Tag Archive for magicians

25 Jun 2011
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Penn & Teller Fool Us 25th June

Penn & Teller Fool Us 25th June

I have been looking forward to this all week, Prime Time Magic and of course realising that Penn & Teller wouldn’t disappoint.

Tonight we saw…

Mark Shortland

“A trick relying solely on chance’ or so the pre-show trailer suggested and in it Mark didn’t actually come across as well as he could have done – BUT – in performance his quirky approach and engaging, and somewhat manic  sense of humor won everyone over. The fun take and super routine and a fun take on the just chance format was great.

Loved the act.

Mattieu Bich

Beautiful effect and all the magicians will be questioning  the “Which one do you want?” approach – superb. He fooled Penn & Teller and for what it’s worth me too. Loved this guys style and ‘predicted’ kicker finish.

You can be sure I’m going to look out for him in the future!

Young and Strange

Liked the fun chemistry between these two guys and they presented a superb illusion. Method aside the effect and delivery of the routine was spot on and these guys stage presence drew much praise from the Maestros – deservedly so. These guys deserve the breaks!

So it won’t fool informed magicians BUT it will entertain an audience and that is what it is all about!

Daniel Madison

‘Card cheating’ was his ‘announced’ passion in the pre-filmed trailer and the ‘theme’ of his effect  was a recreation of a blindfold  deal from a borrowed, shuffled deck of cards. High praise from Penn and Teller for the guys technique, and sure it all looked as it should – a fair deal.  I guess the issue for me here is about the balance between technique, impact (awe and wonder) and entertainment (audience engagement).

I really appreciate and acknowledge this guys skill however.

Penn & Tellers bit!

Great to see their card stab routine again – lots of fun, quirky, totally entertaining and intelligent…

Another Saturday night nugget of gold amongst the so-so programming….

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Alan | No comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
06 Mar 2011
Magic News

Thurston – The Last Greatest Magician?

From the Washington Post – Sunday 6th March 2011

 

 

Roll over, Houdini, and tell Orson Welles the news: Howard Thurston was the best magician of them all. Or so suggests Jim Steinmeyer, who has had a career of his own in magic, inventing illusions for David Copperfield, Seigfried anf Roy, and Welles, a longtime dabbler in magic.

Thurston (1869-1936) slogged away as a potato-peeler salesman and sideshow barker before making it as a magician of both skill and charm. He could deliver his slogan, “I wouldn’t deceive you for the world,” with such conviction that the audience was inclined to believe him. He wasn’t the first magician to saw a woman in half, but he polished someone else’s crude version of the trick to perfection. On the strength of his good looks, glib tongue, tireless practicing and an innate sense of how to shape and pace a trick, he built up a towering reputation – not as easy as it should have been, because he had to overcome the odor given off by his sponging younger brother, Harry, who worked the seamy side of showbiz as an impresario of hoochy-kooch shows.

Steinmeyer takes pains to explain how hard it was even for someone as light-fingered and ingratiating as young Howard to become and remain a headliner. Magic was a competitive and evolving business, and keeping an act fresh meant getting hold of gizmos and materials that could be hard to build, buy or even find. At one point, we see Thurston going from farm to farm near the burg in which he is to perform that night, desperately seeking a rabbit. It took him years to become financially secure, and even then his urge to outspend his rivals on new tricks could plunge him back into debt.

One of the best stories in the book comes from these early years; it shows how legerdemain can come to a magician’s aid offstage. Thurston was trying to skip out on his bills, but a policeman was on to him. The cop followed Thurston and his entourage from town to town on the assurance that money would be awaiting them at the next stop. In Colorado Springs, Thurston claimed there’d been a mix-up – the money had been sent to Lamar, Colo., which they’d just left. Would the policeman mind going back to fetch it while the Thurstons got ready to perform in Colorado Springs? The cop made a wise counter-suggestion: “Maybe we ought to wire Lamar to make sure the money’s there.” Thurston readily agreed. Soon he had his answer, which he handed over to the cop. “Yes, $200 received via wire for you. Operator Lamar.” Satisfied, the cop went off to collect, leaving Thurston and his wife to abscond. Mrs. Thurston, who knew that nobody in his right mind would wire them money, asked how the hoax had been played. Thurston opened his hand to reveal the telegram’s torn-off top, which showed that it had originated a few towns back, in Cripple Creek. “Thornton,” Steinmeyer explains, “had sent the message to himself, from Cripple Creek to Colorado Springs,” where he surreptitiously lopped off the telltale portion before handing it over to the policeman.

