Exploring the Act Sigtuna Conjuring Course 2025
Since 2018, I have been taking time out for one full week every year to grow as a magician, artist and human being. There is no better place to do this than being beside a lake in the beautiful city of Sigtuna, just north of Stockholm, Sweden. Each year, a vast amount of magicians from all over the world, gather to study the art of magic under the helm of Tom Stone (devious magic and misdirection expert) and Leif Olberious (theatrical wizard extraordinaire).
After completing all three Conjuring Courses A, B and C it was evident that some participants still wished to continue this learning process yearly at Sigtuna. From this, Exploring the Act was born. A course to allow participants to bring their own unique acts and ideas, exploring them in detail with the principals and criteria developed in previous years at the Conjuring Courses. It is reccommended that participants have knowledge of conjuring techniques and performing experience but the course was created so that it was not a requirement to have participated in any of the previous course before.
This made it exciting because, it gave the opportunity for both previous students to continue studying and new students to make their way into the fold of conjuring without feeling pressure to go through any previous training other than be a knowledgable creator in the field.
I have been lucky to attend all three years. Each were led by three very different mentors and experts in creating magic – Peter Gröning, Peter Rosengren and Håkan Berg. And each year brought different challenges and learning outcomes.
Here are just some observations I have made across the week that you may find useful if you too are creating magic.
How do we explore an act?
First of all, each participant has a responsibility to bring something to explore. An idea, concept, trick. It does not have to be fully formulated act but a strong starting concept is necessary to get the ball rolling.
It is up to you whether this is a completely new idea, or an old one. I’ve learnt across the years attending that some ideas will be harder to play with than others. But if you fully commit to the challenge, the results will be on an epic scale in terms of creation and development compared to when you are working home alone.
What does it mean to explore one’s act in a group?
The week takes the form of performance and discussion based sessions both in smaller groups and with the entire group.
For ideas, this could mean playing with, changing and or trying new things with them. Ideas that formulate in the group can at times become super inspiring. Concepts you simply could never have thought off on your own. But at times, they can cause conversations to arise that you might be uncomfortable with. Both talking about and hearing. A great part of the process in Exploring the Act is focused on learning how to give and take feedback constructively to others. And accepting it ourselves in a way that does not crush the creative process.
Unlike the Conjuring Courses ,where the exercises are led to a certain degree by the facilitator. The facilitator in Exploring the Act gets us as participants to facilitate and set the schedule. The group together decide what is needed at each point in the day. Essentially we are encouraged to be the adults in the room. I believe the concept is sound. At this stage, it enables us as individuals to develop skills working with one another as a group but also create and develop processes which allow us to create efficiently on our own.
Discussion topics to get things moving
At the beginning of the week we decided the steps required to get things moving on day one. Beginning with;
- Creating an overview of our ideas : In groups we presented and shared our concepts and ideas (either performed or talked through) to get a better understanding of each participants acts construction. Where each person wishes to begin and end their acts. Individuals expectations, dreams and goals.
- Exploration and Play : This took the format of an open discussion and sharing of ideas in smaller groups with note taking which led us all to…
- Reflect on our goals : We agreed that as there was so little time together it became important to be realistic about what we wanted to achieve that week. We were not there to build award winning FISM acts from scratch. But aim for realistic outcomes. Working in groups helped to narrow down what we each wanted to achieve with our ideas and acts across the week and I believe most of us successfully did that.
- Work : This took the format of solo development and group work. At times across the week, it felt like we all as individuals had the desire to work more on our own. But I suppose the biggest discovery was that the whole point of the courses design is to explore our work together. There is no point in being at the course to go off and do it alone. By the end of the week we all learned to use one another each day as sounding boards, to bounce ideas off and to distract when the creative process became too much for us to handle on our own.
Rules of creation
You are probably wondering as you read this why it is important to have rules when working together?
To begin with there were fifteen people in the Exploring the Act group. That is 15 acts, ideas and concepts in total to get through in just one week. This may not sound like a lot, but upon reflection after completing the week this was a huge project that each of us underestimated. And as the week progressed we explored tools that would help manage our time better.
