Doing magic like David Blaine on your own TV special is all well and good. It’s the ideal situation. But when performing magic to real people in the real world, holding audience attention can be one of the biggest challenges that any magician will face. As a skilled and competent magician you need to be able to get and hold the attention of all of your spectators. In this post I’m going to discuss with you how you can do that.

There are tricks and techniques to mastering this and a lot of it depends on understanding the social dynamics of the situation and the unfortunate truth that in the real world, magic is not to first thing on your spectators’ minds a lot of the time.

Before we go into any techniques to help you grab and hold attention, let’s just address one issue first: It doesn’t matter what you do, none of these techniques will work if your act is not brilliant. Nothing will rectify a poor magic act.You need to first of all go to work on creating routines that are absolutely killer, highly entertaining and highly magical.

Getting Attention

If you approach people on the street and stop them and ask them if they want to see magic, many will just say no without thinking. From their point of view it’s the one response fits all because most people who approach you on the street are trying to sell them something. In this situation I have had more luck by just doing something really really quick. Just start. If it’s magical enough it will get their attention and they will stop what they’re doing and watch. Once you have their attention, holding their attention will have a lot to do with getting them to invest emotionally in what you’re doing.

Holding Attention

If you’re doing walk around magic at a party or some other social venue, let’s be honest, all that’s on the minds of most of your spectators is the girl in the red dress that they’re trying to get with. Magic is often well recieved in these situations but one great way to get the attention of a whole crowd and hold it for a while, get the girl in the red dress involved. That’s why grand illusionists have beautiful assistants. It makes watching easier.

Once you are into the routine, use as many personal belongings of your audience as you can. These keeps them involved and holds their attention.