Don’t Please The Audience

Here is an inter­est­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing arti­cle you should read before going into my ram­blings: http://blog.simplease.at/2014/02/dont-please-your-clients/

Good thought, right?

For a design­er, this is sim­ply a truth. The qual­i­ty of the rela­tion­ship customer/designer depends on how good the design­er is find­ing out what the cus­tomer real­ly needs.

In mag­ic, we might have a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. The pro­fes­sion­als will know. Most of the times the only thing of impor­tance is what the cus­tomer needs when hir­ing the magi­cian for his event.

But many magi­cians ignore this com­plete­ly and base the choice of mate­r­i­al and their atti­tude on what they per­son­al­ly like to per­form. Being peo­ple that love their toys, gim­micks and fan­cy mag­ic stuff, they tend to over­see what is impor­tant to their clients. Too much boast­ing here.

Con­se­quent­ly, their choice of mate­r­i­al is made from their per­spec­tive, a per­spec­tive that has been shaped over the years attend­ing con­ven­tions, lec­tures and mag­ic club meet­ings. The view­point is that from a magi­cian, an insid­er, a freak some­times. Bare­ly noth­ing a ’nor­mal’ per­son can relate to.

Devel­op­ing a set of ques­tions might help in choos­ing the right kind of mate­r­i­al. Instead of ask­ing ‘Will this kill them?’ ques­tions like ‘Why should they like this?’ or ‘Will they have a sort of ben­e­fit when see­ing this?’ might be of bet­ter help.

I that con­text, Tamariz’s Sev­en Veils of Mag­ic come to my mind. Para­mount is that the audi­ence likes you gen­uine­ly. For this to hap­pen, all the sev­en veils must be ful­filled. And then, even if there is no oth­er ben­e­fit, the audi­ence will enjoy a per­for­mance of a per­son they real­ly like, which makes a good emo­tion­al impact.

This might look like being not too much, but then it is bet­ter than hav­ing them sit through a rude show-off.

Pass it on!