Why be a Magician?
Words: Sam Stone @babbikat
When was the last time you spoke to someone about magic? Or the last time you saw a magic trick? Was magic ever important to you? Why isn’t it anymore?
Like most children, I used to love magic. I watched magic on the TV and asked for a brightly coloured plastic magic kit for Christmas. Sooty, the silent yellow bear wielding a magic wand, was a personal hero. But somehow, I forgot about magic, almost completely, for over a decade.
Then, at age 20, I became friends with a professional magician. I watched him perform card tricks in the pub, I went to one magic show… then another. I spent a night drinking at a magic bar and met magicians who had trained other, more famous, magicians. I was able to peak a glimpse at this secretive and strange community. I started talking about magic more and discovered that many friends were secret fans. Lots of people love magic, they just don’t like to talk about it very often.
I started making ‘Why be a magician?’ to try and satisfy my curiosity about magicians. Once I had learnt a little bit about the magic community, I had so many more questions. Mostly, I wanted to know why people become magicians. Like all performers, magicians have a strange balance of introverted and extroverted tendencies. They spend hours alone practicing their craft, before becoming the loudest, most confident versions of themselves onstage. I spoke to a professional magician, an amateur and a performance artist, about what led them to performing magic and how magic has changed their lives.
I hoped that by making an audio documentary as opposed to a film documentary, I could try and answer these questions without the distraction of how a trick looks, and whether or not it fools you. I was also torn over to whether the name the piece its more serious name ‘Why be a magician?’, or the campy name I like to call it in my head - ‘Wonder Boys’.
Big thanks to Sunil Singh, Tom Cassani and George Hunt who spoke to me about performing magic, and to Harry Smithson whose feedback and sound design greatly improved the piece.