I posted this a while back at the Ellusionist boards, and it helped a few people out. Rather than just sitting on it, I want to keep spreading out the word as it's the culmination of a lot of lessons I've learned the hard way. I hope you get something out of this.
Who are you? A relatively mundane question and one that usually gets a mundane answer. But there's more to it than that. It's an essential question of every artist and performer, and also one of the most difficult to answer. Especially in the case of magicians for whom one of the most common pleas for help usually begins with, "How do I build a character?"
I'm going to break it down in this article and hope to give you some food for thought.
Where to start?
The first phase in figuring out where to build up your persona is in remembering some simple wisdom.
When Morgan Strebler first moved to Las Vegas with his wife and eldest son, he went through the obligatory starving artist phase. The turning point was when an agent was brutally honest with him and said to him as he left her office, "Be you, but bigger."
1. Be you, but bigger.
Look to what gives you inspiration. Ask yourself why it inspires you. What does it make you want to aspire to? How can you express that externally? This requires some real soul-searching and thinking and is not something you will come across overnight.
Spend a couple of weeks thinking about who you look up to. Make a list. Study their looks, sense of style, mannerisms, attitudes. Pinpoint that which you like most and see if you could pull that off. It could be something as simple as voicing a few more jokes in conversation or getting your ears pierced, or as involved as giving your entire wardrobe an overhaul, growing your hair out, and working out more frequently.
Hey, nobody said this would be easy.
Speaking of which, this leads me to your first obstacle. Unfortunately, not everybody will be as supportive of your quest for self-improvement. To become a success in anything, you must make yourself larger than life and not everyone can accept that. Some friends may fall by the wayside, but the respect you will garner will give you a much more fulfilling feeling.
With that in mind, I want to see a draft in your responses. Give me a list of people you think are cool. Not just magicians, but actors, musicians, comedians, athletes, friends, relatives... anybody who makes you want to be a better person. If you can, say one or two things you admire about them and soon you'll have the first stages of your roadmap complete.
What do you want?
Once you're on the path to feeling comfortable in your own skin, the next step is to determine where you want to be. You have an ideal self-image in mind, now where do you want to go with this new, confident, larger-than-life you?
Write down at least three long-term goals and when you'd like to reach that level by at the latest. A goal is really just a dream with a deadline. If you give yourself a set amount of time to accomplish a task, you will use every second of it. Thus, if you give yourself forever...
Once you have those goals, work backward. When airline pilots are touching down on the runway, they keep their eyes focused at the end of the tarmac so that they don't veer off to one side or the other. The same applies with goal-setting. You have to break it down backwards into manageable steps with deadlines so as to keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed or losing your way.
2. Reverse engineer all goals.
Again, this won't necessarily be easy and will require a lot of patience and discipline. Rick Maue once said that he made a decision years ago that he would not do any performance for less than $500. Initially, it was a tough time because the number of shows he was doing shrank dramatically. But he kept with his decision and soon found that even though he was performing less, he was still making more money and now had more time to devote to his family and improving his magic.
In your responses, list three goals and when you want them accomplished by. Don't be afraid to think big picture. You'll be able to break it down into simpler, more precise steps later.
Who do you want to meet?
This is a big one. All this planning won't mean anything if you don't have an audience. This is crucial to building your identity and persona. You must figure out who your target audience is.
3. Find your target audience(s).
Think about the kind of people you like to hang out with. Think of who you would like to hang out with. What is the common thread that binds you to these people? Humans are constantly thinking up new ways to meet each other. Just look at the pick-up artist community. But through it all, commonalities are how we truly bond as a people.
The importance of knowing the commonalities you share with your audience is so that the service you render is one that connects with them as well as something you can express honestly. Charles Morritt is the man who devised the original method for Houdini's vanishing elephant effect. But it was originally an effect known as The Disappearing Donkey, which he performed in the small town of Hexham where people were accustomed to seeing donkeys and dealing with their stubborn behaviours and surly attitudes. Morritt himself was familiar with handling beasts of burden, so he appreciated the wonder of a cantankerous donkey disobeying a magician, then being suddenly cooperative enough to climb into a box on stage and vanish all together.
4. Hang out with like-minded people so that you can create things valuable to them and you alike.
These are the sorts of subtleties, nuances, and idiosyncracies that will make your reputation.
