Disappearing in Plain Sight: The Magic Trick and the Missed Event (original) (raw)

Illusory Bodies: Magical Performance on Stage and Screen

This article draws upon a range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century accounts of magic performance to argue that the success of an illusion was dependent upon the spectator’s engagement with the trick as a conscious application of mechanical effects. The stated aims of the magicians’ art, as evidenced by their published statements, but also by the nature of their applied techniques, was that audience response was not to be a simple form of stupefac- tion, but a lively interaction with the performance as both a meticulously composed spectac- ular sight and as a contribution to a broader fascination with technology and illusionism. Spectators were encouraged, directly or indirectly, to make comparative assessments of the illusions with which they were presented, based on their knowledge of earlier instances of the same tricks or on their awareness of published exposés of popular effects. This kind of collusive illusionism is carried into the filmic realm, as demonstrated significantly by the work of the French film-maker Georges Méliès. In adapting his popular stage illusions for incorporation into the new film medium, Méliès prompted comparisons between the different versions of the same tricks, thus highlighting the distinct and defining characteristics of each medium.

Displaying the Magician's Art: Theatrical Illusion in Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute (1975)

Cambridge Opera Journal

Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute is a film that not only represents a performance of Mozart's opera but also reflects on the experience it generates in the theatrical audience. The opera becomes the means through which Bergman explores the magic of theatrical illusion by displaying the artifice behind it. I examine the film's take on the representation of theatrical illusion from two perspectives. First, with reference to the famous sequence of the overture, I demonstrate the crucial role of the audience's imaginative engagement. Second, I zero in on Bergman's role as omniscient director who not only uncovers the artificiality of the theatrical source but also plays tricks with the film audience. Yet our observing the ‘constructed naturalness’ of the magic flute and Papageno or the theatricality of the Queen of the Night's performance does not hinder the film's ability to engage us. Rather, witnessing the workings of illusion strengthens its grip on us.

Techniques of Illusion. A Cultural and Media History of Stage Magic in the Late Nineteenth Century

2023

This book explores stage conjuring during its “golden age,” from about 1860 to 1910. It provides close readings highlighting four paradigmatic illusions of the time that stand in for different kinds of illusions typical of stage magic in the “golden age” and analyses them within their cultural and media-historical context: “Pepper’s Ghost,” the archetypical mirror illusion; “The Vanishing Lady,” staging a teleportation in a time of a dizzying acceleration of transport; “the levitation,” simulating weightlessness with the help of an extended steel machinery; and “The Second Sight,” a mind-reading illusion using up-to-date communication technologies. These close readings are completed by writings focusing on visual media and expanding the scope backwards and forwards in time, roughly to 1800 and to 2000.

A Pathognomy of Performance: Theatre, Performance and the Ethics of Interruption [2002 thesis version]

2002

This book-length work offers a theatre-philosophy in the form of an ethics of appearing. Drawing on the work of contemporary philosophers, such as Nancy, Derrida, Lingis, Lévinas, Blanchot, Badiou and Deleuze, it elaborates the theme of ‘becoming unaccommodated’. Within this theme, anomalous disturbances in normal ‘states of affairs’, both on and off-stage, are shown to give rise to a specifically ethical experience of audience. Pathognomy, the art of tracking the ephemeral or elusive across varied terrain, as opposed to the systematizing impulse of physiognomy and its logic of recognition, is revived as an approach to exploring this phenomenon. Its defining feature is its manifestation as an event, a key term in contemporary ‘Continental’ philosophy. Bringing together a wide variety of source material drawn from theatre and performance studies, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies, the early chapters explore the experience of audience as the audience of experience. They examine particular forms of theatrical appearing and spectatorship, notions of fiasco and disaster underpinning performance, and an ethics of theatrical experience. Shifting in scale from the macro to the micro level, these concerns are then focused around an engagement with the face as the prime figure of appearance, elaborated in the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas and ‘disfigured’ in the garish symbol that stands for theatre – the masks of comedy and tragedy. The face and subsequently its oral/aural counterpart, the voice, are investigated via a logic of appearing or expression, a previously neglected and discredited concept. Expression is reanimated as an alternative to the tragic logic of representation. The anomalies of expression are explored via iconic images in artistic and scientific works deploying theatricalized presentations of human emotion, as well as via phenomenological consideration of other varieties of theatrical appearing, visual representation, everyday behaviour and non-linguistic utterance.

