Ring 49’s season opener was a lecture by Ryan Edwards – arguably Canada’s top mentalist, and it was certainly easy to see why. Ryan gave one of the most entertaining and educational lectures I have seen in a long time.
But before we get to Ryan, Scott Hood (our TVP), Derrick Finn and Victor Staniewski had recently attended Magic Live where the magic of Doug Henning (former member of Ring 49 and namesake of the club) was highlighted. Mr. Henning’s sister Nancy was there and sent back a special gift: an original event poster from one of Mr. Henning’s shows for one of our current members, Doug McCoy. Why specifically for Doug? Doug Henning and Doug McCoy both joined Ring 49 on the same night!
A second bit of business was the introduction and first presentation of a new tradition for Ring 49, an annual President’s ward. The brainchild of our current president, Doug Hunt (we have a lot of Doug’s in this club), this is an award that will be presented each year for service to the ring. Doug was honored to present it this year to our long-serving Treasurer and Secretary Victor Staniewski. Vic is passing those formal duties off to our new Secretary/Treasurer Kim Harrington, but he had literally kept the ship afloat for many years and we all appreciate and thank him for that.
Another new initiative, this time from member Magic Travis (Halyk) is the setting up of a monthly Dealer’s Table to make available effects and supplies as a service to our members. Travis brought in a good range of items, and all sales will help support the club as well. Excellent initiative Travis, thanks from the group.
Finishing that, we had a great lecture. Ryan (Edwards) had a well thought out reason for specializing in Mentalism; magic equipment is too heavy and requires too much effort to set up, and the public is often desensitized to magic, so mentalism often has much more. I like performing magic, but I must admit I see both points. Ryan has had a long, varied and interesting history which I won’t go into too much detail here, but includes effect production and marketing, consulting (including for TV) and of course lots of performing.
One criticism he has for current mentalism is all the reliance of electronics, so he started out with an effect that was more old-school, and pure genius. He did a trick where the back of a deck of cards changes from blue to red – very strong effect. Then he explained it was entirely based on people not really caring about details. The entire club would have sworn that he spread out a blue backed deck (face up) and that it turned red. I won’t divulge his method, but it was strongly based on mis-leading actions and comments (I will say that the deck was red from the beginning – how can a club full of professional magicians miss that?).
We discussed how to use psychology to mislead people and influence what they believe they saw. He demonstrated fooling people without actually doing anything at all, simply by saying things and letting their mind fill in erroneous assumptions. I think I learned more about magic from this effect than from learning 100 tricks.
Other effects that he offered his takes on included distributing bags for people to put objects in and then identifying who each item came from, and getting several people to randomly suggest large numbers and then having them add to a predicted number – both standard effect but with very good twists. He also demonstrated skill at splitting cards and other items for making customized props.
Ryan closed with a discussion about the importance of scripting, including prop and stage management, music, and generally treating magic as the artform that it deserves. Too many of us are focused just on doing tricks. Ryan emphasized the importance of the performance elements and of theming a performance. Well said!
Next month, we are opening the floor for members to bring in items of interest and perform short presentations for the benefit of the group. These events are invaluable as they are hugely instructive to the members, highlight new or unusual effects, and maybe most importantly allow the presenter to gain constructive feedback from a well-informed group on the effect and their presentation. Looking forward to seeing everyone then.
Rene Chouinard
This was a great event