What are your horizons?
If you've been following me this far, go out and buy yourself a beer (or a Jones Soda if you're a minor). You've already put yourself ahead of the average person on the street. Now that you have a foundation, you need to build on that.
One of the keys to success is maintaining this idealized self-image and identity while at the same time avoiding falling into a rut or the trap of complacency. Sportcaster and TV personality Keith Olberman once said, "If you do not evolve, you risk becoming a parody of yourself."
Think of how many people that pitfall has caught. Criss Angel, Metallica, Van Halen, Joel Schumacher, and whatever's left of the creative team at Disney. Complacency breeds mediocrity.
5. Expand your horizons.
One of the most multi-faceted performers of our time is Teller. That's not a joke. Despite never speaking while on stage or camera, Teller is one of the most expressive performers today. He can portray whimsy, childlike wonder, angst, fear, analytical skepticism... This diverse range of "faces" he puts on is one of the factors that contributed to his success.
Think about yourself. You have a couple of main passions, true. But what else are you into? Let's use Andrew Mayne as an example. Andrew is essentially a comic book geek who has achieved an impressive level of success. He's produced multiple stage illusions, but also has several popular close-up effects on the market. He's published a book detailing his love of comics by giving simple superhero-esque magic tricks marketed to kids. At the same time, he also produced Ghost Vision. He has a DVD set called Wizard School, but also produces educational videos for the classroom explaining science through illusion technology. Among magicians, Andrew is a true Rennaissance man.
You never want to be that guy who does that. To be a successful individual, make people like you by showing yourself to be a friendly, trustworthy person with an active life and mind. After that, you can sell them on your business, and only then can you sell your product or service.
That wraps up this article. To recap, we covered 5 steps toward setting a foundation for finding your performer's persona.
1. Be you, but bigger.
2. Reverse engineer all goals.
3. Find your target audience(s).
4. Hang out with like-minded people so that you can create things valuable to them and you alike.
5. Expand your horizons.
Later this week, I'll be posting a follow-up article that goes more indepth on the positive lifestyle changes you'll need to make on the path to forging your idealized identity, including a list of recommended reading.
Until then, give what's been talked about here some serious thought.
Who are you? A relatively mundane question and one that usually gets a mundane answer. But there's more to it than that. It's an essential question of every artist and performer, and also one of the most difficult to answer. Especially in the case of magicians for whom one of the most common pleas for help usually begins with, "How do I build a character?"
I'm going to break it down in this article and hope to give you some food for thought.
Where to start?
The first phase in figuring out where to build up your persona is in remembering some simple wisdom.
When Morgan Strebler first moved to Las Vegas with his wife and eldest son, he went through the obligatory starving artist phase. The turning point was when an agent was brutally honest with him and said to him as he left her office, "Be you, but bigger."
1. Be you, but bigger.
Look to what gives you inspiration. Ask yourself why it inspires you. What does it make you want to aspire to? How can you express that externally? This requires some real soul-searching and thinking and is not something you will come across overnight.
Spend a couple of weeks thinking about who you look up to. Make a list. Study their looks, sense of style, mannerisms, attitudes. Pinpoint that which you like most and see if you could pull that off. It could be something as simple as voicing a few more jokes in conversation or getting your ears pierced, or as involved as giving your entire wardrobe an overhaul, growing your hair out, and working out more frequently.
Hey, nobody said this would be easy.
Speaking of which, this leads me to your first obstacle. Unfortunately, not everybody will be as supportive of your quest for self-improvement. To become a success in anything, you must make yourself larger than life and not everyone can accept that. Some friends may fall by the wayside, but the respect you will garner will give you a much more fulfilling feeling.
With that in mind, I want to see a draft in your responses. Give me a list of people you think are cool. Not just magicians, but actors, musicians, comedians, athletes, friends, relatives... anybody who makes you want to be a better person. If you can, say one or two things you admire about them and soon you'll have the first stages of your roadmap complete.
What do you want?
Once you're on the path to feeling comfortable in your own skin, the next step is to determine where you want to be. You have an ideal self-image in mind, now where do you want to go with this new, confident, larger-than-life you?