Thurston could make someone disappear or float in mid-air, he could saw a woman in half without bloodshed, but he was probably best at sleight-of-hand, above all at turning playing cards into projectiles. A card would appear between his fingers and then fly out into the audience, directly to the member who had summoned it out of the deck. After years of barnstorming, Thurston became a headliner in vaudeville, but he was more ambitious than that. Eventually, he and his retinue were a show unto themselves, held over in New York and London.

Steinmeyer breaks the magician’s code by explaining how Thurston accomplished some of his effects. But not only do these appear to be tricks that have dropped out of most magicians’ repertoires; the techniques are so complicated that what you really get from the descriptions is a good sense of how hard Thurston worked at his craft.

The book is too long, the author too intent on taking the reader through every loop-de-loop of Thurston’s convoluted career. Also, the rivalry with Houdini to which the subtitle alludes never quite comes off. Houdini became renowned as an escape artist, not a magician, and most of the time he and Thurston were on friendly terms. Overall, however, “The Last Greatest Magician in the World” does justice to the Golden Age of Magic and to a man who, in the author’s words, was “a distinctive mixture of ignoble confidence games, personal desperation, and a masterful talent to amaze and surprise.”

Dennis Drabelle is a contributing editor of Book World.

THE LAST GREATEST MAGICIAN IN THE WOR LD

Howard Thurston Versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards

By Jim Steinmeyer

Tarcher/Penguin. 377 pp. $26.95

Alan | One comment | Tags: , , ,
03 Mar 2011
Magic Thoughts

It’s all too easy this Magic Stuff

Easy, Amazing, Magic, Mentalism & Hypnotism Tricks! 

Learn The Secrets To Effects & Illusions That Will Turn YOU

Into A Magician For Your Friends & Family, Almost

Overnight!

 

Unfortunately this is a depressingly typical advertisement and it’s not because the product can ‘almost’ turn me in to a wonder worker overnight!

In the UK, as perhaps elsewhere, magic is not seen in the same way it was even twenty years ago. Today I was talking to Professor Tickles , a professional childrens entertainer in Cornwall, and we were lamenting the passing of an age.

The Prof. asked a profound question, he wondered how many professional magicians were actually making a full time living out of their magic alone.

A valid question.

Were he to have asked that question a when we both started performing we would have been fairly sure of the answer. Magic as an entertainment art form was ‘acceptable’ and enjoyed by audiences. David Nixon and latterly Paul Daniels brought commercial and thus agent interest in booking professional acts.

The erosion of the art, and the fact that magicians today are seen as coming a poor second to comedians, jugglers and other variety acts, is due I believe to three major factors..

1) The magicians themselves not keeping ‘in step’ with the interests and needs of the audience. Audiences believe they are more ‘sophisticated’ in this day and age and that brings with it a degree of cynicism and dislike of being fooled. It’s really interesting to note that Derren Brown is one of the very few (and perhaps only) magical performer who can sell out major theatres on a national tour. If you look at his act it is intelligent, sophisticated and engaging.

2) Traditional magicians who work at mastering their art (the Michael Vincents, Guy Hollingsworths of the world) are respected and applauded by magicians and enjoed by audiences when they are booked BUT are being undersold by the explosion of David Blaine, Street-Magic-Clones, who buy into the adverts like the one above. The general quality of performance drops and hence the public perception of magic and magicians falters. If you try selling yourself as a magician you are competing with the image that the potential  booker has of one of their ‘uncles’ or a ‘YouTube Magic Hack’ performing meaningless feats of trickery.

