Discourse in Magic

This week Jonah connects with Helder Guimarães, a prolific magician known for bending the expectations of what a magic show is capable of. In this episode they’ll discuss how to balance the artistic and the logical sides of your performances, why Helder requests that those who purchase his material not perform them on TV or online, and how he directed his love of performance and creation towards the past year of pandemic-era virtual performances. A Live Show Like No Other If you were lucky enough to get a ticket to one of Helder’s shows you might have found yourself outside a convenience store with your ticket in hand and a confused store clerk assuring you that there is no show at this address but he can at least offer you a memory. And as he led you into the photo booth and the secret door opened up to a hidden room where Helder was waiting to perform a one hour set with you you might realize that this person likes to upend your expectations about what is possible with a magic show.   Helder opens up about the work that went into his immersive production of Borrowed Time and what it took to assemble the right team that brought it all together.  Embracing The Mystery of Theatre Helder magic career really took off after his FISM win in 2006. But that win almost never happened because the panel of judges truly believed he had cheated, rather than simply fooled them, by using a stooge in his act. His performance was just too impossible and the judges couldn’t figure out how he pulled it off without cheating. Jonah and Helder talk about that act and break down some of Helder’s thoughts on the importance of disguising the method. Going Virtual   A global pandemic shutting down all live performances on the planet wasn’t going to slow down Helder either. He shares with Jonah his process of putting together another truly unique show with The Geffen Playhouse, called The Present, in which members of the virtual audience are sent objects that they use during the show so that the magic is literally in their hands. Helder shares what it was like to produce a show in lockdown and finally break out a concept he had been considering for a long time but never had the right environment to test it out in. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Bill Goodwin is an amazing person, amazing friend with a lot of knowledge of a great era in magic. He met all those great card guys. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? One of the things that it’s both positive and negative is that I do believe that magic is not yet developed as a performing art as it can be. I think there is a lack of depth in what magic is still today. But that’s a positive thing at the same time, because it allows us to be able to explore that. There is a lot of things we can do to create new magical experiences and to create new ways of audiences to feel impossible moments and at that point it becomes something positive. One of the things I like about magic right now is the possibility of seeing diversity much more than when I started. When I started, the only things you could see or read were the videos that these big names produced or the books or the people around you or you had to travel and you’re still always going to be limited. Now you can talk with friends in Japan and then they can share things that happened there. That’s amazing, that the idea that that diversity exists and it’s more attainable, that is something really powerful. Used correctly, I think it can be of great advantage for everyone. One negative thing would be the lack of criteria of publishing magic these days. I think a lot of things get to the press or to videos or to whatever medium they are using to sell before people really think through what they are putting out. It’s almost like people have ideas and two months later they publish it. And I feel that magic has much more to gain with each people keeping their secrets a little bit more. Nourishing them. And when it comes to the right moment that they will feel it to then publish because that will have a little bit more of that depth as well.  Take home point Something that took me a long time to learn and that I do believe it’s the essence of magic. From the creative point of view. And the way I like to think about magic is of self-expression, that’s what we are creating. I would say that being honest is the best thing they can do in every single thing. Be honest when working on it, be honest when sharing it, be honest when receiving criticism, be honest with yourself, be your own self critic. The worst comments should be yours after a performance. Plugs For magicians, Secret Language is still available and if you visit secretmagic.com there will be a password hint. It’s very easy for people who know a little bit about magic and once in you can get a lot of Helder’s releases through the website. For everyone else interested in Helder’s performances you can follow him on instagram @instahelder or visit thisishelder.com The post Creating Impossible Magic Experiences with Helder Guimarães appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