Write down at least three long-term goals and when you'd like to reach that level by at the latest. A goal is really just a dream with a deadline. If you give yourself a set amount of time to accomplish a task, you will use every second of it. Thus, if you give yourself forever...
Once you have those goals, work backward. When airline pilots are touching down on the runway, they keep their eyes focused at the end of the tarmac so that they don't veer off to one side or the other. The same applies with goal-setting. You have to break it down backwards into manageable steps with deadlines so as to keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed or losing your way.
2. Reverse engineer all goals.
Again, this won't necessarily be easy and will require a lot of patience and discipline. Rick Maue once said that he made a decision years ago that he would not do any performance for less than $500. Initially, it was a tough time because the number of shows he was doing shrank dramatically. But he kept with his decision and soon found that even though he was performing less, he was still making more money and now had more time to devote to his family and improving his magic.
In your responses, list three goals and when you want them accomplished by. Don't be afraid to think big picture. You'll be able to break it down into simpler, more precise steps later.
Who do you want to meet?
This is a big one. All this planning won't mean anything if you don't have an audience. This is crucial to building your identity and persona. You must figure out who your target audience is.
3. Find your target audience(s).
Think about the kind of people you like to hang out with. Think of who you would like to hang out with. What is the common thread that binds you to these people? Humans are constantly thinking up new ways to meet each other. Just look at the pick-up artist community. But through it all, commonalities are how we truly bond as a people.
The importance of knowing the commonalities you share with your audience is so that the service you render is one that connects with them as well as something you can express honestly. Charles Morritt is the man who devised the original method for Houdini's vanishing elephant effect. But it was originally an effect known as The Disappearing Donkey, which he performed in the small town of Hexham where people were accustomed to seeing donkeys and dealing with their stubborn behaviours and surly attitudes. Morritt himself was familiar with handling beasts of burden, so he appreciated the wonder of a cantankerous donkey disobeying a magician, then being suddenly cooperative enough to climb into a box on stage and vanish all together.
4. Hang out with like-minded people so that you can create things valuable to them and you alike.
These are the sorts of subtleties, nuances, and idiosyncracies that will make your reputation.
What are your horizons?
If you've been following me this far, go out and buy yourself a beer (or a Jones Soda if you're a minor). You've already put yourself ahead of the average person on the street. Now that you have a foundation, you need to build on that.
One of the keys to success is maintaining this idealized self-image and identity while at the same time avoiding falling into a rut or the trap of complacency. Sportcaster and TV personality Keith Olberman once said, "If you do not evolve, you risk becoming a parody of yourself."
Think of how many people that pitfall has caught. Criss Angel, Metallica, Van Halen, Joel Schumacher, and whatever's left of the creative team at Disney. Complacency breeds mediocrity.
5. Expand your horizons.
One of the most multi-faceted performers of our time is Teller. That's not a joke. Despite never speaking while on stage or camera, Teller is one of the most expressive performers today. He can portray whimsy, childlike wonder, angst, fear, analytical skepticism... This diverse range of "faces" he puts on is one of the factors that contributed to his success.
Think about yourself. You have a couple of main passions, true. But what else are you into? Let's use Andrew Mayne as an example. Andrew is essentially a comic book geek who has achieved an impressive level of success. He's produced multiple stage illusions, but also has several popular close-up effects on the market. He's published a book detailing his love of comics by giving simple superhero-esque magic tricks marketed to kids. At the same time, he also produced Ghost Vision. He has a DVD set called Wizard School, but also produces educational videos for the classroom explaining science through illusion technology. Among magicians, Andrew is a true Rennaissance man.
You never want to be that guy who does that. To be a successful individual, make people like you by showing yourself to be a friendly, trustworthy person with an active life and mind. After that, you can sell them on your business, and only then can you sell your product or service.
That wraps up this article. To recap, we covered 5 steps toward setting a foundation for finding your performer's persona.
1. Be you, but bigger.
2. Reverse engineer all goals.
3. Find your target audience(s).
4. Hang out with like-minded people so that you can create things valuable to them and you alike.
5. Expand your horizons.
Later this week, I'll be posting a follow-up article that goes more indepth on the positive lifestyle changes you'll need to make on the path to forging your idealized identity, including a list of recommended reading.
Until then, give what's been talked about here some serious thought.