3) The ecomonic climate is such that an evening out may not include being ‘fooled’ by some mountebank or trickster offering emotionally neutral demonstrations of one-upmanship. There have always been hobbyists and of course the hobbyst becomes the semi-professional  rather than the part-time professional. I make the distinction here as the semi-professional possibly sees their magic as providing ‘pin money’ at best, or merely an opportunity to  ‘do some magic for an audience’ at worst. The part-time professional on the other hand possibly understands that being a ‘professional’ means that you are trying to earn a living or establish a business for yourself. So whereas the former will approach bookers and offer services for ‘beer, a meal and a whip round’ (with no thought of  this being a business ‘loss leader’) the latter recognises the value of their skill, effort and work so seeks a ‘fair’ wage for their performances.

I like many professional performers am finding ways to bring my skills to other markets, I always have done this. In the past it was because I wanted to have a varied approach to earning my living but in this day and age it is a requirement for survival. I feel lucky that I have had a regular (twice a month) cabaret residency for my mentalism act for the last eighteen months. This with the one-off or short run bookings and the summer season residencies amounts to half of my professional income. Would that it were more. The other half of my income is from using my performing skills and magical interests to create and deliver motivational seminars, presentational workshops and personal development coaching.

I think this is the ‘norm’ for many professional magicians, but would love to hear from readers about their thoughts and experiences.

Alan | One comment | Tags: , , , ,
07 Feb 2011
Magic Reviews

Magic in the Movies – Top Ten Films

So in the absence of a TV Magic Spectacular to write about I thought I’d try to compile an overview of films that have magicians at the core of the plot or magic (in terms of stage magic and conjuring) as a central theme.

I thought I’d try to create a Top Ten List in the knowledge that such a list is easily challenged and based upon personal bias.

What I ended up doing was to  collate a list of movies that feature films which have magical themes or very obvious magical references in them. Of course the rash of Harry Potter films, the excellent Lord of the Rings trilogy and even Star Wars could be included. However, from a desire to expand the list of magician inspired or magically themed movies I have left t these out as being ‘too obvious’.

For reasons of brevity I have also not included fully animated movies in this list, so the likes of Fantasia, Sword in the Stone and even The Illusionist (Sylvian Chomet’s 2010 film) are not considered.

I’ve also ignored television series, such as The Magician (Bill Bixby trained by Mark Wilson), Jonathan Creek, the quirky 1970′s TV series Ace of Wands as well as specific Colombo, Midsummer Murders, One Foot in the Grave episodes that were based around magic and magicians.

So this brings us to a quick round-up of some of the best of the magician-in-the-movies films I am aware of. Starting with those just outside the Top Ten – not because of any lack of quality, just because they are a little peripheral to the main list.

Passport to Pimlico (1949) directed by Henry Cornelius and featuring great performances from Stanley Holloway and Margaret Rutherford. This great Ealing comedy contains a sequence on the tube train where magician of the day The Great Masoni, drops his case allowing his doves to escape adding to the surreal nature of the comic moment.

Dead of Night (1945) directed by Alberto Cavancanti is a superb Ealing portmanteau horror movie which contained a series of stories about a dream told by a guest arriving at remote farmhouse. The film is said to have influenced cosmologists Hoyle, Gold and Bondi to develop the ‘steady state theory’. They were inspired by the circular nature of the films narrative. However the movie contains a story about a ventriloquist and a less than charming dummy. Ventriloquism is related to the magical arts, hence its inclusion here. The story is the forerunner of one that is actually in the list, Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins.

Thirty Nine Steps (1939) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The original and perhaps greatest version of this film the climax of which is takes place as in a theatre where a ‘memory man’ is performing. The Memory Act can be considered as a subset of the magical art of Mentalism. The great magician Harry Lorraine is world famous not only for his ‘magic’ act but also for his contribution to the training and development of the human memory.

