Magic is among a short list of arts and disciplines that are present in every culture, in every language and every part of the world. Mental magic and mind reading is the only remaining genre of magic which has a question mark next to its validity. It is the only genre of magic that some people still think could be real.
Performers like Derren Brown have become enormously successful of late and in could be speculated that a large part of his success is attributable to one quality of his performances: believability. A large fraction of his audience believes that what he is doing is not trickery, but genuine, scientifically grounded imitations of psychic phenomenon using magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship.
Making your magic act believable has pros and cons. On the one hand, your act will be marketable to the highly educated, who, may otherwise dismiss magic as silly fun and something for children. On the other hand, taking your magic in this direction is going to create a barrier to certain demographics. This is the decision you will have to make. But there is something cool about performing mentalism when your audience think that the mechanisms behind it are complicated and take years of dedication to learn.
So without further ado, here is a brief guide to creating believability.
In his book, Absolute Magic, Derren talks at length about how there should be a sound theatrical theory behind why your magic works; a source of your abilities other than “it’s magic”. And once you have decided what this is, the way you present your effects must all have a theatrical theory behind why they work that can be logically rooted in the source you have decided upon. Further, you must treat all of your presentational elements which suggest the source of your powers very seriously. If you treat them seriously, your audience too will attribute importance to them and jump to the conclusion that you want them to – namely, that the effect would not work if you did not do it.
Think deeply about what your act would look like if you did have psychic powers. Think about whether it would look like you make it look when you perform. Would you always be right when you read a mind? Would you always be 100% correct all of the time? Would your techniques and methods work on everybody?
Think through your performances and your act and theatrical reality from the audience’s point of view. What conclusions will they jump to? What will they be lead to think?
Another approach is to create routines which start out with a simple trick that is based on scientific logic or something real. Then, in phase 2 of the routine, step it up with an illusion that appears to be a development of phase 1. Then, in phase 3 you can take it to the next level and perform something really quite magical which borrows from phase 1 or 2 and seems grounded in those simple ideas.
You could think of it as creating an illusion upon which all of your other illusions are based. If you can successfully come up with something to fit this bill, you will have a very powerful mentalism act that most will believe.
