Hi all,

I did a recent stage performance as a teacher for my school with a mixture of magic and mentalism. The mentalism begins from 5.10 and the sticker on my face I accidentally left from the previous trick! "Ang Bao" is the name of the red money envelopes given as gifts in Chinese cultures (I am in Singapore) - so I'm using those instead of envelopes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai2WbDXU2M0

I don't have much stage experience, and even less with stage mentalism, so I would welcome feedback.

My own notes for improvement:
A bit too much dead-time during a few parts with the envelope routine - I didn't have as much rehearsal time as I would have liked! I should have gotten the participants on stage to verbally confirm the numbers on the envelopes before the big reveal - they were written in thick black grease pencil, but not visible on the screen. I should have perhaps given the participants more time to change their mind etc to strengthen the effect. I should have also provided some premise for how I was influencing them in my script, such as "everybody chooses number 2..." etc.

Considering your lack of stage experience I think you did incredibly well.

Very good!

And honestly better performance than some experienced people I’ve seen.

Keep doing what you’re doing.

Mentalism can often drag, it’s a fine balance between creating suspense, making sure everyone understands what’s going on, audience management, and wanting to carefully demonstrate the fairness of the procedure.

This was a good performance. I really liked that you did some "classic" methods in mentalism and not went for the easy way of electronic. I also liked the personal touch of having pictures of the teachers. Great job.

David, don't let your relative inexperience fool you. You are a very natural and entertaining performer. Charming and likeable too. Loved your magic as well. Keep it up!

The entire performance was beautifully done.. Thank you for sharing..

mG

You did fantastic! Thanks for sharing and keep us posted on future performances.

^^

Thank you all for the lovely comments. I should be clear that I did enjoy my own performance as well, just always looking for ways to improve.

Just wanted to congratulate you on a very entertaining performance! Well done!

Since you asked for feedback, here goes:

First: This was a magic show, not a mentalism performance. You can't open with a series of magic effects, do a mentalism effect and then call it mentalism. From an audience perspective it's all magic...and the mentalism effect falls into the category of mental magic. Having said that...

Second: The show was smooth and engaging. And...

Third: The notion of matching the volunteers with their pictures was clever and quite charming. You drew the right kind of response from the audience.

Thank you for sharing this.

David

Thank you! My thoughts exactly.

It was a nice magic performance (hence using the term trick) but lets be clear that's what it was. Seems like there is no mentalism left in this forum anymore. Everyone just praises magic.

The red sticker on the cheek became distracting, but not as much as that photographer, and Don Ho.

Thanks for sharing. I'm sure it was a hit with your students.

Your self-critique is very good.

Very nice.

You did great hermano

I enjoyed the performance I agree with the comments, but at you get better every performance, I enjoyed watching and learned some tips from you and the other comments here, thanks for sharing

Your stage presence was very good and like many have mentioned the routines were great but not pure mentalism. There is no suspension of disbelief, or actual belief when mentalism is mixed with magic, its just another trick. Still entertaining but if you want the true impact of mentalism it should be seperated completely from anything magicky.

As someone with very little stage experience myself I have to say your presentation and awareness/confidence in your routine are excellent, good job.

Really good job. Thank you for sharing with everyone. Getting out on the stage is the best thing you can do for your performance. Getting the experience under your belt. Its one thing performing in front of a mirror and a whole other beast in front of a live crowd.