The Raven (1963) directed by Roger Corman sees the great Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff as medieval magicians involved a magical duel. This fun, camp and colourful movie loosely based on the Edgar Allen Poe poem The Raven, is not the greatest example of the Corman-Price collection, but is great fun.

Night of the Demon (1957) Jaques Tourneur. This great movie is an adaptation of M R James’ story “Casting the Runes”. Starring Dana Andrews as a sceptical psychologist ‘cursed’ by the Faustian looking magician and ‘cult’ leader Julian Karswell (Nial MacGinnis). In one sequence Karswell dressed as Dr Bobo performs magic at a children’s party. The conversation which then ensues between the psychologist and the magician holds within it a host of performance frames  and ideas for budding bizarrists out there!. Tourneur apparently never wanted the audience to ‘see’ the demon. I many ways I wish he had had his way. The film would be even creepier and scarier if the terror was left to the imagination – again bizarre magicians take note!

The Magician (1958) directed by Ingmar Bergman. The only reason that film is outside the top ten is because of the possibility of being considered as being ‘pretentious’ if it is placed where I think it belongs – in the top 5 at least! Max von Sydow plays a travelling magician and ‘magnetic-healer’ (harkening back to the days of Mesmer) caught up in  a tale about prejudice, honesty, the class system and ….. well the whole thing is multilayered. Sydow is brilliant, he rarely speaks, and Bergman’s visuals are great. The film has been called a ‘thinking mans horror movie/. It is creepy surreal and brilliantly acted and directed.

The Great Buck Howard (2008) directed by Sean McGinly is built around John Malkovich’s character who is in turn based upon the mentalist Kreskin.

Next (2007) directed by Lee Tamahori sees Nicholas Cage as a man who can see a few minutes into the future and disguises his gift by working as a lounge magician. Cage is seen as another kind of ‘magician’ in the fantasy movie The Sorcerers Apprentice (2010 directed by Jon Turtletaub) which makes direct references to the Disney Sorcerers Apprentice in Fantasia.

Magic Man (2010) directed by Roscoe Lever stars Billy Zane who plays Darius, the  Magic Man of the title. Billed as a thriller, this movie hasn’t received the best of reviews. As I’ve not seen it yet I can’t comment – but maybe a future review of this list may see it included.

So onto the Top Ten

10 Excelsior Prince of Magicians 1901 directed by Georges Melies. This pioneer of film making was a magician before turning his hand to cine-magic. He produced many short films of which this is only one, but many of which featured movie versions of stage tricks that magicians would love to be able to actually do. He was one of the first film makers to feature stop frame, time lapse and multiple exposures. He also hand painted many of the  black and white films he shot. A true innovator.

9 The Grim Game 1919 directed by Irvin Wilat. Not the greatest of movies to watch, but from a magician’s point of view a must. It featured Harry Houdini in the title role showcasing his feats of escapology. Houdini, not only a great magician but a great entrepreneur embraced early cinema but to be quite honest he made little lasting contribution to cinematic art. In some ways, perhaps, Melies earlier ‘trick photography’ lessened some of the dramatic impact Houdini’s live performances will have had.

8. Lord of Illusions (1995) directed by Clive Barker and based on his novel of the same name. This film is notable for its magical references. Not only does the ‘evil’ lead character Nix have supernatural powers, but his disciples have them. One of his disciples, Swann, after Nix’s early demise (prior to his later resurrection) uses his magical powers to become a popular illusionist. The staged magic sequences are well done, there is a cameo appearance by the great Billy McCombe and the Magic Castle is represented as a place of secrets. The basic concept that ‘magic is a dangerous reality’ is a great theme for the Bizarre Magicians out there.

7 Cast a Deadly Spell (1991) directed by Martin Cambell, sees  Detective, Harry Philip Lovecraft (played by Fred Ward)  living in a 1940′s Los Angeles where magic is common place. He is recruited by a rich man to find a lost book – yeap, you’ve got it… The Necronomicon! It’s really a Bogart-esque film-noire with a magical flavour, of course by definition then there are magicians. It’s witty, fun and full of Lovecraftian references. Unfortunately at the time of writing it, unlike its less sharp sequel (Witch Hunt) is not available for purchase on DVD.

