Being prepared for mistakes

 "Everything that can go wrong, will sometimes go wrong"

That’s famous Murphy's law. What it basically means is that no matter how good you are or how much you have practised certain trick or the routine, you still should be prepared for mistakes because if you are performing a lot, you will encounter them at some point or another. Sometimes you will just end up losing your break, you false shuffle messes up and you lose your stack, you miss your force and so on. In close-up situations these sort of situations are actually rather easy to get out when you get good enough. What I mean by this is that when you have enough experience you just tend to also have the “tools” to get out of difficult situations by just “jazzing”. In worst possible scenario on close-up only few people will experience you “dying on stage” moment so it is not really end of the world.

However when you are on stage the things are somewhat different. On stage you are followed by larger audience and hopefully your act is much more planned. You now how to start, how to end, how each piece flows together and so on. However, there is still a risk that something goes wrong and on stage any error can totally mess up your rhythm and flow of your act. This is why you should be prepared for them. Someone once wrote that the difference between good and excellent magician is that when excellent magician makes a mistake, the audience isn’t even aware of it. Why is this? Simple, the excellent magician was prepared to the mistakes.

Let’s take Daryl’s Rope routine as an example. It or any other common rope routine can be found on at leasy 70% of most stage magicians act. However, how many of those magicians are prepared that one night, in the middle of the routine, you suddenly drop out the small “secret” piece of rope? Or how many are prepared that when you try to do bill switch or vanish cigarette and suddenly the thumb tip drops on the floor? Have you ever thought how you would react to situation like that? Often when we are rehearsing a routine and something like that happens we tend to start over from the beginning. However is that really the best way to learn? Instead I suggest that we should keep on going, try to find a way to recover from the mistake with as little damage done to the routine as possible. In the long run this might also help us develop something our own, something more creative than the original piece was. Also it will prepare us for those situations where the things go wrong.

I believe that you should have emergency plan to each of your routines. This plan would allow you to get out of most disasters that can happen and still get you some sort of conclusion of the routine. Close-up magicians for example tend to carry invisible deck with them just for those situations when they lose the card or some smart ass decides to lie about their card. This allows them to get out of those situations rather easily. Similarly invisible deck could be uses as pack up routine also on stage. Let’s assume that with the current boom in mentalism, you do tossed out deck. However one assistant is nervous and misses your force card or remembers the card wrong and isn’t sitting down. What do you do? Especially if you do Gazzo type routine, where the idea is that the last spectator stays standing up. However, he remembers your force card wrong… Invisible deck could save you in this situation as well. However, if you haven’t practised the use of the invisible deck in this situation, it will show on the audience and they might sense that there was a mistake. If that option is also well rehearsed and planned, it will seems to the audience that it might have been the plan all along.

Of course sometimes things will go so wrong that they simply can’t be saved. However, you should try to identify this sort of moments as soon as possible. If the situation is unsalvageable then don’t try to do it. Just end the routine, do not make a big deal about it or try to apologize. Just move on. We are just people after all, we are also allowed to make mistakes. By preparing for the errors you gain confidence and you can relax even on stage because you know that you are prepared in case something unexpected happens. This allows you to concentrate on having fun and entertaining while on stage and those are one of the most important things to do on stage.