Rehearsal

Prac­tice is not only neces­sary if you want to have the tech­niques ready when you need them. It is neces­sary for com­plete routines, acts or tricks. This seems logical, but is rarely put into practice.

There are many ways to prac­tise: a drill, a run-through, a short prac­tice run, men­tal train­ing, and many more. In the theatre, there is the ‘dress rehearsal’, which is rehears­ing in full cos­tume from start to fin­ish. Unfor­tu­nately, this prac­tice is rarely seen in magic (at least by amateurs).

Prac­tice routines. After you have learned the most import­ant tech­nical things, such as moves or gim­micks, rehearse the entire routine. The full range of move­ments, the order in which they hap­pen, the pat­ter or music.

Whenever you start a rehearsal, make sure it is a com­plete rehearsal. Don’t go through the routine slop­pily. Go through it with all the pat­ter, gags, present­a­tion, cos­tume and props. Act as if you are per­form­ing for a real audi­ence. Ima­gine an audi­ence sit­ting in front of you in your rehearsal room. Cut out eyes and faces from magazines and stick them on the wall. It will fool you into think­ing you are address­ing real people.

The dif­fer­ence is that rehears­ing gives you the tim­ing and feel of a routine. If you do it from start to fin­ish, it will feel awk­ward at first. This is more work on your part than just imit­at­ing a few moves and rush­ing through the routine.

But it will give you a sense of tim­ing, dur­a­tion and tech­nical prob­lems. Only by rehears­ing thor­oughly do I dis­cover many small tech­nical details that I would never have found oth­er­wise. These would have been dis­astrous in per­form­ance, but I was able to avoid them by rehearsing.

Just prac­tising indi­vidual moves is not enough. You have to go through the whole routine and presentation.

The world’s greatest cel­list, Pablo Cas­als, is 95. One day he was asked why he con­tin­ued to prac­tise for four or five hours a day. Cas­als replied, “Because I think I am mak­ing progress.