When Tommy Wonder was talking about why he wanted to do a 2 cup routine, he made a pretty compelling case for it — you’re simplifying things overall (both presentationally and methodologically) by eliminating one of the cups, but at the same time you’re keeping the full range of effects open for you. Given that, you’d think you’d see more 2 cup routines out there, but aren’t too many examples that are easy to find. People either keep with all three, or else they simplify all the way down to one. This makes it somewhat problematic for those looking for models to study.
So, that’s why when I saw the 2 cup routine from Roland Henning (of the controversial WeeklyMagicFailure blog) I got in touch with him straight away about putting it up. It was a good thing I got in touch with him too — the original routine he had up was several years old, and only had three final loads and more simplified preliminary stuff with the small balls.
We went back-and-forth on this one discussing getting it up there, because Roland didn’t design this thing to be seen by magicians. In the standard one he actually flashes the orange on purpose as a bit of a feint — the idea, I assume, would be, “I saw you put the orange one there!” at which point he can say “Good for you! And did you see these?” and reveal the other final loads. Also, because of the confines of the camera the loads are a bit tighter than he’d like, and, of course, English isn’t his first language.
I still think it’s a whopper of a routine, myself.
Update: Roland chimed in on the Cafe with some extra information…
Haha… here a a few things that might be noteworthy. Calling the loads “rainbow” in the end. In Germany it is very commonly known that a rainbow consists of 7 colours so often when the audiences tell others about the routine I “made 7 big balls appear” which is not true of course, but it works very often.
First I show the orange ball before the routine starts. That creates a bit of a challenge. I do not fear that challenge therefore I feel good about it. When the cup is lifted to reveal the orange ball the effect is even stronger because it comes as no suprise for them, and it naturally tells them that the effect is near the end.
I made sure that they don’t applaud when the orange ball is revealed, not messing up my climax, not making me shout: “Wait, Wait, Wait, hold your applause!”
Another thing is the before mentioned flash of the orange ball. I usually flash the orange ball as it is loaded into the cup. And my line as I do it is “Watch the cup!” There are 2 reasons to do this:
1. Those who actually watch the cups will see the orange load creating an audience devided into those that are in the know and the ones that are not.
2. Self satifaction. I feel it is a terrific joke to be played. I think it is funny to tell them to “watch the cup” knowing most of them are not. Kind of weird but I got a lot of jokes like that, that I only do for myself. (I used to call my “rocky” David Williamson)
As for the video. I am not really happy with the loads. In a regular performance there is much more offbeat and the attention during the load is way off anyways.
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