One of the goals of the course is to give each and every participants material the same amount of time and focus. It became necessary early on to set time limitations in groups to manage time spent equally exploring each persons ideas. We developed strategies to quickly assess what each person needed at the beginning off, and at intervals throughout each day. Getting comfortable with asking questions like “What do you need?” and “How can I help you?” was key. Most importantly, learning that it is ok to ask for help from others when it is needed anytime of the day.
One of the things we had to accept about creation is learning that it is difficult. When we create the rule is we all must get comfortable with being uncomfortable. The creative journey has highs, lows and everything in between. The journey to a great idea is not a straight walking distance from A to B. If you want a great idea, you must visit uncertainty, impossibility and failure to get to it. It’s part of the process. In learning to accept that this is intrinsic in all artistic development, the process becomes more manageable.
This feeling of uncertainty we enter to build something worthwhile, we aptly titled, The Ditch.
The ditch and all its glory!
Part of exploring the act was spent on learning to navigate failure.
The feeling of failure or a setback is like metaphorical ditch in creation. These dips artistically can be pretty hard to get out of!
If you have never experienced this before, a ditch is simply when you don’t know how to proceed with your idea to get to your goal. A writer would call it writers block. An actor a creative dip. Essentially it’s when an idea reaches the point where it feels too difficult to continue pursuing it to completion.
This feeling is very real and powerful. We feel many different emotions in this ditch and when we are deep in it, it is, at that point when we are most likely to give up on our ideas completely.
We as a group discussed coping mechanisms to prevent this feeling of vulnerability in the hope to make future ditches more manageable. These options included.
- Stretching the timeline : Extending the time that we give ourselves to get an idea to completion.
- Shrink the scope: Cut features or ideas to make the project more manageable in its present state. We can always expand again with more knowledge and skills at a later stage.
- Track tiny wins: We must measure daily progress instead of focusing only on the final goal. Learning to be kinder to ourselves!
- Build a routine: Rely on daily habits rather than waiting for one huge creative inspiration to come. Show up every day! And remember that even the times we do not spend on our acts is fruitful. Taking regular breaks is vital to success.
- Remember the “Why”: Revisit the original purpose or problem that inspired your idea regularly. Your idea can become something really good but it just takes time. Think not what your idea is now but what it could become in the future!
This next topic we explored was, for me, quite possibly, the most enlightening thing I have learnt to utilise as a creator on the course. And I schouldv’e put it to use many years ago!
The Pain Scale
When the Pain Scale was first introduced, I really did not see the point of it. I found it difficult to gage where exactly I was and why it was relevant in my acts creation. But by the end of the week my mind was completely changed.
The pain scale is a necessary tool used to gage if you are in a good place or bad place on that day of creation. It informs you ff you are ready to create or if you should leave the idea for a while, take a break and have a cup of tea. If we look at the chart above from 1 to 10. 1 being you feel great. Life is easy. 10 being you feel overwhelmed and abject terror at the thought of continuing to work on your idea. You suddenly realise that when you feel around a 5 that means you are in a good creative place. Why is that?
When at 5, we feel just the pressure to create but you are still in a good head space to make progress. And to know before you begin working each day exactly how you feel will mean more meaningful work will be completed. When we are ready to do it. And in the right place.
I realised as the week went on observing people moving up and down the pain scale, it was very clear that when people placed themselves anywhere from 7-10 they really needed help. They were not in a good mood and needed to step away from the task and take a break. When we are at a 10 it is simply impossible to create. Nothing good comes from being there.
At the same time if you are between a 1 and 3 on the scale this is also bad because then you are not putting yourself under enough pressure and obligation to develop or push yourself further. Effectively you are not creating or engaging in a way that will further your ideas in any shape or form.
The pain scale allows us to access how we feel throughout the creative process.
Feelings, I have discovered on this course, play a huge part in creation. They both enable to prevent us from developing our ideas. And it is much better to create and develop our ideas in a good place rather than feeling rubbish and forcing them to come out.
If you wish to keep up to date and perhaps attend the Conjuring Courses or Exploring the Act in 2027 and find out what all the fuss is about visit this website https://magic-workshops.com and go to the contact form. Fill in your details and remember to hit sign up to the newsletter which will keep you up to date about when to sign up. It’s usually around the 1st January at midnight! First come, first served. It fills up quickly!
