The Minitoire and The Shadow
/CP writes:
“I’ve kept up my 100 trick repertoire since you first introduced the idea, and it took my magic to another level. But now in the last 2 years I got married, had a kid, and got a job that’s keeping me much busier than I’ve been in years and the repertoire has fallen by the wayside. Do you have any advice on keeping up the repertoire when life gets busy?”
First, check your priorities.
Would it be possible to adopt the child out? Or quit your job?
If no, then we might have to make changes to how you approach your repertoire.
The 100-Trick Repertoire concept was created to battle against two things:
The idea that was trotted out in magic about how you don’t need to know a lot of tricks. You just need to do a few tricks well. “Why is everyone always buying new magic? [Insert dull old magician’s name] did the same four tricks for fifty years!” This is fine if your concern is what you’re going to do for the Keith-Albee circuit. But in social magic, you need to have more varied offerings and evolve more.
The other thing I was fighting against was my own propensity to learn a trick, do it for a couple of weeks while it was shiny and new in my mind, and then have it fully fall off my radar completely.
So the 100-Trick Repertoire was something you could build and maintain to give you a wide variety of material to perform, and to keep tricks from falling into obscurity after you’ve performed them a few times.
But it is somewhat of a luxury practice. It requires some time every month to rehearse the tricks in your repertoire that need rehearsing. And time to seek out new material. And time to think of ways of presenting the tricks you know. And just time to occasionally read through the repertoire and refresh your memory about the tricks you know.
If magic is your primary hobby, and life isn’t too busy, this isn’t a huge investment of time. A couple of hours week is very doable.
But if you’re juggling a number of hobbies or life is particularly hectic at the moment, you may not have time to devote to the project.
For you people, let me introduce…
The Minitoire
The Minitoire is a mini-repertoire.
And just like the Minotaur was part-bull, part man...
The Minitoire is part-“I want to have a healthy, ever-evolving, vibrant repertoire” and part-“I have so little time at the moment and I’m worn out by 9pm every night.”
The Minitoire is a 12-trick repertoire, made up of three tricks, in four areas.
So think of four broad areas you want to be prepared to perform in and then pick three tricks in each area.
For example, I might choose:
3 tricks I can do with a borrowed deck.
3 tricks I can do with nothing on me but my phone.
3 tricks I can do with some “interesting object” I keep on display at home
3 tricks I can do with a small prop or gimmick I might carry around with me when I go out.
This will keep you prepared for a good variety of performing situations.
Once a month, take 20 minutes to run through these 12 tricks. If they’re not complicated, you can probably run through many of them in your head.
Swap in new tricks in these categories as often as you like.
The 12 tricks in your Minitoire aren’t the only ones you’ll ever perform, but they’re the only tricks you’re required to actively tend to and rehearse once a month.
There are some tricks that are so easy or so ingrained in you that you don’t really need to rehearse them or think much about them. You’ll still do these tricks from time to time when you think to do one. But you don’t need to put them in your Minitoire. This is your Shadow Repertoire. Tricks that sort of linger in the background of your brain and require no upkeep on your part.
Your full repertoire consists of:
The Minitoire — the tricks that you’re putting some effort into rehearsing and keeping at the front of your mind.
The Shadow Repertoire — the tricks you just sort of know.
For example, if someone hands me a deck of cards to show a trick, I have three tricks from my Minitoire that I’m completely comfortable and on top of and feel ready to perform at all times. So I’m never fumbling in my head wondering what to perform. And I also have a bunch of old card tricks in my Shadow Repertoire that might occur to show them instead, if I’m feeling that.
When you take a trick out of your Minitoire, add it to a list that you keep on your phone or your computer. Once every three months, read through that list to remind you of some of these tricks. Maybe you want to add them back to the Minitoire. Or maybe you remember them enough that they can exist in the Shadow.
I think you need some structure to your repertoire, even if you don’t have a lot of time to devote to it. Otherwise you’ll just perform one go-to trick all the time, or your mind will blank out when someone asks you to perform.
The Minitoire and Shadow Repertoire is a good minimalistic way of structuring your repertoire, without having to devote a ton of time to it.