Ben Train returns to harass Jonah for another update from the Toronto Magic Company.  This week they discuss the winding down of virtual shows, what their first live show post-pandemic was like, how they’re planning for the future of in-person shows, how they’re consulting for other businesses, and how much fun they’re having the new teleprompter they purchased!  Are Virtual Events Dying Down? The story seems to be the same for every magician, virtual shows are winding down. Even for the Toronto Magic Company, Jonah and Ben have noticed a dramatic decline in bookings for virtual shows. Does this mean the end of virtual magic? Is this a harbinger of the return of regular in-person shows? Jonah and Ben discuss the exciting possibilities and remind each other what they’ve loved and learn from a year of virtual performances. First Live Show Back Ben and Jonah are also just back from their first live in-person show since the start of the pandemic, and it was a bachelorette party. The guys share their thoughts on what it was like to be back to in person shows and how different it feels from before. They also open up about their plans for the eventual return of in-person shows in the near future and how they’re both learning what sort of events they want to accept and which events they’ll be more comfortable turning down. Consulting and Youtube Content On top of the return to in-person events, Jonah and Ben have also been consulting on a bunch of different projects including TV shows, VR, music videos, and even helping to design a wedding proposal! Over the past couple of years, Jonah and Ben have worked to help solve magic problems with magicians and now they’re excited to begin working with movies or television shows to help their projects and really extend their problem solving abilities. Stay tuned to find out more about the projects they’re involved with!   And the return of in-person events doesn’t mean that things will be slowing down for Jonah and Ben on their online platforms. The Toronto Magic Company continues to produce new content on their Youtube channel and need your feedback to know what you like. They’ve tried vlogging but also scripted shows and sketches and, as you might expect, Jonah and Ben have differing opinions about what sort of content they should focus on in the future. So make sure you weigh in and leave a comment at youtube.com/torontomagiccompany The post The Toronto Magic Company Bought A Teleprompter! appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah shares with you six tools that will make working with your team easier as you expand your magic business.   #1: Slack Slack documents your conversations. How many times have you communicated with a freelancer in an email thread that goes on and on and on and on, or have you shared information and you have to go and dig through it. Slack makes that communication a little bit easier, a little bit more searchable, and is a nice place to communicate with your team that is outside of email, outside of Facebook, outside of everything. With Slack, if you have multiple team members, then they all may have conversations with you and you may have conversations with other individuals, and they may have conversations with each other. For Jonath, that’s been a real lifesaver. Slack has a nice place to put everything to organize your work communications. #2: Asana With Asana, you can have a project within a project. You can have tasks and within those tasks you can have sub tasks. You can even have recurring tasks. You’ve got a place to track everything, and it really makes it simple because now you don’t have to dig through email or slack or anything else like that. You can set goals, you can set deadlines, you can do tons inside of Asana. Jonah uses it completely entirely for free, and it really is a game changer and it gets you out of a long thread to give tasks and into a really easy place to write out tasks, communicate about tasks, add people, and manage people on task. So if there’s one person doing something, you send it to them. If there’s multiple people and it’s all visible, it’s really effective. Jonah found this probably doubled or tripled the amount of work that he was able to do with his team, just because it was clear and organized and not very hard to learn. #3: Loom Loom is a screen or camera recorder that takes that file and immediately puts it in a folder on the web and gives you a link that you can share. It takes so long to record a video on your camera, upload it to a drive, and then send that drive link to someone. Same thing when you send some sort of screen recording, some sort of tutorial that also takes a long time, you have to save to your computer. And it’s usually a ginormous file. Loom makes the whole process of recording yourself, recording your computer or recording yourself and your computer at the same time really, really easy.  #4: Google Drive Google Drive is really important. Once you’re using a team that is going to be sharing files back and forth, you don’t want to just send a file that’s going to disappear. You want the space, and it’s really important to potentially pay Dropbox or Google Drive to get that couple hundred gigs or maybe terabytes of cloud storage to be able to put your photos or videos or projects or anything else like that. If you have to go and upload from your hard drive, photos or videos, every time you have a new project, it’s going to slow you down working with your team. If you’re working with your team, if you’re writing things together, if you’re creating videos together, creating documents together, graphics together, anything, then you probably want to invest in some sort of cloud storage. #5: Zoom Zoom! Zoom is important to have meetings. And, as time goes on, we are going to have teams that are more and more global and it’s nice to be able to share your screen and also see each other and all that good stuff. You know Zoom, you just experienced a pandemic. So you know all about Zoom, but it really is that important. If you don’t use Zoom, you can use Skype or another platform that you like to use but Zoom did a really good job and Jonah pays for it because he does virtual shows and it’s pretty good for his team. Jonah even pays for the recordings because it’s great to have the recordings of things that you teach to your team and you may want to use it later. #6: LastPass You need some sort of password manager and password sharer. Instead of you giving your team members your password to log into your Zoom account to grab a recording, you share with them the LastPass link. They click that link and it fills in the form and they don’t even see what the password is. So they’re able to use any usernames and passwords that you have and log in from wherever they are. It’s so easy for LastPass. And at a low price point it’s very reasonable to manage all of Jonah’s passwords to make it easy to share with team members. Upgrade Your Business Jonah would love to know what software you use with your team. Was there one that he forgot here that you use? Do you think one of the ones that you use is a better version of something that we have here? And if you are growing your team and want help growing your magic business then send an email to info@discourseandmagic.com with the subject “Upgrade” and Jonah will get you some info about upgrading your magic business. And that might mean working with a team member and adding some software to make managing that team easy.  The post Magic Appetizer: Tools For Your Team appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah connects with Ekat, an incredible magician, youtuber, cardist, and so much more. Together they’ll talk about creating content online, the difficulty in marketing magic, and the challenges that come up when trying to ethically review magic products. You Gotta Join The Circus  Ekat was first introduced to magic while still living in Russia, where her favourite place was visiting the circus. Mesmerized by a magician who was performing for attendees waiting in the line, her first question to him was, “how did you do that”? The magician told her that if she wanted to learn how she’d have to join the circus. She didn’t join the circus but she did take to heart the lesson to take control, seek out, and teach herself the secrets of magic. To Review or Not To Review Ekat has made a name for herself on Youtube as a reviewer of magic products. Together, she and Jonah talk about her process of choosing which products to review, how she reviews them, and the ethical questions she has to ask herself when deciding to review magic products in the first place since even talking about them in a critical way can annoy members of the community who would rather these discussions be kept out of the public.  Similarly, Ekat got started on Youtube by documenting her journey learning different magic tricks and teaching them to her viewers. So what tricks does she teach, and under what circumstances would she choose not to give a tutorial? Hint, the answer is in whether or not the trick is old and universal vs one that is still being actively marketed by a living creator.   Read The Comments?  Given that Ekat is on Youtube, and sometimes stirring up controversy by simply talking about how some tricks are done or reviewing products and sharing honest critiques, it’s no surprise that the comments from some in the community can be harsh. Ekat will share her thoughts on how to handle criticism online, how to navigate it as a business owner where you don’t have a choice about whether or not to post content if you want to stay in business, and the lessons she’s learned facing her harshest critics. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Bao. It’s really unique what he does with TikTok, and he understood the whole influencer marketing thing with his videos with milk. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? I really like all of the development with magic apps. Technology has to evolve and the more advanced it is the more it does feel like magic. I love that it’s evolving. I hope to see more seamless integration with technology One thing that I don’t like it is that there are too many things being released right now. It’s become too much of a market releasing things without quality. It’s too much of a machine. Take home point I would say, you have to do what you love. If you don’t like creating content, don’t create content! Try to find a way to marry what you like with your magic. Plugs Ekat’s Youtube channel is the center of where they create content: youtube.com/user/babycatxd You can also slide into Ekat’s DMs on Instagram with your questions: @ekatmagic And keep an eye out for Ekat’s Penguin Magic Lecture. The post Reviewing & Marketing The Secrets of Magic with Ekat appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah connects with Cody Clark to talk about his sensory sensitivity shows for autistic audiences, performing with autism, and the obstacles that still remain in the magic community for minority and disabled performers. Won Over By Magic Cody shares with us the story of his autism diagnosis and the choices his parents made at the time to not subject him to harmful treatments but instead continue to offer him the same opportunities that his neurotypical siblings were being offered. As he grew up he wanted to lean heavily into the arts or sports but both proved to be full of challenging barriers. That was until he attended a magic performance where he was invited onstage to help saw another audience member in half. Here he found something he could do. He immediately purchased his first magic kit and joined up with a local magic club.  