious moment, one I’ll remember forever. And being ‘in the moment’ allowed me to hit pause on my planned routine and take advantage of something really cool that happened unexpectedly during the show.

So how do you stay ‘in the moment’ and take advantage of these opportunities?

Simple. By knowing your routines inside and out. When you know your routines so intimately, you can let part of your brain track what is happening during the show and adjust as you go.

My friend Paul Romhany will soon be releasing an exceptional chair test routine with modular options. You can stretch out the routine with multiple climaxes or you can scale it back and just do a ‘bare bones’ routine if you feel your audience won’t have the attention span for a longer routine.

That’s a brilliant way to know your routines but still be able to adjust on the fly to meet your audiences where they are.

The key to this is practice, practice, practice. And get lots of flight time with your routines.

Many amateur magicians run from one routine to the next, always chasing the next cool trick. But if you want to get to the completely comfortable stage of preparedness, you gotta stick with the same tricks, as long as they are working.

Keep performing them for multiple audiences. Keep adjusting, making changes, and polishing the scripts. That’s how you master a routine.

And once there, you can still be ‘in the moment’ to handle any problems that arise.

So how did I get out of my PATEO disaster?

I got lucky. And I realized I got lucky. And I pivoted to take advantage of it.

When I asked my volunteer to eliminate bag number two or number three, she chose bag number three.

Rather than try to steamroll through the entire PATEO process in a misguided attempt to do the routine as scripted, I simply said “Great! You’ve chosen to eliminate number three.”

Then we took turns smashing the other five bags. No procedure, just smashing all five remaining bags.

I then asked my volunteer to reach inside the bag she chose and take out what was inside. She removed the egg, and I broke it into a glass to show it was a real egg, to applause.

How about you? Are YOU ‘in the moment’ when you perform?

Want to check out that fish routine I mentioned? It’s right HERE.

--Cris

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