Disciplines
Performers divide their craft into disciplines and care about the distinctions enormously. Buyers have never heard of them, and ask instead for a format — close-up, or stage.
Two performers who both work close-up can be doing almost unrelated things. Most bookings that disappoint were a discipline mismatch rather than a bad performer.
You are not choosing a magician. You are choosing which of eight crafts belongs in your room.
Close-up disciplines
Performed at conversational distance, for small groups at a time. Distinguished by what is in the performer's hands.
Sleight of hand with a deck, performed at conversational distance. The deepest technical tradition in magic and the easiest to do badly.
Close-up work with small objects other than cards — coins, rings, everyday things a guest recognises.
The scale between close-up and stage: performed standing, for thirty to eighty people, without a stage or lighting rig.
Stage disciplines
Performed to a seated room. Distinguished by whether the act speaks, what it uses, and what it asks of the venue.
Pure sleight of hand performed on stage, usually silent and to music. The most technically demanding discipline in magic.
Stage magic with props, dialogue and audience participation — the broadest stage discipline and the most adaptable.
Performance built on thought rather than objects: what a guest is thinking, remembering or about to choose.
Magic where the laugh is the point and the effect carries it. Judged as comedy first.
Large-scale stage magic with substantial apparatus — the discipline with the biggest visual payoff and the heaviest production requirements.
Working out which discipline belongs in a particular room is most of what we do. Describe the room — how many people, seated or standing, what else is happening, what languages are in it — and the answer usually follows.
If it turns out none of them fits, we will say so. How it works.
