Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Locations
Lopez de Legaspi #2420
Oil and Water is a card trick. Its effect is pretty well known amongst magicians, and perhaps even a few laymen. The premise is simple enough to understand. The magician has a few red cards and a few black cards. The black cards are interwoven into the red cards, Red, Black, Red, Black, etc. and then the entire packet is broken into two piles. In the blink of an eye, the cards are magically separated into their respective colors, red cards in one packet, and black cards in the other. This is similar to how oil and water separate themselves when mixed.
Oil and Water presentations hold a special interest because they have bugged and bothered me for ages. Most, if not all, of the presentations I've ever seen all just seem too "magiciany" to me. The presentations lack conflict and climax, both vital elements of good theater. Sure they all have a good beginning, a strong middle, but none of them have a decent climax, meaning no ending in sight. Wait a minitue. Did I just say, "No climax?" WTF? That's not magic!
Instead, they all reek of “Hey, lookee what Mr. Magician can do! (until the end of frickin time...)” They lack substance and form. And after the first magical separation, the effect repeats itself ad nausea, making the further separations predictable, therefore anti-climactic. And how can I make people feel comfortable if I can't offer them a climax? Boggles the mind.
In all the years I have played with the trick and its different presentations, I haven't been able to figure a decent presentation. I can do the darned trick. But I don’t like to do it because I haven’t been able to figure out how I want to do it. I have played with many of the straight-up "Oil and Water" and "Oil and Vinegar" plots but, while the audiences "enjoyed" them, I could tell that there was no climax. I have thought about the Democrats vs. Republicans, Communists vs. Capitalists, royalty and peons, rich and poor, racial segregation, cats and dogs: we could list every popular (or not so popular) yin and yang and I bet that I have considered them all for presentation of Oil and Water. Heck man, I even played around with the "Reality vs. BS" plot last year and finally decided that it still didn’t have what I wanted, even though it came pretty darn close.
However.
Lately I have been real keen on Skinner’s “Oil and Water Ride Again” as described in his book Classic Sampler. I really, really like the routine because after showing the red and black cards magically separating a couple of times, it kicks your ass in the end when all the cards are found to be just one color and the other color has flat-out disappeared. No shit, man. All the cards are shown and the other color is nowhere to be found. This ending is soooo much better because it punches out a solution that all the other routines lack, thus giving the routine a clear-cut, KO ending. Tied in with a brief physics lesson; it has all the makings of a classic.
This makes me think that all those omnipresent, dichotomy-based presentations in the initial stages of Oil and Water have been all wrong, all wrong, all wrong. The key to the whole darn thing, the presentational aspect that makes it all work is the heart-stopping and powerful kicker ending. The climax.
Oil and Water is a card trick. Its effect is pretty well known amongst magicians, and perhaps even a few laymen. The premise is simple enough to understand. The magician has a few red cards and a few black cards. The black cards are interwoven into the red cards, Red, Black, Red, Black, etc. and then the entire packet is broken into two piles. In the blink of an eye, the cards are magically separated into their respective colors, red cards in one packet, and black cards in the other. This is similar to how oil and water separate themselves when mixed.
Oil and Water presentations hold a special interest because they have bugged and bothered me for ages. Most, if not all, of the presentations I've ever seen all just seem too "magiciany" to me. The presentations lack conflict and climax, both vital elements of good theater. Sure they all have a good beginning, a strong middle, but none of them have a decent climax, meaning no ending in sight. Wait a minitue. Did I just say, "No climax?" WTF? That's not magic!
Instead, they all reek of “Hey, lookee what Mr. Magician can do! (until the end of frickin time...)” They lack substance and form. And after the first magical separation, the effect repeats itself ad nausea, making the further separations predictable, therefore anti-climactic. And how can I make people feel comfortable if I can't offer them a climax? Boggles the mind.
In all the years I have played with the trick and its different presentations, I haven't been able to figure a decent presentation. I can do the darned trick. But I don’t like to do it because I haven’t been able to figure out how I want to do it. I have played with many of the straight-up "Oil and Water" and "Oil and Vinegar" plots but, while the audiences "enjoyed" them, I could tell that there was no climax. I have thought about the Democrats vs. Republicans, Communists vs. Capitalists, royalty and peons, rich and poor, racial segregation, cats and dogs: we could list every popular (or not so popular) yin and yang and I bet that I have considered them all for presentation of Oil and Water. Heck man, I even played around with the "Reality vs. BS" plot last year and finally decided that it still didn’t have what I wanted, even though it came pretty darn close.
However.
Lately I have been real keen on Skinner’s “Oil and Water Ride Again” as described in his book Classic Sampler. I really, really like the routine because after showing the red and black cards magically separating a couple of times, it kicks your ass in the end when all the cards are found to be just one color and the other color has flat-out disappeared. No shit, man. All the cards are shown and the other color is nowhere to be found. This ending is soooo much better because it punches out a solution that all the other routines lack, thus giving the routine a clear-cut, KO ending. Tied in with a brief physics lesson; it has all the makings of a classic.
This makes me think that all those omnipresent, dichotomy-based presentations in the initial stages of Oil and Water have been all wrong, all wrong, all wrong. The key to the whole darn thing, the presentational aspect that makes it all work is the heart-stopping and powerful kicker ending. The climax.
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