Spectators versus Participants

All too frequently magicians use audiences as furniture. Magic cannot happen without a participating audience member. Music can exist in the vacuum of a practice room or locked in a piece of plastic, art can hang in a closet, but magic needs an audience to experience it. As a theatre artist one task I did a lot was Lighting Design. Good lighting design reinforces the action without bringing too much attention to itself. The difficulty in lighting design is that you never light the walls or floor, but rather the actors that move through the space. Without the actors, you are essentially lighting the air. Lighting is only perceived when it interacts with a person or object. You most often see the effect of light rather than the light itself. The same can be true with magic. Every performance of magic is different, because the participants change not only with every performance, but with every piece and how they interact with the performer.