No, seriously, what does it take? You can send me your luminary answers if you have them, you little oracle you, directly to my inbox, because I want to know. I’ve written about FISM before, but it’s been especially on my mind as I search for rooming in Quebec City for FISM 2021.

I, myself, thought about competing (don’t anticipate this, but it’s so far out I can’t rule it out), so I started to research what it takes to make a winning act. A quick google search led me to some magic cafe pages (do I even need to link these?) which were… interesting… I then stumbled upon some random entries by Stuart MacDonald who has a pretty interesting article on his journey (later finding out he created a Go Fund Me to go compete. Which, I mean, I guess? Anyways.) His act is pretty awesomely good. Check it out on Penn & Teller’s Fool Us. Very magical. And pretty fooling for a live audience (I’m kicking myself because I actually just noticed the iron clad moment on this watch through). You can also check out Miguel Munoz’ act, chopped (available uncut without the final FISM presentation elsewhere).

Pretty stunning stuff. Combining this info with some of the videos my friends showed me from Busan last year, there has to be a technical component to your act that no one else is doing. Mirror duplication of large objects? Yeah, no one else is doing that. Production of contact juggling balls? You bet your local magic stage acts aren’t doing this. There was some contestant ( I actually can’t remember their name, if a reader knows, write me) who completed their Rubiks cube routine by having the cube assemble itself from a bunch of broken pieces. Talk about a cool visual even just reading that.

Point is, there’s some huge technological gaps that must be bridged to be a competitive act in this competition. You have to be doing some brand new move/sleight/setup/method that no one in the audience has ever seen before. Furthermore, each of these acts linked above have some sort of beauty to them. Taking Eric Chien’s ribbon premise, it’s intrinsically visually interesting. The technology for his act has been around for a while, but he took it to a completely new degree, thus refreshing the idea of it again and making it new. Because it is so purely visual, it has a beautiful simplicity to it as well. There’s a level of professionalism to the props/set pieces in each act as well, but I’m starting to digress.

How does one create/unearth unseen/new technology and perfect it in the modern age? That’s a question one has to ask if one hopes to take FISM 2021.

— J.R.