Overcoming Barriers As an austic performer, Cody is passionate about ensuring this shows are accessible to all audiences and provides unique sensory sensitivity shows where other autistic people can enjoy the magic without loud noises, like having a focus on silk magic. From there, Cody has found a niche in the fringe festival circuit where he’s carved out a space for himself.   However he shares with Jonah the continued barriers he faces in simply working with his market to be fairly paid for his work in a world that systemically undervalues disabled people and still allows for disabled workers to be paid below minimum wage in many countries, including the US. Embracing Passion Cody will share how a love of trains, a love of old school country music, and a love of magic have all combined to form his stage personas and offers advice to other performers on how to step out of their comfort and ask for advice or help when they need it. It’s been Cody’s experience that there is no better community to ask for him than in the magic community.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain There was one mentor of mine I’ve been saving for this moment. I consciously did not mention them in other moments because I wanted to bring them up now. The big unsung hero of magic, the person who’s given me stage time and so many other stage time through indie magic, monthly, and also a transgender magician who does magic as Rodney The Younger, who does magic as Andrea Merlin, Queen of Magic,. Taylor Martin,.  They’ve been a professional magician for about 60 years. Based in Indianapolis and they are an unsung hero because they weren’t necessarily, well, they knew they were trans of course, but, they weren’t necessarily intentionally, like, I’m going to break barriers here, here, and here, like even I was. Instead, they just needed to make a living in this world and how they’ve dealt with the hurdles from places like the Magic Castle of all places. That’s up to Taylor if they want to elaborate, but they had the best Magic Castle rejection story I’ve heard, I will say that. What about all these barriers, how Taylor’s toppled these barriers has been so inspiring to me and that Taylor’s characters are why I have Conductor Cody, why I have Nudie Suit Cody and why I have just Plain Suit Cody. The whole character thing comes from Taylor. What do you like about modern magic?  To compare the things I like I will compare two hobbies, one that I left when I got into magic, and then of course magic. I’m into toy trains, especially Lionel Trains. When I left trains and got into magic, both hobbies were the exact same, old white guy hobbies who were dated. One hobby has since evolved and is currently publicly relevant. The other has stayed dying. Guess which is which.  Magic has listened to those critiques, magic has figured out how to evolve, how to be relevant, how to invent new ecosystems, to learn magic, how to get people exposed into it whilst retaining its core charm about what magic is. Where toy trains have continued the descent downward. And they literally think, “oh, just make it operable on your iPhone. That will get kids in”. Where really, that’s just a bandaid on a larger problem with that industry. Where magic for all the faults that still has, it is now a relevant part of the ecosphere again. It’s gone from people being bullied for being a magician to people being celebrated for being a magician. That’s the big thing I like about magic a lot. What do you not like? I think there’s a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in magic right now, because there is a lot about old white guy magic that needs to die. But at the same time, a lot of it’s still good material. Those L&L DVD still have a lot of gems. The elders are still in the magic club, the elders are still at the magic conventions. There are still great people with great advice. But yet, I feel like we’re too eager to abandon those old routines. In my professional career, I consider myself like the country singer Emmylou Harris. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Emmylou Harris, but she takes the old Carter family songs and adds rock and roll to them. So essentially, that’s what I feel I’m doing taking classics of silk magic, taking the misers dream, but yet covering them and my own personality so much, like with Emmylou Harris songs, you don’t realize until after the fact wait that wasn’t old classic wait, that was a traditional piece of music or magic! And that also circles back to why I’m doing volunteer work for the S.A.M. and the S.Y.M. The place where magic clubs, I feel as an ensuring that their members learn basic magic skills. And it should no longer be a lecture club. But I do still feel there is a valid place for magic clubs in the future. I’m not ready to let them die off. And that’s why I’m using my positions in the S.A.M. ecosystem to contribute ideas on how the societies, on how the assemblies, can become training grounds instead of just the lecture circuit. Take home point I’d say that liking things, I’d say that different types of audiences, that script writing, that all the things I mentioned today, they’re all nothing to be scared of, but rather it’s a different way of thinking. Whether it’s with disability is a different way of living in the world. A different way of thinking about magic routines is beyond stunts. A different way of thinking about how to have a career in magic. Don’t be scared of any new things. Don’t be ashamed of being your honest self. Instead, just embrace and cherish your different way of thinking. Plugs Everything you need for more Cody Clark can be found at codyclarkmagic.com  And lately Cody has been really enjoying TikTok where you can follow him @codyclarkmagic The post Overcoming Obstacles In Magic With Cody Clark appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah connects with John Gaspard and Jim Cunningham, the minds behind Sunday Night Magic and the Eli Marks series of mystery novels.  Together they talk about creating content adjacent to magic and the joy of creating works that are not intended to make any money.  Neither Jim or John identify as working magicians, but they both share a profound love the art form and have each found unique ways to get involved in the magic community using the strengths that they each possess proving that even if you’re not a working magician you can still contribute and help grow the magic community, even when creating magic adjacent content.  Sunday Night Magic When John Gaspard wanted to start writing with magic as a focus in his mysteries he needed to learn how magic worked. In Minneapolis he met Suzanne who agreed to give John lessons in magic. Soon after a friendship struck up and an idea was proposed to create a monthly event where magicians would be invited to give a lecture and perform for a public audience. John brought Jim Cunningham on board because of his connections in the magic community and his experience as an MC and with their combined talents Sunday Night Magic was born.  Eli Marks Mysteries Of course, Sunday Night Magic was just a side effect of John’s efforts to create a mystery novel centred around magic in an authentic way. He has always put in a lot of work to ensure that his central character, Eli Marks, thinks and behaves like a real working magician and nothing bugs him more than when authors write about a specific field without doing their research. One of his favourite highlights, that he recounts for us, is receiving feedback from Teller himself after reading The Linking Rings and saying that the book really got all the details right.  Currently John has seven books available in the Eli Marks Mystery series, with an eighth on the way, and if you listen to the audiobooks you’ll be hearing the voice of Jim Cunningham narrating the novels.  Behind the Page To help promote the books, and get to know more about the inspirations behind the tricks featured in each mystery, John and Jim has also started up the Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast. Where they not only offer up behind the scenes conversations behind each book in the series but also interview the magicians whose tricks they feature in the novels.   Wrap-Up Endless Chain Jeff Atlman. You might think you don’t know him but you do. He’s a prolific comedian and actor who has now moved back into magic in his semi-retirement.  Jay Johnson is a ventriloquist who was a great friend of Harry Anderson who is insightful and funny and has a billion stories about magic and performing.  What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? John really enjoys Fools Us and how they are presenting, and respecting, magic.  Jim really likes how artistic and dramatic the magic artform is becoming and no longer relying solely on comedy and spectacle. Seeing magic presented as a theatrcial event that can rock your world is really special.  John doesn’t like seeing performers running on auto-pilot and are no longer critically analyzing their performances. It’s not fun to watch.  Jim doesn’t like that it is still very hard for many local communities to be exposed to live magic. If you don’t live near the right city or can travel to the right location you might never be exposed to really wonderful local live acts.  Take home point Just say yes and don’t worry about things being money makers. Be open to try new projects.  And magic is such a cool artform and you don’t have to perform to love it and enjoy it.  Plugs Sunday Night Magic can be found on facebook at facebook.com/sundaynightmagic All things Eli Marks can be found at elimarksmysteries.com Jim Cunningham also performs each year at The Phantom’s Feast which you can learn more about by visiting trailofterrormn.com/phantoms The post Creating Magic Adjacent Content with John Gaspard and Jim Cunningham appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

