magicmatters.com

Engaging audiences in a meaningful way can be very difficult. It is too easy to fall into the mindset that magic is magic, and that by making the motions and saying the words is enough to allow audiences to experience magic. Far too often we see performers who have spent a great amount of time working behind the scenes on their physical technique, while giving their presentation almost no thought at all. Is it sufficient merely to make the moves or operate the gaff competently to have the audience experience the magic? I would argue that to perform magic competently is akin to performing an interesting stunt. The audience may not know how the stunt was accomplished, but they know it was “some trick.” To captivate an audience’s imagination, alter their perceptions and transcend their sense of reality is to perform magic.

Why bother go to all this work? Because ultimately, it makes your job easier and leads to a more satisfactory experience for your audience.

What we don’t see when we go to the movies, theatre, or even concert or museum, is the effort that goes into making a performance an effortless experience. To be confronted with work is not to be transported. In any performance, rehearsal is necessary to allow the performer to get beyond the technical demands required by his discipline, allowing them to focus on expression. An actor’s job is to listen and respond, not recite memorized words and execute rehearsed movements. A musician’s job is to transport an audience by relating through music a story or experience as filtered through their style and persona. A visual artist’s job is to render a visual image that transcends the detail and speaks to their works’ viewer by appealing to their emotions by way of their experience.

What is your job as a magician? You will need to decide this as you proceed…

In the “legitimate theatre” or at the cinema, the show doesn’t begin when the curtain goes up, but rather when the theatre-goer is first exposed the the performance through advertising. This builds a sense of anticipation as they order and receive the tickets, which intensifies as they await the date of the performance. Then they might get dressed up and go out to dinner before the show. Finally, they arrive at the theatre, open the brass-clad doors and enter a lobby filled with rich colors, textures and smells. They join a diverse group of people from all walks of life, pick up a program, peruse the souvenirs available after the show, perhaps chat with others in the lobby and ultimately head to the wait at the closed doors that represent the threshold into the “house.” The doors are opened wide and the crowd swells and pushes forward where they are greeted by ushers who take their ticket—the symbol of their worthiness to pass through the mystic portal from one world to another—and escort them to their seat. There then begins the wait as everyone takes their place. Finally, a hush goes over the crowd. The lights go down, the music swells, the curtain goes up and the audience is transported to another world, another place, populated by creatures who resemble people, but are somehow more real, places that are somehow more compelling and exotic than the place we inhabit. A place filled with more emotion than it is possible to comprehend.

This elaborate ritual preceding the actual event goes a long way to establishing the appropriate context to allow an audience to surrender themselves at the prospect of living another life or learning of other places, things or experiences that they themselves will never had except by extension. This shared fantasy, results in a “shared experience” that bonds people together in a way much stronger than mundane experience. “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger,” might well be written, “that which does not kill us, brings us together.”

Magic is a form of theatre and can also be much more. The main difference that separates magic from all the other performing arts is that where in the other forms the artists are telling a story, in magic you are creating the story. Whether you are telling or creating, the central focus remains the story. As live performers we must take advantage of the hundreds of years of study about performance. As the creator or—as I prefer—catalyst of the experience, we also have much to learn from the writer of fiction—whether short stories or longer narrative. To not avail one’s self of the wealth of work already done along these lines is to deny our audiences of the richer experience they deserve. By incorporating the techniques designed to aid the intuitive leap from written text to emotional response of the dramatic actor, combined with the careful sculpting of situation and response used by the writer of short stories we can elevate our performances—and audience’s estimation of our craft—to levels we have never dreamed.

In the beginning, there was a void…

… Nature abhors a vacuum.

And so we begin. Thanks for beginning the journey with me as we explore magic, its theatrical and theological origins, its scientific and psychological underpinnings and our tilting at the windmill of the public’s perception of magic and magicians.

Over time I hope to develop a community of artists, writers, performers and enthusiasts interested in stretching our perception of what magic is, what it can be, and how with proper intent, we can better understand how to use our medium to communicate greater truths.

I look forward to the journey and invite you to take it with me!