Kenton Knepper's
"Krystal Visions"

Peter Marucci's
"Bizarre Bazaar"

Craig Browning's
"Cranial Consternations"

Michael Matson's
"My Magic - My Way"

Michael Jay's
"Thoughts on the
Passing Scene"

Rich Tenace's
"Stage Stuff"

Scott Guinn's
"Pro-Files"

Jon Thompson's
"Thinking Allowed"

Shane's
"One Eye, Inward"

Dan Paulus's
"Real Magic"

Michelangelo's
"Stages of Illusions"

Andi Gladwin's
"Close-Minded"

Andy Leviss's
"Shared Thoughts"

Tyler Wilson's
"More Than Words"

"At The Shop" Reviews

"In Your Hands" Effects

"Proving the Impossible"
 Challenge

"Other Visions"
Guest Contributors

Free Visions

Visions Store

Visions Links

Contacting Visions

Submitting an Article

Privacy Statement

Administration Info

At one time or another, it’s happened to all of us. Somebody finds out what we do, and says, “Show me!” Fortunately for us, this request is usually easy to comply with. Let’s take a look at some possibilities for doing an impromptu demonstration, and then look at a little twist on this request that tends to make things a bit tougher.

To start with, there’s always the ultimate impromptu mentalism demonstration, a psychological force. No props, just you and the participant. There’s a catch, though. In most circumstances, as you know, I’m a big fan of these, despite (actually, because of) their inherent risk of failure. When this is the only piece you’re doing in a more direct challenge situation, though, you might want to go with something a little more failsafe. It’s a matter of ratio -- while a failure once in a while makes things more believable, when it’s one of only one or two effects you’re doing, we’re talking a possible 50-100% failure rate.

So, then, we move on to more certain effects. The beautiful thing about mentalism is that there’s so much that can be done with just a pencil and a piece of paper. One effect, as we’ve used as an example for “propless” mentalism, is a one-ahead test. Add in a swami gimmick (which can easily be carried around with you), and the possibilities are endless. For some great advice on both material with a one of these, as well as instructions on how to make two different kinds, I’d recommend checking out Lee Earle’s Swami Gimmick Teach-In video. There are some great ideas here, including one of my favorite impromptu-esque effects, Terry Parrett’s “Boris and Natasha”. There is one effect on here which is a veritable classic, but one that I might offer an argument against. Call it sacrificing a sacred cow, if you will.

For as long as there have been swami gimmicks, mentalists have been accurately guessing the amount of change in a participant’s pocket. While it does tend to impress an audience, in my opinion there are much better effects for the job. Why? Ask yourself this -- what about guessing the amount of change a person is holding makes for a display of mentalism? Unless the person knows how much change they have in their pocket, you’re not reading their mind. You’re guessing. If they have to count the change to know the correct answer, than it’s not mentalism. This of course doesn’t even account for the fact that sitting there while they count change isn’t particularly engaging if there’s more than just that one participant. So let me take a moment to digress slightly from our original subject and move to strike this effect from our active performing repertoire. There’s so much material out there that does make sense, why use this one?

That digression out of the way, back to the subject at hand. In his massive tome Mind, Myth, and Magick, T.A. Waters details a whole slew of impromptu effects, including a multiple effect impromptu show. If you don’t already own this book, shame on you! Stop reading this column, go buy a copy, and come back!

For the ultimate in impromptu mentalism, you’ll remember that I recently wrote about an impromptu performance by Banachek which involved his effect, “Psychokinetic Time”. Fortunately for us, Banachek has been generous enough to release this effect in full detail as a relatively inexpensive booklet. This is easily my favorite impromptu piece of mentalism. You don’t need to carry anything -- just borrow somebody’s watch and you’re all set to perform an amazing feat of psychokinesis. It doesn’t get much better.

Another wonderful piece of impromptu mentalism, for those among us who do metal bending, is bending a coin. There are two approaches I use most often. First, to go with another Banachek idea, I use his presentational bits from Psychological Subtleties to cause a coin to bend in the participant’s hand. Depending on whether or not you use a borrowed coin, this is at most a one-move effect that will get screams from the participant. More recently, I’ve begun using Ray Koenig’s “Bent Cent”, a really cool visible bending with no moves at all -- Shane reviewed this (it’s available both as a separate item and in Kenton Knepper’s book An Enchanted Evening) a few issues back. Of course, if you’re doing bending in an appropriate situation, you could even do some spoon bending (although one should be careful, for example, about bending a restaurant’s silverware -- they might not be as amused as your companions are!).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg in what you can do when challenged to show somebody what you do. Use your imagination, dig through the vast number of resources out there for us to find appropriate material, and you too will never be caught off guard.

Before we go, though, there’s that little twist I mentioned at the beginning, though. What if they don’t say, “So, show me”, but instead say, “Okay, read my mind. What am I thinking?”. You can sometimes maneuver your way around this into an effect that you can easily do, but not always. This is where the performer who takes the psychological entertainer approach has an out that a “true psychic” doesn’t necessarily have. It’s a lot easier to briefly explain that it doesn’t just work like that, and that a rapport needs to be developed; that you need a context within which to determine what they’re thinking. It takes some advance planning, though, to get away with this -- you don’t want to seem like you’re stammering for an explanation of why you can’t do what they want. It needs to be believable. I’m sure there are other ways of getting yourself out of tough situations like this, but these are the two best I’ve come up with. I’d love to hear if you guys have any other suggestions, so please e-mail me if you do.

Andy

P.S. - On December 15, I'll be releasing my new booklet Ramblings and Revelations. This booklet is an outgrowth of Shared Thoughts, and will include a whole slew of new, never before seen essays on mentalism, as well as completely re-edited, revised, and in some cases fully re-written versions of all the Shared Thoughts essays to date. I'm really excited about this, and I think you all will be, too. As a thank-you to you guys, the readers who have encourage me to keep writing this column and to write R&R, I want to offer a special deal for you. We'll be adding the book to the site (http://www.asquaredproductions.com) for pre-orders in a couple days. Once it's there, on the information page for the book, there will be a link for Visions readers. When you click on it, it'll ask you for a password -- enter the word "snarfblat" and you'll be able to pre-order your copy of Ramblings and Revelations for $5 (full price is $10, normal pre-orders are $7). The one catch is that this offer's only going to be good until November 12, so get the extra savings while you can!