Posted by Ian on 2009-10-17
in News
This week I saw a show where the performer concerned claimed to be a “world class magician, illusionist and mind-reader”. Now I’m not sure if that was meant to read “world class magician; and illusionist and mind reader”; or whether the “world class” covered all three categories.
I hope for his sake that he was only applying the “world class” to the magician (and the fact that he has performed for the Queen perhaps gives that some validity). Magician is a fairly generic term to our art form and therefore it’s hard to distinguish between those magicians who you might consider “world class” and those who perhaps are only “country class”.
However illusionist and mind-reader are fairly specific: and there are some very well-known examples who one could pin the title of “world class” to without much fear of argument. As an illusionist, there is no doubt that David Copperfield is world class; and as a mind-reader Derren Brown is indisputably in that category.
When it came to illusions, it was impossible to make any judgement about this performer – as he didn’t do any. However he did perform quite a bit of mind reading.
As somebody who has myself performed – and certainly seen – quite a bit of mind reading type tricks, I can certainly tell you that his repertoire wasn't earth shattering. But there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that so long as the frame work around the tricks is convincing.
This frame work could be a claim that the mind reader was born with an innate ability; it could be his application of a sixth sense through a heightened use of the other five; it could be through him using the skills of pseudo psychology such as NLP or the study of body language. It doesn’t really matter so long as it sounds vaguely convincing in the context of a theatrical experience.
With some mind-readers, indeed, no explanation is necessary. They just go ahead with conviction – and their mind-set and persona carries you along for the ride. This performer, though, had no particular stance or attitude towards either himself or his material.
A couple of times he did try some sort of explanation but it was muddled and inconsistent. For instance at one point he claimed to be using the five senses; the next he said that everything he was doing was “a trick, a scam, a con.” Which basically implied he wasn’t a mind-reader at all.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered putting the description of mind-reader in his publicity in the first place.
I hope for his sake that he was only applying the “world class” to the magician (and the fact that he has performed for the Queen perhaps gives that some validity). Magician is a fairly generic term to our art form and therefore it’s hard to distinguish between those magicians who you might consider “world class” and those who perhaps are only “country class”.
However illusionist and mind-reader are fairly specific: and there are some very well-known examples who one could pin the title of “world class” to without much fear of argument. As an illusionist, there is no doubt that David Copperfield is world class; and as a mind-reader Derren Brown is indisputably in that category.
When it came to illusions, it was impossible to make any judgement about this performer – as he didn’t do any. However he did perform quite a bit of mind reading.
As somebody who has myself performed – and certainly seen – quite a bit of mind reading type tricks, I can certainly tell you that his repertoire wasn't earth shattering. But there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that so long as the frame work around the tricks is convincing.
This frame work could be a claim that the mind reader was born with an innate ability; it could be his application of a sixth sense through a heightened use of the other five; it could be through him using the skills of pseudo psychology such as NLP or the study of body language. It doesn’t really matter so long as it sounds vaguely convincing in the context of a theatrical experience.
With some mind-readers, indeed, no explanation is necessary. They just go ahead with conviction – and their mind-set and persona carries you along for the ride. This performer, though, had no particular stance or attitude towards either himself or his material.
A couple of times he did try some sort of explanation but it was muddled and inconsistent. For instance at one point he claimed to be using the five senses; the next he said that everything he was doing was “a trick, a scam, a con.” Which basically implied he wasn’t a mind-reader at all.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered putting the description of mind-reader in his publicity in the first place.