Witch Hunt (1994) directed Paul Schrader. A sequel to Cast a Deadly Spell in which detective, H. Phillip Lovecraft  played by Dennis Hopper combats the evils and corruption of a magic wielding senator. As a sequel not shoddy, but perhaps not quite as fun as the first movie.

6 The Great Kandinski (1995) directed by Terry Windsor. This ‘made for TV’ movie must be included in this list, not only for its charm and humour, but for its sensitivities. Richard Harris (whose work is admirable) plays a retired escapologist living in a nursing home. The story revolves around Kandiski’s desire to ‘chase one more secret’ and do one ‘final show’. The escape featured is Houdini’s Water Torture cell, which is a testament to the iconic nature of that one illusion.

5 Nightmare Alley (1947) directed by  Edmund Goulding. An impressive movie and perhaps one of the all time greatest examples of film noire. Tyrone Power plays a  ‘psychic con man’ Stanton Carlyle whose trail of deceit and self deceit take from rags to riches to rags. Of course the magicians out there will immediately see a link to a performer who used to go out under the name Rinaldo, but was better known professionally and now to mentalists’ world wide as Stanton Carlisle. (1928 – 1990). Stanton insisted, despite many good natured challenges, that that was his real name and was not influenced by the Goulding film.

4 House of Games (1978) directed by David Mamet. Ok not really a magic film, but features a performance of one of my all time magic heroes, Ricky Jay. Ricky is one of a group of con-men in this Hitchcockesque thriller. Mamet, as always does a great job in capturing mood and the movie explores human motivations and behaviours. Ricky Jay is of course no stranger to the big screen, with roles in the Bond Movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, Magnolia, Buck Howard, The Prestige and many more. This, I believe however was his first venture onto the ‘big screen’

3. Houdini (1953) directed by George Marshall with Tony Curtis in as Houdini. This movie does have a lot to answer for in that it creates some of the longer lasting myths about the life of the genuinely ‘mythic’ Houdini. His death on stage as a result of performing the ‘water torture cell’ is not fact, but the movie certainly hints at it. The ‘brush with death’ in a frozen river; the first performance of the ‘straight jacket’ at a Magicians Society dinner almost surely never happened – but the romance and innocence of the moment saves it. The magical advisor on this movie was Dunninger.

I suppose it is worth mentioning in passing that in 1998 there was a TV movie about Houdini (directed by Pen Denshem) and an earlier attempt at a biopic remake in 1976 with Paul Michael Glaser in the title role (directed for television by Melvile Shavelson). The movie Death Defying Acts (2007) directed by Gillian Armstrong focuses on Houdini’s documented interest in mediums and psychics and he is really the vehicle through which another story can be told.

2 Magic (1978) directed by Richard Attenborough and staring Anthony Hopkins. In the film Hopkins’ character starts out as a magician, but sees success as a ventriloquist. The movie charts the fall into insanity as the relationship Hopkins has with his dummy ‘Fats’. It’s a classic movie with some of the creepier overtones being softened by, what some claim to be, slower sequences of sentimentality.

1 The Illusionist (2006) directed by Neil Burger and staring Ed Norton. The pace and the feel of this film is wonderful. It is a love story with some great performances from a superb cast. The magical advice came from Ricky Jay and Michael Webber. Norton as  Eisenhiem is the ideal stage magician. The cinematography is brilliant, the plot nicely involved and with, perhaps a few surprises.