Jonah is back with Ben Train with the Toronto Magic Company to ask him questions about how they’re handling the virtual slowdown during the summer, how they’re preparing for the future of Unconventional.fun, and what tools they’re using to run their business and coordinate with their growing team. The Virtual Slowdown Jonah and Ben share their feelings for the future. Will there be a future for virtual shows even after the world re-opens and returns to normal? Will some people want to keep booking and hosting virtual gigs? What about a hybrid model where you might do some in-person gigs mixed with virtual entertainment?  Learning At Home Ben and Jonah have had to adjust a lot after working from home for a year. How has Ben’s lifestyle and priorities changed? As things slowly go back to normal not everyone is hoping it will return to normal. So many people have adjusted to working from home and many may want to keep working from home going forward, and that means there’s still a future for virtual events.  Tools To Run Your Business Learning to run your business from home after a year we’ve just had has meant finding new tools. Ben and Jonah will recommend some of their favourite organization tools they’ve used to run the Toronto Magic Company, especially as they’ve had to expand the company in the past year and bring more people onto the team. The Future of Unconventional.fun Ben and Jonah are currently planning the next convention and today they’ll pull back the curtain on how they plan the convention and process involved in scouting and booking guests for the show.  There’s also still time to sign up for future Unconventional.fun events by visiting Unconventional.fun! The post Tips, Tools, and Tricks of the Trade with The Toronto Magic Company appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah connects with Peter Samelson where he offers up three questions we can ask ourselves to make our magic scripts better. Something Theatre Couldn’t Do Peter Samelson originally focused on theatre with an intention to do something with his life that was worthwhile and mattered. After training to become an actor and moving to New York to make an impact in the theatre scene he realized he was going to struggle to make that impact. At first he was fed up with magic, mostly because he wasn’t attracted to the primary focus of deceiving or fooling people, but once he moved to New York and began seeing how magic could impact a theatre audience and the difference it could make to the theatre scene he began to view magic in a new light. With magic, he had an opportunity to reach people in ways that many people in theatre couldn’t do. Magic As A Moving Image Peter also offers up a master class in dissecting your script. He explains about the images of magic. Magic is a real-time moving three-dimensional image. It almost doesn’t matter what the script is around it, the image has a potency. In a script you need to not only have imagery but imagery that is not just personal imagery, you need universal imagery. Three Questions The best way to approach any bit of magic that you’re trying to find a script for is to ask yourself these three questions. Why, what, and who. Why am I doing this and why should anybody care about this? What is this about and what would it look like if it was real magic. Finally, who is your audience and who are you in relationship to them? Wrap-Up Endless Chain Christian Cagigal or Todd Robbins  What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Peter likes the fact that the focus on social media and on online performances has led to an exposure and driven magic forward to develop new effects and new solutions to problems.  Peter doesn’t like the idea that just publishing something doesn’t give you the right to perform it. There’s been a back on forth discussion on performance rights. Peter is of the mind that if you are publishing a book that the understanding of it is that the person who picks up that book is going to use it.  Take home point Keep asking yourself why. Why are you doing this trick? Why are you doing this routine? And, more importantly, why should anybody care? Plugs You can find Peter on Facebook (facebook.com/peter.samelson) and Instagram (@samelsonmagic) and on his website at Samelsonmagic.com   Jonah also recommends a wonderful masterclass on vanishing ink that you can find out by visiting vanishingincmagic.com/magician/Peter-Samelson The post Three Questions To Ask Yourself with Peter Samelson appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah connects with Doc Dixon to talk about comedy in magic and the work that goes into getting those laughs. If you’ve been in magic for a while then you definitely know the name Doc Dixon. He is a creator, a thinker, a performer, and a worker. He has appeared on Penn & Teller’s Fool Us twice (and fooled them once!) and you’ve probably seen him at a convention or you’ve seen something he has come up with.  In this interview, we learn about what he loves to do. We talk about being a worker, we talk about writing, we talk about creating magic, and so much more.  Comedy Is Simple, Deception Is Hard Making magic funny is pretty simple for Doc Dixon. Did they laugh? If they didn’t, then it’s not funny! Doc Dixon talks about how he builds jokes into his routines and how he discovers where the laughs will be from audiences on virtual performances to making Teller laugh out loud on Fool Us.  