Film and Media '13: The Pleasures of the Spectacle (University of London)

This paper examines the films of Buster Keaton in relation to the concepts and strategies of stage magic. The films that Keaton made during the 1920s deploy familiar tropes from the world of theatrical magic, from the lateral dispositions of his film sets -mirroring the stage sets of late 19 th and early 20 th century magic theatre -to Keaton´s contingent and mutually transformative relationship to other agents (human and non-human) with which he comes into contact. Exploring films such as ´Neighbours´, ´Sherlock Junior´, and ´The Navigator´, I show how Keaton deploys what magician and magic theorist Darwin Ortiz describes as spatial and temporal dislocations (twin strategies of deception in stage magic), which propel both the narrative action of his films and their frequent spectacularity. Keaton not only mimics but, significantly, reverses the traditional relationship between magician and audience, thus placing the viewer in a privileged position whilst his own perspective is -according to the 2-dimensional logic of the cinema screen -apparently occluded. In this way Keaton extends and develops the spatial logics set out by Melies in early cinema, adapting elements of what Simon During has called the magic assemblage, to create his own unique systems of action. Postscript Briefly though, I would like to say something about Keaton's performative style, with specific reference to his face. In a paper I produced for the Staging Illusion conference at Sussex in 2011, and entitled The Shuffling Gait of a Fit Man: Performance as wilful ambiguity and deception, I gave the example of the character of a Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo in Christopher Priest's novel (subsequently made into a feature film) The

Acting out : the pleasures of performance horror

2014

The horror genre has always been a subject of fascination, both in popular culture and in academia, and its manifestations continue to inspire monographs and papers. These studies, however, often focus only on books and movies, whilst the genre encompasses much more: art, music, theatre and games, forms which have not had as much attention. The objective of the current discussion is to move beyond this limited tradition, instead engaging with performance, or live action, horror. This study begins with the premise that, because of its often immersive format, performance horror creates an intensity that is unique to this form. This uniqueness stems from the fact that the form is live and this type of horror thus creates a confrontation between audience and performance that cannot be replicated by books or film. The focus of this thesis, then, is in the analysis of this form and its elements and to identify how these work together to create a particular narrative. In order to adequately discuss performance horror, a theoretical framework is established in the introduction, aiming to bring together a wide variety of scholarship in order to pin down the specifics of the form and its features. As such, secondary reading provides a clear context for the work presented here. In addition, case studies of a number of productions are used to show how performance horror works in practice. These case studies are informed by close readings of both play scripts (where available) and marketing materials. Interviews with many of the creators were undertaken to gain insight into the underlying ideas and thought processes when staging these productions. Each of these tools helps to build a picture of the elements which influence the narrative of this form of horror, how they are translated into performance, and how they may impact an audience. Through this process, the thesis provides a new way of looking at this particular practice, as well as a means to approach the study of popular and immersive performance.

The politics of presence: stagecraft and the power of the body in the romantic imagination

2003

For the old-fashioned proscenium arch was substituted a gilded picture frame, remote from the footlights, over which the actors were forbidden to step. Grumblings both loud and deep were heard among the players over their various deprivations, and finally old Dowton, pluckier than the rest, broke into open rebellion. "Don't tell me of frames and pictures!" he exclaimed, with choler. "If I can't be heard by the audience in the frame, I'll walk out of it." And out he came. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I look back on the experience of writing this dissertation, my overwhelming thought is how lucky I have been. My first piece of luck was choosing Kurt Heinzelman as my supervisor. Everyone knows that Kurt is a dedicated and perceptive reader; fewer know his expertise in the fine art of calming frantic dissertation writers. The project couldn't have been done without him. I have also been lucky in my dissertation committee, Doug Bruster,

Performing and Visual Arts The Empty Space in Theatre and Psychoanalysis

2015

The notion of empty space in this work was defined on the basis of theoretical investigations in the fields of theatre, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and theory of space. Understanding of the empty space in theatre was based onto the theories of a British director Peter Brook, while the theoretical postulates of Jacques Lacan were taken from the field of psychoanalysis. Concept of the emptiness, which Peter Brook defines as the ultimate condition for emergence of the truly theatrical experience, was analyzed in a relation to Lacan’s most intriguing concept of the Real. The emptiness needed for the theatrical act was associated with the subject’s inner emptiness, which upon Lacan has extimité character. The notion of empty space, necessary for creating the “new“ (in theatre likewise in psychoanalysis), was also connected with the notion of “minimal difference“ defined by a French philosopher Alain Badiou. Badiou’s psychoanalytic interpretation of the new gave grounds for the comprehens...