1 The Prestige (2006) directed by Christopher Nolan. Whilst The Illusionist is sumptuous and engaging and at its core ‘hopeful’ and ‘romantic’, The Prestige is darker and deals with revenge, envy and competitiveness. Great performances from Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as the feuding magicians each with a ‘secret’ and a narrative that  is non-linear  make the film engaging and well worth the little effort you need to keep up with the tangled web of intrigue. The ‘prestige’, the finale of the film, contains revelations that may surprise. Intelligent scripting brings the emotional tension to life and the rich magical references (Chung Ling Soo, The Bullet Catch, The Water Torture) make this film a must for magicians. Ricky Jay appears as an established stage performer and Michael Caine is great as the illusion builder – although I would never ask him  to build me a vanishing bird cage!

I really can’t separate these two films in terms of quality of acting, direction and story so they share first place billing with…

Magicians (2007) actually deserves a Gold Star in this list. Directed by Andrew O Connor and with script written in collaboration with David Britland, Andy Nyman and Anthony Owen and others this is a magical tour de force. Opting for a comic look at the world of the conjuror, Magicians, sees Mitchell and Webb rattle through some great one-liners; pay homage to some key magicians and have a real knock at some of the oddness that is part and parcel of the magic scene. The great Pat Page makes an appearance, and most of the magic ‘stalls’ at the magic convention hosting the competition at the centre of the films plot were provided by well known magic dealers.

Alan | One comment | Tags: , , ,
04 Jan 2011
Magic News

Magic is dead ?

Magicians seek to reinvent an old art for the Internet age

In the days of the Internet, magic is losing its mystery, and some magicians are running out of rabbits to pull out of a hat.

“Magic is definitely in decline,” says Toronto comedian/performer Jay Sankey, who creates magic and consults with the best magicians in the world, including David Copperfield. “It’s shrinking.”

Sankey and others lay some of the blame on a saturated market brought on by hundreds of cable television channels and the Internet, where people expose tricks to the world and sometimes claim them as their own.

One magician, Toronto’s Dan Trommater, has had enough and is moving away from parlour tricks. Called the “thinking man’s magician,” he is building a new client base in the corporate world, where he uses magic as a tool in leadership workshops that deal with wrong assumptions and embracing new possibilities.

But Sankey believes magicians themselves are to blame for not moving quickly enough beyond the clichés of card tricks and tuxedos.

Magicians rank only above mimes in the amount of disrespect they get, but magicians have been arrogant and out of touch for too long, he says.

And they have a hard act in Toronto, which has no permanent home for magic. In North America, there are probably fewer than 10 venues dedicated to the art. Compare that with comedy; in Toronto and elsewhere, comedians have a variety of local venues where they can perform.

Yet, watching a magician send ripples of delight and wonder through a crowd, one might wonder why magic hasn’t taken off in this city.

In early December at the Ryerson Theatre, for example, a group of world-class magicians performed Magic N Miracles, sponsored by the Toronto Firefighters Association to benefit local causes. A near-capacity crowd of about 1,000 could barely control their gasps through the 90-minute show.

Yet North American audiences seem to be pulling a disappearing act.

“Magic has to reinvent itself,” Sankey asserts. “Magic is irrelevant and has been irrelevant for a long time, and I think it’s caught up with us.”

The most popular acts — Copperfield, Penn and Teller, David Blaine and Criss Angel — are still commanding presences. But few make a full-time living at in Canada. Sankey believes the profession is limited to dozens, “but not hundreds.”

“Magic is a hard way to make a living,” he adds.

The art is in such a freefall that perhaps Canada’s most decorated magician says he can’t get an act booked in Canada.

Shawn Farquhar of Coquitlam, B.C., declared the world champion of magic in 2009 at the “Olympics of Magic” in Beijing, says he is more demand abroad than in his own country.

“I do almost all my work in Europe and Asia now,” Farquhar says.

His YouTube video Shape of My Heart has been viewed more than a million times, and an audience of 3,000 in Korea immediately recognized the music from the video when Farquhar introduced himself.

“The crowd went insane,” Farquhar said. “And I said, ‘You know this?’ I have a fan base that I didn’t know existed.”

Comedian/magician David Acer of Montreal agrees that technology has changed things. “What’s changed is the ability of magicians to ply their trade based on secrets alone,” he says. “It turns out they now have to get better at other things, like being entertaining and real relevant.”

