About a month ago, I had an idea for a routine that’s a three shell game sort of routine, but with juggling. You can read about it here. The premise is that a prize is put into a slit in a tennis ball. That ball is then juggled with two other tennis balls that also have something less valuable in them. The person from the audience needs to track the one with the prize, but can’t and end up winning the two lesser value prizes.
I had an idea, what if instead of prizes, I had predictions. Inside the first tennis ball was a piece of paper that said, “You Will Pick This One First” and the second that says, “You Will Pick This One Second” or something like that. That gives a magic (mentalism) payoff for each selection.
To my surprise, when I actually tried this, it fell totally flat. I’m guessing because the trick took the surprise turn, and the bonus effect wasn’t expected…and probably not that good.
Testing ideas in front of the audience is part of the creative process for me. Sometimes it hits, and sometimes is misses!
-Louie
Tag: bank night
The Shell Game Onstage
The idea of doing a three shell game style routine onstage has been in my head for a little while. Onstage, a shell game type routine typically manifests itself as a Bank Nite type routine, where money is mixed with worthless prizes. The spectator picks all but one envelope, leaving the magician with one, which has the money.
There are two challenges with a Bank Nite style of routine:
1: The spectator loses (usually)
2: The final reveal is anti-climatic, the audience knows what’s in the last envelope, so opening it isn’t really a moment.
A good example of ending the routine with a bit of a moment is telling the audience that money is in one of the envelopes, but not showing them. A good example of this is John Archer’s Blank Nite routine:
What’s the Solution to Doing The Shell Game Onstage?
This doesn’t really solve the problem, but here’s the idea I came up with: You have three tennis balls with slits cut in them. You put the $100 into one of them, and the audience has to follow that one while you juggle it.
This is nice and visual, and it has the mixing element of the three shell game. The audience is involved in trying to follow it.
This doesn’t solve the two main problems: the spectator loses, and the final reveal is anticlimactic.
I like the visual…but now to try to figure out how to solve the two issues.
-Louie