Blog – Page 6 – Washington Magic Latest News

The Eighth Strategy: Overcome And Prevail

October 4, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

THE EIGHTH STRATEGY: OVERCOME AND PREVAIL
Never, never, never give up.
—Winston Churchill

Scene: This really happened. Lance Burton achieved the accolade reserved for the greatest of Las Vegas headliners: his own stage in his own theater. The first American to win the Gold Medal awarded by the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques—the “Olympics of Magic”—in 1982, Burton is performing on his stage in his theater at the Monte Carlo Hotel when, suddenly, one of his comely assistants is menaced by what can only be described as a man-monster.

The masked being brandishes a sword—prompting Burton to interrupt his show, grab his own trusty blade, and engage in an apparently impromptu Errol Flynn-style duel. There is thrusting, parrying, and the discordant clash of real steel against real steel. Clearly, Burton is battling for his theatrical life, conducting a brave fighting retreat up a staircase and taking his stand at the top.

“What do you want?” he demands of the apparition. “Why are you here?”

The Seventh Strategy: Grab The Dialogue

September 18, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

THE SEVENTH STRATEGY: GRAB THE DIALOGUE

—Whoever plays offense first wins.

—Bill Clinton

Scene: This really happened. Like most sons, Harry Blackstone, Jr. imagines following in his father’s footsteps. Three decades before, the father, Harry Blackstone, Sr., made a borrowed handkerchief dance impossibly and mischievously alongside his audience’s imagination.

Now, it’s 1987. The son enters the stage to reach for a lightbulb in a lamp held by his lovely wife. It’s hot. He waits, cooling, and now almost magically removes the still-lite bulb and admits:

“Of course, it’s impossible … that’s why we do it.”

The Sixth Strategy: Redirect Your Audience

August 30, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

THE SIXTH STRATEGY: REDIRECT YOUR AUDIENCE

Start the fire in the east; attack in the west.
—Sun Tzu

Scene: This really happened.

Tony Slydini , born Quintino Marucci in Italy in 1900, learned the rudiments of magic from his amateur magician father. The boy was never much interested in grand props and great stages, but focused instead on the proscenium within his own mind. Early on, he mastered a sleight of hand technique founded on precise timing and so-called misdirection. In fact, it was direction that Slydini practiced, honed, and perfected, creating a style of close-up magic that was entirely new.

Traditional effects relied on theatrical conventions, including a certain distance between the magician and the audience. Traditional magicians, accordingly, developed a repertoire of grand, if often stagey, gestures. Not Slydini. His magic invited close inspection. It never sought to evade reality, but to embrace it. Nor did he create about himself a phony aura of wizardly remoteness from his audience. Instead, he welcomed them, inviting them to move in closer and closer. He eschewed rigidly set programs, in which the scale of effects typically rises in a crescendo of you-ain’t-seen-nuthin’-yet showmanship. Instead, he engaged with his audience, apparently following their lead while directing them to inspire the direction of his show.

The Fifth Strategy: Cheat Preemptively

August 14, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

THE FIFTH STRATEGY: CHEAT PREEMPTIVELY

“Losers react, leaders anticipate.”

—Tony Robbins

Scene: Recall the story of Max Malini, told in the introduction. It really happened. Back in the 1920s, Malini, a world-famous magician especially renowned for his “spontaneous” close-up magic, stunned a U.S. senator, who asked him, at a formal dinner party, to “do a trick.”

Protesting that he is completely unprepared, Malini at last gives in to the repeated entreaties of the senator and his entourage. He asks if anyone happens to have a deck of cards. No one does, of course, but—fortunately—the magician carries a deck. He withdraws it from his pocket, shuffles it, then “forces” a card on the senator’s wife. When Malini then asks her to return it to the deck, the card turns up missing. Visibly annoyed, Malini half apologizes. “This is very unusual,” he protests.

The Fourth Strategy: Disorganize Innovation

August 8, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

THE FOURTH STRATEGY: DISORGANIZE INNOVATION

“There’s something about the center of any bureaucracy— it’s as if the water tastes different there….”
—Robert Shapiro

Scene: This really happened. We are in the suburban Las Vegas home of Jeff McBride, one of the best magicians in the world today. Gathered here are some of the other top American magicians, taking a five-day Master Class sponsored by the world’s most famous magic school. In the desert heat, this select group comes together to hear lectures, try out new material, and endure more-or-less polite critiques. Most of all, they create new ideas in a professional magicians’ equivalent of the experimental “Skunk Works” that legendary aircraft designer Kelly Johnson led for Lockheed—where he and his crew developed the likes of WWII’s war-winning P-38 Lightning fighter, the Cold War’s U-2 spy plane, and the SR-71 Blackbird, still the fastest aircraft ever built. Or think of it as akin to Steve Jobs’ famed “Mac Group,” set up in a Cupertino, California, strip mall, physically separate from official Apple HQ and topped by a Jolly Roger pirate flag. It was the perfect place to imagine and build a computer that shifted the PC paradigm.

Today, imaginations are fired up inside an unassuming desert home, the very environment in which McBride synthesized the shamanistic roots of magic to create a totally new effect: The Water Bowl Illusion. (Ultimately, on September 7, 2017, this is the effect that will fool Penn & Teller on their Fool Us television show.)

The Third Strategy: Imagine First

August 2, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.”
—Albert Einstein

Scene: This really happened . It’s 1983, and the world’s most famous illusionist, David Copperfield, is performing in a worldwide television special—his ninth. This time, he’s in China. Think China, and you cannot help but think Great Wall. Now, with the cameras feeding video across the planet, and with a live audience arrayed on both sides of the timeless landmark, David Copperfield makes his appearance.

Begun in the seventh century BC, the Great Wall of China extends over three thousand miles and was built to prevent the passage of the most powerful invading armies in history. Copperfield proposes not to storm it or climb over it or travel three thousand miles around it, but rather to walk through it.

The Second Strategy: Reboot Aspiration

July 30, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

“A computer on every desk and in every home”

—Bill Gates

Scene: This really happened. It’s the early 1920s, and Harry Houdini is the world’s most celebrated magician. Right now, he’s sitting behind a closed curtain, having just escaped from one of his signature magical props, the Chinese Water Torture Cell. Moments ago, onstage before a live audience, his feet were locked into stocks fixed into a restraint brace, and he was hoisted upside-down, suspended in midair by his ankles. The brace fits on top of the Torture Cell proper, which is a sinister-looking device, a phone booth-size glass box reinforced with a steel framework and filled with water.

The First Strategy: Forget Reality

July 25, 2018/in Washington Magic Blog Posts/by Washington Magic

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
—Albert Einstein

Scene: This really happened. It’s the mid-1970s, and Doug Henning is re-energizing magic with his own form of magical wonder. He walks onto a Broadway stage, his pants one of those strange 1970s colors, and he’s holding a newspaper, reading it, and turning to the audience: “The only thing a magician really does is to ask one question: ‘What’s real, and what’s illusion?’”

The Eighth Strategy: Overcome And Prevail

The Seventh Strategy: Grab The Dialogue

The Sixth Strategy: Redirect Your Audience

The Fifth Strategy: Cheat Preemptively

The Fourth Strategy: Disorganize Innovation

The Third Strategy: Imagine First

The Second Strategy: Reboot Aspiration

The First Strategy: Forget Reality

Our Websites

Connect

Sitemap

Sign Up

Blog Archives

Our Websites

Connect

Sitemap

Sign Up

Subscribe

Blog Archives