Yet the Internet hasn’t been all bad for magicians. Although YouTube has created a subculture of magicians who don’t perform before live audiences, they use the video-sharing site as a springboard to success. One turned his YouTube act into a hit on America’s Got Talent.

The information age has also sped up learning the craft.

“When we were young, the magic trade journals would have maybe 10 new tricks a year,” said Farquhar, 48. “Everyone would devour them. Now there are 50 new tricks a day through the Internet. Once somebody sees an idea, it sparks a new idea. The Internet is helping us develop our magic.”

Farquhar said the recession that hit Las Vegas also hit magic. But he reasons that the best magicians were born in bad times, when people needed an escape.

Murray Hatfield, who hails from Victoria, B.C., produces and directs the Magic N Miracles benefit tour. He and wife Teresa have turned the act into a full theatrical production, including video projections of close-up tricks, plus contemporary music, dance and costuming.

“My goal is to show audiences that magic is more than just birthday party magic,” Hatfield says.

Sankey doesn’t share that excitement, and goes so far as to say that magic as we’ve known it is doomed.

“That’s what I think and that’s what I hope,” he says starkly. “I think it’s time. What’s next for magic is a really big question and lots of people are wondering about it. I think the days when we try to make magic entertaining just because we know the secret and the audience doesn’t, I think those days are over.”

He’s plotting a reinvention of magic.

“This coming spring, I plan to release something in the magic community which I’m hoping will be the beginning of the change. I think it could be an exciting time.”

But true to his profession, he is mysterious about it all, other than to say that “magic” as a label will be gone. The word is “so laden with so many problems, marketing-wise, and clichés, and I think we need to take a break from it.”

What’s the word?

“I can’t tell you.”

He’s looking at unveiling the mystery on (what else?) April Fool’s Day.

News: 4th Jan 2011

From:

http://www.thestar.com

Alan | No comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
11 Jan 2010
Magic Thoughts

Magic – Does it Mean Anything?

There’s a huge difference between the ‘tricks’ some  magicians perform and the ‘art’ others aspire to.

For many amateur magicians ‘learning magic’ stops once they ‘know’ the secret of the trick. Professional performers will regularly come across someone in their audience who makes the claim that they ‘know how that is done!’.

But knowing ‘how’ doesn’t mean you can do it!

A magic effect is a finely crafted piece of theatre with a beginning a middle and an end. It can have meaning in and of itself, but there are few effects that do, or it can be given meaning by the context or the frame the magician places around the ‘trick’.

I feel that some of the ‘apathy’ and ‘indifference’ to magic that we experience in the UK is because there have been too many magicians who have relied upon the ‘magic’ and not considered the emotional frame they place around it.

So, for example, the magician places a coloured hanky in the spectators hand and after a few magical gestures it changes colour. Visually appealing but what does it ‘say’ other than ‘look how smart I am!’

Even when such an effect is presented with ‘cod’ explanation (pretending to tell the audience how it is done) the bitter aftertaste that can be left is one of “I’ve just been conned” rather than I’ve just been ‘entertained’ or ‘amused’.

‘Frame’, ‘meaning’ and ‘intention’ are all important in crafting a magic routine. Notice I said crafting as opposed to learning or performing! A crafts-person is an artist who takes time over the creation of their art!

Meaning can be as simple or as complex as you like, but it needs to be something more than ‘look I’m doing neat things’.

Magic, as opposed to Mentalism, is a visual art and as such can access a wealth of social and cultural metaphors from which to draw meaning. The key thing is to remember that the ‘viewer’ will construct their own internal meaning from the clues you give them. Understanding this is the key to presenting (emotionally) engaging magic.

Here’s a great example of a simple piece of magic most magicians know how to do, but placed in a frame in which there is ‘meaning’ and emotional relevance for the audience.

Ian Saville : The Socialist Magician   http://www.redmagic.co.uk

Alan

Alan | 2 comments | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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