3 Ways To “Be Yourself” as a Magician
By looking at the magicians who have successfully made their magic more personal
A common piece of advice on how to present your magic or character is to “Be Yourself”, which is probably the most unhelpful advice to anyone, especially an introvert who struggles with social interactions and idle chit chat.
But so many successful magicians out there have managed to stand out, by being themselves to one degree or another so I decided to look at what they did in an effort to help myself and you add more of yourself in your magic. By the end of this you should have some actionable goals in reworking your current routines based on the following three approaches I’ve seen.
1. Inject Your Personality
Okay, your personality is another way of saying “yourself” so this may sound like a cop out just to say inject your personality, so let’s dive a bit deeper to see what that looks like.
Your personality consists of characteristics, behaviour, traits, values and emotional patterns that make you, you. This will affect what you like and how you act, and can change overtime as you grow in knowledge, wisdom and maturity (or immaturity in some cases). So, take a look at who you are and how you act, are you funny, serious, dry, weird, gothic or many different things?
Take a look a Dan Sperry1, who’s monikers are Shock Illusionist and Anti-Conjuror, and looks like a magical Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson hybrid. He didn’t decide when performing magic to adopt a gothic persona, he was already like that growing up, and then gravitated towards routines that allow him to highlight that personality - Russian Roulette, Razor blade swallow and mint through throat to name a few. He took normal routines and added his own spin to them with music, aesthetics and a presentation that suited him, such as his dove act, which you’ll never see Lance Burton do in that style!
Rewrite your current routines to make them more your style and eliminate hack lines while you’re at it.
2. Incorporate Your Hobbies & Interests
Magic may have started as one of your hobbies, but if you’re like me it ends up being your main recreation that you think about constantly, but you do have hobbies and interests outside of magic, right?
Hopefully you do and if not, get some because it will make you a better magician and person in my opinion. Utilise your hobbies in your magic in some way, whether overtly and subtly. Lea Kyle2 started designing clothes before dipping her toes into magic, and once she combined her knowledge of fashion design with the art of quick change, she made such a big splash no one has come close when it comes to that sub-genre of magic.
Another example is Chris Funk, who in addition to being a magician is also a musician, so he’ll always answer “yes” if people confuse him for either profession. In this case, his signature routine when you look at the foundation is a cut and restored rope routine, but he throws in his guitar playing, adds in sound manipulation before the final magical moment of restoring the power cable.
Find ways to add your hobbies and other interests into your magic, even if it’s just a passing mention of it. In any of my drawing duplication routines I make a joke about how I did a Masters in Animation, which provides fodder for conversation afterwards if people want to talk to me about something other than magic.
3. Draw From Your Background/Culture
Everyone has a different background growing up and comes from different cultures, which we can draw from to make our magic more personal.
This is something that comedians do well that magicians often neglect. Comedians will tell jokes and stories from their childhood or joke about stereotypes in their culture, while magicians take out a box with a dragon painted on it and claim they have some ancient oriental magic, which we never see anymore thankfully (hopefully!).
Kevin Li does this very well, in his Fool Us3 and AGT acts, he draws from experiences as a child and uses them as a premise for his routines. Whether it’s learning Chinese with flash cards or using photos to highlight memories as a child, Kevin ensures his act is unique and very much himself by drawing from his own experiences.
Look for things in your background and culture that you can use to help you stand out with your act.
Putting It All Together
Let’s get practical with some actionable steps you can take right now.
Take out a piece of paper or open up a blank document and put three columns with the headings Personality, Hobbies/Interests and Background/Culture.
Start filling out the columns based on yourself, leave nothing out, even if you think it doesn’t matter, only you will see this anyway.
Write down a routine that you currently do and look at all the different things you wrote down and start matching up things you want to incorporate into those routines
Go through your script for those routines and see where you can add those elements you want
Perform it and see how it goes, then repeat until you’re satisfied
Alternatively, you can look at the traits you want to showcase and create/find a routine that would best match.
Let me know if this was helpful and if you were able to apply it to any of your routines or if you thought it was useless and to go back to the drawing board!
3 Things Worth Sharing
Speaking of making things personal, Asi Wind created a whole act where the magic was all about other people and their names. Just amazing!
My favourite magic podcast currently is The Magic Guys, hosted by Aussie magicians Josh Norbido, Nick Kay and the Gandalf of magic Doug Conn. You can listen to it on Spotify, but the best way to enjoy it is on YouTube where they’ll occasionally show things off or their guest might perform something. Check out the Dennis Kim episode to be fooled in a childlike way.
I’m still finding my way through this Substack/Writing journey, so if you have something you want me to write about or any sort of feedback, please let me know so I can improve to serve you the content you want!
So this is more you sharing something to me!
All great advice for aspiring magicians! Thank you David, and you can apply these principles in any stage performance! 💞
Sorry, that Chris Funk performance was hard to watch - i had to stop at 3:53 because of all the awkward silences, the bad overacting when the cable "didn't work" the first time (nobody got it was supposed to be a joke), and the audience's confusion about what was supposed to be magic and what not. I appreciate the willingness to try new things, but this came across as it was the first time he actually tested this routine before an actual audience.