When you perform mentalism do your audience believe it’s real?


Acclaimed Mentalist Phill Smith describes Mitox:

For me, performing mentalism is about giving people a window into a world where the things that I do are possible. Imagine how your audience will respond when they are faced with a person, not a trick, not a routine, a living, breathing human being whose very existence redefines what is possible. I’m talking about addressing your craft as a professional, as a craftsman, and developing a toolkit which will allow you to become something unique.

I have worked on my toolkit for years, and now, with Mitox, I am presenting it to you. Mitox contains the cream of the crop of my routines, effects and ideas about performing mentalism as it should be performed: as powerful interactive theatre capable of opening the eyes of an intelligent audience to a world where thoughts are fluid and even time itself can be toyed with.


Teach a Man to Fish
Mitox isn’t just about 20 great effects though. They represent the core of the ebook, certainly, but I hope they are more than just effects to try out and learn. In Mitox I lay out ten great tips for creating your own effects, all of which I have tried to sum up in each of the twenty core routines, to give some inspiration to you, the reader.

Picture being able to create effects and routines at the drop of a hat, peeling away from the mainstream industry. Relying not on dealers and purchased effects to supply you with miracles but to have at your fingertips a bottomless resource of unique and powerful performance pieces unlike any performed by any other mentalist the world over.

This has always been within reach, but in Mitox I share with you my ten top secrets for generating inspiration and leveraging your own unique knowledge into impactful pieces of mental theatre that will leave your audiences speechless. Join me on the frontiers of mental performance.


The Grand Deception
As a mentalist, your premise is what marks you out from the man in the street, it is the source of your abilities and the story which is told by your every effect. It is what elevates your performance beyond mental magic tricks and lifts it into the theatre of belief. The premise is the engine which drives a mentalist's act, but how much time have you spent pinning yours down?

In Mitox I explain my theory of Premise and explain how I believe Premise can transform a dull routine and turn it into a performance capable of stimulating your audience’s emotions as well as their intellects.

How would it feel to have an act that audiences don’t see as being ‘what you do’ but as being ‘who you are’? Knowing that they haven’t come to see your act and routines, but that they have come to see you.



I like things to be simple and easy. I hate gimmicks and gaffs. I like backups in case things go wrong. I like strong effects, which give me the chance to shine through. I love impromptu. Above all I like the audience, for a moment at the very least, to believe.

I hate dealer hype, and I hate the disappointment of buying a text full of clever but unworkable effects. For this reason, I have been through Mitox and stripped out anything that wasn’t 110% great. Anything I wasn’t happy with: out. Anything difficult to do: out. Anything which audiences didn’t respond to with real feeling: out.


So what’s left?

20 industrial strength effects that will knock your audiences for six.


Left Brain / Write Brain
An introduction to the structure of the brain leaves the audience with a remarkable (and completely impromptu) prediction of thought of number and colour.

Equifinque
The perfect close-up opener for any mentalist, a light-hearted propless introduction to mind control and prediction which is almost guaranteed to warm up any audience.

Red Handed
The strange story of a Victorian murderer takes a time-warping twist for the weird which will blow your audience away, as your randomly chosen helper is shown, via a hundred-year-old manuscript, to be an exact physical match for the culprit, even down to their clothing and name.

Custard Booktest
You divine the thought of an image from a randomly chosen page of an ungimmicked copy of the Yellow Pages, then reveal that you knew before you even arrived at the gig what the image would be. There are no gimmicks and no gaffs; the directory can even be borrowed.

Atypical
Two spectators are each given a sealed envelope labelled only with the word Party, each of which contains a photograph of a party. With no further clues, each is able to describe the kind of party shown in the photograph and even details such as decoration and the outfits of the guests. Remember, they genuinely do not see the photographs, each photograph is different, the helpers are not stooged and there is no pre-show work. This effect combines the imagination of the audience members with the ingenuity of a unique principle to produce a great new effect.

I’d Rather Not
You make a prediction of a spectator’s most embarrassing moment so remarkable that she will simply not read it out.

Force of Personality
A very visual Just Chance effect where you put your ability to judge a participant’s personality on the line with an incredible gamble. This effect plays big and gives you the opportunity to really engage an audience with your personality. (Includes details of a handy new utility prop which simplifies hundreds of other effects, which is so easy to make you probably have all the bits on your desk already)

Signature Effect
An autograph book serves as a powerful reminder of a whole chain of exciting meetings, one of which is chosen by a spectator. You successfully divine which signature they are thinking of and add in a brilliant kicker that suggests that perhaps that particular celebrity will be back in touch...

Gagging Order
The ancient one ahead gets a simple update, which solves the problem of the final prediction with a great bit of lateral thinking. You may not like it straight away, but your audiences will.

Real Deal
You ask a group of people to imagine drawing something. You pick one of them and tell them what they are thinking of. That’s it. There are no gimmicks, not even any props... just like the real deal, if you are up for it, Real Deal is too.

Knowledge 5
A quick and easy introduction to genuine psychological influence and suggestion with a built-in safety mechanism to stop you from making any mistakes, Knowledge 5 is a simple way to generate a customised psychological effect for any situation and audience.

Thumbscrews Booktest
Not so much a new method but a whole new approach to any booktest. You put the psychological thumbscrews on a spectator in a new presentation that takes your existing booktest and builds it into a credible demonstration of mental ability that is as fun as it is intense!

Knowledge 3
A highly engaging demonstration of subliminal suggestion framed as a simple bar bet. Using nothing more than the items from your pockets, you challenge the audience to resist your attempts to influence their decisions.

Graphology Trio
A complete routine of graphology-themed effects starts with an eminently possible demonstration of handwriting analysis and ends with the incredible divination of a thought of word, ostensibly through ideomotor cues.

Mental Cards
Two straightforward card effects which bring the themes of mentalism into any card routine.

Spectaphone
A spectator shuffles and cuts the deck and, without looking puts a card into his pocket. A random number is written on a borrowed pad with a borrowed pen, a random prefix is added and the whole lot is dialled on a borrowed phone BY THE SPECTATOR. The random sucker on the end is persuaded to to participate in the effect and told to pick a card mentally. The performer does not touch the deck at any time from the start to the finish. Or the phone. He does not speak to the person on the other end of the phone. The named card and the chosen card are shown to match. This effect is killer.

Surveyor’s Matrix
A new approach to an old mathematical puzzle takes a simple trick and remixes it as a fantastic finalé to any mental act.


Is this all dealer hype?
No. These effects all rely on straightforward tried and tested methodologies, and the impact they each have is fantastic. What’s more, you could carry every single prop required to do every one of the twenty incredible effects in Mitox inside a single slim briefcase. And you could buy them all for way less than the price of the book in just one visit to WHSmiths. Some, like Signature Effect, will require a few hours of prep to prepare the simple prop; others, like Equifinque* and Real Deal, don’t use any props at all, you will be ready to go any time.

(*OK, you need a pen for Equifinque, but only once, and not whilst you are performing) Mitox effects aren’t ‘tricksy’; they don’t come across as routined deception framed as mental skill. To an effect, they have all been engineered to appear as real.