I never was a firm believer that the tricks themselves should have a common theme. I always thought that if the tricks themselves had a common theme, then the routine would be boring. For example, if you take Shoot's coin routine Nerd and ended it with Silver Dream, this is what the spectator will see: Three coins appear one by one, three coins disappear one by one, three coins appear again one by one, and then three coins disappear one by one. Yes both routines themselves are impressive, and yes Silver Dream has to be one of the best (if not THE best) endings for a coin routine, but I think that it would be boring to see the same thing over and over again, especially if you continue on with other coin vanish and production routines. You could have the best patter in the world while doing a series of coin vanishes and productions, but you've got to admit...it's going to get boring. This was also the reason I never liked Spellbound routines. Why does the damn coin have to keep changing from copper to silver and back to copper and back to silver? A bit redundant isn't it? So instead of taking individual tricks that are similar to each other, why not take tricks that are different from each other and give them all a common theme through your presentation?
A really good example of someone who does this is Jeff McBride. I saw his show back in December and he did a number of tricks which aren't related without the presentation (masks, miser's dream, his Chinese coin routine, cups and balls, Abbi's strait jacket escape, his card manipulation routine, a thimble routine, commando act, and some others). But what he added was a story about the different stages of a magician's life along with some magic history of how people performed magic during different periods of time. By doing so, he was able take all those tricks that would be totally unrelated otherwise and make them all part of a big story about how a magician grows throughout his or her life.
Curtis Kam is another magician who is excellent with routining. I've never seen his actual act, but based on the things I've seen him do for laymen at this bar we go to occasionally, he puts together his own routine and adds a story to them. For example, he turned a hanging coins routine into a joke about four guys on an island who find a genie and three of them wish to go home, but one guy says he misses his friends and wishes they were back on the island (this is also a blonde joke). He then proceeded into another routine about how silver rings are made. Sure those two routines aren't really related to each other, but having themes for each routine worked just as well for him. Yes Curtis switched presentation themes while he was performing (other than the fact he used coins in both routines), but by changing it up a little, he was able to give a fresh story to his audience and keep their interest.
So after reading about how Jeff McBride and Curtis Kam theme their routines, you can see how there's different ways to put a theme in a performance. Of course you don't HAVE to theme your routines this way because it may not be your style. Ifyou prefer to have all the tricks themselves to have a common theme, that's OK too. Yeah I said that I never believed in theming based on tricks, but it's just not my personal preference, though it may be yours. Try taking different elements of your tricks and finding a common theme that your tricks may have.
