Swallowing needles and card tricks: a small taste of a holiday magic show
BEN HART started performing magic when he was just five or six years old. At 16, he won the Magic Circle’s Young Magician of the Year Award, and went on to turn a hobby into a profession.
“I’m lucky that it’s my career. But if I wasn’t earning money doing it, I’d still be doing it,” he said.
For the 26-year-old magician — who was in town to promote IMPOSSIBLE, the World’s Greatest Magic Show, which is coming to Manila for a series of performances over the holiday season — curiosity and the knowledge that magic is not really about the performer, but the audience, is what makes a great magician.
“You have to want to know the answers but also be prepared to accept the fact that there aren’t always answers in life. Sometimes, when people are learning magic, they become too interested in the secrets and they forget what it’s like to be an audience member experiencing the mystery,” he noted. He said that one audience member’s experience is different from another’s because everyone’s mind is different. Mr. Hart, one of the six magicians who perform in IMPOSSIBLE, also said that technological advancements and access to information are both an advantage and challenge to magicians today.
“Information is shared so quickly now. Even the biggest secrets are leaked in the Internet. So, for magicians [where] our secrets are small, that’s a challenge. But, it’s okay because for as long as people are leaking big secrets on the Internet, no one’s [going to] be interested in our little secrets,” Mr. Hart said.
The advantage is that technology has improved the standard of magic worldwide through the increasing number of practitioners.
“Magic has always had to evolve with technology... Magic is never [gonna] die because we are always at the front of technology,” he said, stressing that early inventors and scientists were considered magicians during their time.
A MAGICAL DEMO
Mr. Hart demonstrated a couple of “small” tricks while meeting the press at the Novotel in Cubao on Oct. 9. He started with a card trick, asking one member of the press to write her name on a chosen card — the queen of hearts. The magician then transferred the card from its position in the middle of the deck of cards to the top by snapping his fingers — suddenly biting it with his mouth, then making it disappear. The trick ended with him handing a sealed envelope to the participant, which when she opened — of course it contained the chosen card with her name written on it.
He performed a dangerous act for his second trick — swallowing a set of needles, slowly consuming the needles one at a time, then proceeding to “swallow” the entire set. He then chewed on a long thread and swallowed that. He then slowly pulled the thread out of his mouth, the needles strung along it at intervals.
Asked after the demonstration if there is a trick he has not performed that he would want to do, he said that there were a lot. He is passionate about recreating old magic that have not been performed for a long time, he told BusinessWorld after the demonstration.
“Each year, I try to take an old magic trick and bring it back to life. [And] it’s like being a detective because I have no video evidence of what the trick was. So, I have to go back, look at the magician’s notebooks, [and] try to build the equipment. There are [ lots] of magic tricks I want to do.
“The one I’m working on at the moment is an old trick from 1910. It was done in London. The trick is — you have an aquarium full of fish and [ you] put in lots of pieces of wood with letters on them. And somebody takes a newspaper, and they tear the newspaper to lots of little pieces. And they choose one piece. [And they] read the word on that piece of paper. You get the fish to move and nudge up the letters one at a time to the surface of the water, spelling the word. It’s a trick called ‘The Educated Fish.’”
DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF MAGIC
Speaking about IMPOSSIBLE, Mr. Hart likens watching the show to experiencing different flavors.
“You can expect the unexpected. It’s a very big magic show — the world’s greatest magic show. There are six of the world’s greatest magicians. Each one has a specialized act. There’s a dangerous act, there’s a small beautiful, close-up magic [act], [and] grand illusions. There’s a great dancing magician. There’s mind-reading. There’s really something for everyone,” he explained.
Joining Mr. Hart in the show are America’s Got Talent contestant and daredevil performer Bello Nock, break-dancing and street magician Magical Bones, illusionists Josephine Lee and Ali Cook, and mind-reader Chris Cox.
Presented by Wilbros Live, IMPOSSIBLE, the World’s Greatest Magic Show will have performances from Dec. 25 to Jan. 3 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City.
Tickets range in price from P150 to P1,800 (plus ticketing charge), available at TicketNet. —