Do Good Magic Throughout his career, Doc Dixon has set out to do one thing. Do good magic. He’s a big believer that it’s not about the number of tricks you can squeeze into a performance but that it’s more important to know your timing and understand how long new tricks will take up in your act vs old tricks where the routine has accumulated jokes over time, “like barnacles on a ship”. Understanding your routine, it’s timing, and where the personality lies in your performance will always be more important than the number of tricks you have at your disposal. Never Too Late When the pandemic hit and every live show in the world was cancelled, Doc Dixon thought he could wait it out. And he kept waiting. And waiting. And pretty soon he was worried he had waited too long. So he reached out to Jonah and the Toronto Magic Company and signed up for the Upgrade Academy to polish up his business skills and launch his virtual magic business. He learned how to market his show as well as learned who to market to, as he soon learned that the audiences that attend virtual shows are different than the audiences that did, and soon will again, attend live in-person shows.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain Charlie Frye. He’s great at magic. He’s a great juggler. He’s a great artist. And he’s a kind person… he’s gotta be a serial killer! (Doc Dixon clarifies that he’s joking). What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? It used to be that everything about magic was clouded in secrecy like a secret society. Now the information is available to everyone to learn and share, even if you have you weed through a lot of useless information. It’s sad to see performers that expose tricks just for youtube hits. Take home point If you want to have a piece that’s really good, you don’t have to keep looking for new magic. Take that piece you’ve been doing a long time and focus on it and work it. The jokes, the comedy, the bits, are going to expand while it gets smaller in some weird wonderful way. You’re going to take out the dead weight and you’re going to put on new stuff.   Plugs Dixonmagic.com where you can also follow Doc’s latest blog post. If you’d like to stay informed on Doc’s upcoming writing projects, the best thing to do is subscribe to his newsletter at dixonmagic.com/contact where you’ll also be included in special messages that he only shares with those who subscribe. The post Making Magic Funny with Doc Dixon appeared first on Discourse in Magic.

This week Jonah shares three success stories from the Upgrade Academy.  If you want to super-charge your magic business and equip yourself with the skills and knowledge you need to host successful virtual shows you can sign up for the Upgrade Academy by visiting discourseinmagic.com/upgrade Case Study 1: Doc Dixon Doc Dixon is well known, you might have already seen him on Fool Us, and is absolutely incredible. But he was very nervous about getting into running a virtual business. Which is understandable! There’s no way to know, when you invest in a new project, how it’s going to pan out. So Jonah told Doc Dixon about his two-week guarantee, which means you can try everything in the program and, if it doesn’t work for you, you can get a full refund and some tacos from Jonah so that even if you didn’t get anything from the program you at least get to walk away with some tacos. Doc Dixon ended up with amazing results and while he never got those tacos he does believe that the Upgrade Academy was worth every dollar. Case Study 2: Durgy Spade Before the Pandemic, Durgy Spade was making his income through performing and MCing at weddings. He’s arguably the best in the biz at what he does. And then, all at once, all of his infrastructure vanished. With no more big giant weddings, Durgy needed to reinvent himself. He needed to find a new way to get the magic going and he waited, and waited, and waited, and worried he had waited too long. But he decided to go for it and joined Upgrade Academy to get the wheels moving with incredible results. Case Study 3: Chris Wall Over the course of the past twelve months, Chris Wall has gone through a phenomenal transition. When the pandemic began he had a website with a handful of photos and nobody was booking him, which is probably a situation that many magicians can relate to. Over the last twelve months Chris has participated in many different Upgrade Academy programs and has gone from growing his business to now being a part of the Mastermind program, trying to scale his business past making three to five thousand dollars per month. Chris will share with you some of the biggest difference makers that you can steal.  Upgrade Your Magic Business If you want to work with Jonah and find out how he can help you add three to five thousand dollars per month in virtual magic income, or in in-person magic income, then go to discourseinmagic.com/upgrade.  In June, Jonah will be doing some live sessions all about the transition back to in-person performances.  UnConventional.fun Is Coming Up! The two-day eight-bit video game virtual magic convention is happening May 29th and 30th and you can grab your tickets to return to Magic Land at UnConventional.fun The post Upgrade Your Magic Business with Upgrade Academy appeared first on Discourse in Magic.