SMOKE & MIRRORS

I've always believed that MAGIC is not about DOING TRICKS but about Spinning Stories, Telling Tales, Formulating Fictions...

A lot of magicians would disagree with me (probably the majority, actually!) but magic is such a potentially potent and powerful craft - even an artform - that it is capable of not simply puzzling and perplexing the spectator but of evoking breath-catching wonderment...

Like the shaman - the mystic, the oracle, the seer - the magician assualts our rational senses; confronts our fears, doubts and hopes; challenges our beliefs (and disbeliefs); awakens memories of dreams and nightmares; and liberates far-fetched fantasies and gives them wings...

My friend John van der Put and his colleagues in Stand Not Amazed have a similar philosophy about magic and recently enjoyed success with their performance of Magic to Cry for...

A couple smoking, two lives driven by little white death sticks. They appear, evaporate, multiply uncontrollably, and all the while we wonder: is it ever ok to really need something? To need someone? Maybe not all bad things are good for you. An acceptance is reached, an understanding gained, he quits giving up, she quits giving in; everyone needs a vice in the city.

Stand Not Amazed are currently working on a full-length debut show in which magic, movement and storytelling will be woven together and have very nicely asked me to be their 'Textual Consultant'. Although I haven't the faintest idea what that will turn out to mean in reality -- in so far as magic ever deals with anything as humdrum as reality! -- I shall, in the meantime, be watching their next outing, The Quircus, on Thursday 5th July at The Honor Oak in SE23 (full details in side bar, scroll down below right; click to enlarge), with suitably bedazzled fascination!

Why not join me there? And if you Sit Not Amazed, I shall be very surprised!


[Image: Magician Tarot card from The Halloween Tarot by Kipling West]