Hello everyone!

I'm thinking about making a routine about different themes of magic and different kinds of magicians and would like to get some feedback on my idea.

I'm thinking of starting by talking about the picture of a magician as someone pulling rabbits from his hat and then do some produces and vanishes myself. Then I was thinking of producing a deck of cards and start talking about card tricks.

After this I will start to talk about how many magicians fancy mentalism and proceed with some mentalist effects myself. After this I will continue by saying something like "I often get the question: If you really can do magic, why aren't you doing anything meaningful, like producing money?" This will be my introduction to coin and money magic.

Then I will continue with something like "But there are more ways to earn money with sleight of hand. I'm thinking of how you can earn money by cheating in different kinds of games." This will be my introduction to "gambling magic".

Of course I could do all the different parts on their own and have a lot of smaller routines, but I at least want to try them all together. What do you think of this and do you have any tips on the presentation? Like how to smooth out the transitions between the themes?

Who is the audience and how long do you have? What are their expectations?

I can see some value in this approach but wonder what is the "story told after" you are attempting to achieve?

It is good that you are seeking a "bonding element" for a show rather than just jumping from effect to effect, but not sure that this will sustain audience engagement.

They may be willing to "suspend disbelief" to allow that whatever you do will be magic, but a "classroom" theme may alter their expectations. You don't want them thinking, "how does this work?"

Even mentioning "sleight of hand" as a possible explanation defeats the entire reason for using Sleights which entails a "never happened" quality. I'd dump that theme.

For reasons why it may be unwise to mix Mentalism and Conjuring check many threads on the "Penny for Your Thoughts" forum. At least don't call it "mentalism" out of respect. An "effect of the mind" is OK.

Remember that the human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish ...