RING 41, MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN—Dr. Richard Mossey Ring
Meets last Wednesday of the month, except July & August
Tripoli Shrine Center, 3000 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, 53208
Doors open at 6:30, Program starts at 7:00
Dr. Thomas Williams, Secretary-email: [email protected]
March 27, 2019
The Ring meeting was called to order at 7:05 pm by President Scott Lane. The first announcement included was that the annual auction will be on 5/5/19. The venue was not available on the last Sunday in April, the usual date. Next, the annual Close-up Contest will be held at the May meeting on 5/29. The next announcement was that this Fall the Ring will be buying tickets to the David Seebach annual Halloween show. Scott Lane also reported that he had a great time performing last night at Ring 398 near Green Bay. Ring 398 meets on the third Tuesday and next month will be hosting a lecture by Dan Fleshman.
Scott Lane then introduced the guest for the evening, Monty Witt who had agreed to present a lecture on Misdirection. Monty is originally from Hawaii. He owned and ran a kiosk selling magic and ran a small dinner theater. He holds three Guinness World Records in magic.
Monty started by asking for a definition of misdirection and then wanted us to look at it in a different fashion. He then performed several tricks, including the vanish of a rainbow streamer followed by the vanish of a second scarf and then the reappearance of each separately. He then performed a short sponge ball routine, an ambitious card routine and finally a two-headed coin routine and a coin penetration of the hand. During this presentation, he reported that he used only one gimmick.
Those tricks were performed as a lead-in to the discussion of the principles of misdirection. He stressed to stop trying to hide moves with misdirection, rather think “what do I want the audience to see”. Your job as a magician is to control the focus point i.e. “what they see”.
Monty then went on to discuss why misdirection works and the different types of misdirection. The first example was time misdirection. A good example is the crisscross force in which you move the focus point. You can also create a “relaxation point” or what has been referred to the “off beat”.
He recommended not practicing in front of a mirror. Monty felt it was ok to use a mirror when learning the “moves” but continued practice in front of a mirror gets you used to watching your hands. The audience tends to follow the magician’s eyes. You want to look where you want the audience to look. The audience’s focus also tends to focus on motion, flashes of light, close vs distance, big vs small and bright vs dull. Examples were given for each type of focus.
The applications of misdirection to stage magic were then discussed. The idea of the focus point and ways to move the focus point were then discussed with examples.
Monty then reviewed the tricks that he performed at the beginning of his lecture and how he applied the principles of misdirection on each of the tricks. He pointed out how he controlled the focus point at the crucial times. Time was given throughout and at the end to answer questions. The meeting was then adjourned.
Monty is available to other Rings to present his lecture on misdirection. He can be contacted via email at [email protected] or phone at 920-264-3328’.