Low Cost Hard Hitting Mentalism – Paul Brook

Paul Brook presents a two day course focusing exclusively low-cost mentalism that packs a punch.

On the first day Paul will share with you five close-up mentalism routines that will wow the people you perform for yet won’t break the bank:

• Sharprediction – After a drawing duplication the mentalist asks the participant to look at the pen she has just drawn with and printed on the barrel is the item she had just drawn. The pen can be kept by the participant.
• Copenhagen Cover-Up – Using just two business cards and a pen the participant goes on an imaginary journey with the performer only to find that the performer has predicted the exact locations that were freely chosen.
• The Password Generator – Amazingly the participant correctly guesses the password that the performer has written down. An envelope, that has been visible at all times, is opened to reveal the participant’s private password written upon it.
• Don’t Be Alarmed – A participant is asked to think of a time in the morning that they think the performer wakes-up. In fact, they are asked to be minute specific. The performer’s phone is unlocked by the participant and the alarm time correctly matches their guess. The performer then looks the participant in the eyes and tells them what time they wake-up in the morning.
• Mistress Memory – A person is shown two shapes inside each other and asked to memorise them. A photo is taken of the participant holding the drawing of the shapes for proof later. The performer now apparently uses hypnotic language to make the participant forget the shapes. After a few moments the participant is unable to correctly recall the shapes and has photographic evidence of their memory alteration.

Day two looks at cost effective stage and parlour effects that are great to perform as part of your set, or in the event of an emergency:

• The Brook Test – An ungimmicked book is inspected by a participant and a word is selected from the book. The word is selected while the participant is holding the book and can be anywhere on the page, yet the performer is able to correctly guess the word.
• Monosemy – A paper ball is thrown around the audience and those that catch it are asked to shout out letters of the alphabet as the performer writes them down. Five are chosen from this selection by the audience and the audience try to find the largest word possible with those letters. The ball of paper that was thrown around the audience is opened to reveal that exact word.
• The Shortest Story – A prediction is given to a member of the audience to hold and three audience members join the performer on stage. On a pad of paper there is a well-known film broken down to just three sentences, each sentence has a missing word represented by a blank space. The participants on stage each choose a word for the missing spaces and are encouraged to generate a ludicrous and non-sense outcome. Despite this, the prediction is opened and contains a hand-drawn movie poster matching their choices.
• Authentication – They say a strong password requires two random words and a number. Three empty envelopes are inspected by a member of the audience and then displayed on stage. The envelopes have the ‘First Word’, ‘Second Word’ and ‘Number’ written on them. The performer writes something down on a piece of paper and inserts it into each envelope. The audience generates a password based on two random words and a number and when the envelopes are opened the contents perfectly match the password.
• Connecting the Dots – An audience member randomly places around thirty dots on a sheet of paper and another audience member numbers them randomly. Another audience member is asked to connect any ten dots in number sequence and to look at this shape and create a drawing based on this shape. Once this is done the participant concentrates towards the performer who perfectly draws the randomly thought of image.

Along the way many tips, tricks and subtleties will be shared that will help you to revolutionise your mentalism performances. Leave your pipe-dreams at the door and let’s get serious.