Dreams and Devices by Bob Cassidy

“The Dream” is a routine that is best performed before smaller audiences or in an impromptu setting. The key principles, though, have great utilitarian value and should find use in many of your presentations.

The basic idea evolved from an old card routine by Stewart Judah. [Don’t go away yet, the finished routine can hardly be considered a “card trick”.] It was the type of effect that has fallen out of fashion lately due to the amount of dealing and counting involved. It struck Bob, though, that the dealing was acceptable if the effect was presented as a type of card game. But while the card game presentation was natural and deceptive, it was hardly earth shaking and still seemed a little too much like a card trick to be useful in a mental presentation. Bob put the idea on the back burner and it remained there for about twenty years.

Recently, though, Bob was working on a “dream” presentation. It was a prediction routine in which he wanted to overcome the weak spot in “Confabulation” and “Swami” type effects – effects in which the performer secretly fills in the blanks on a pre-written prediction which is later removed from a sealed envelope. The weakness lies in the fact that the envelope does not leave the performer’s hand or pocket until AFTER the last selection is made by the audience.

Bob realized, as have many others over the years, that this problem could be eliminated by simply forcing the last item, thus enabling the performer to drop the envelope onto a table before the final selection(s) is made. The problem then, of course, is finding a suitable force. That’s what he was working on when he remembered the Judah idea.

As the routine developed, Bob came up with what he believes to be an original handling of the secret writing phase, as well as an extremely clean way of loading an envelope, which has been on plain view throughout the presentation. Bob has received great reactions from the finished routine and we think you will be, too.