The Power of One Coin

What was the first magic trick you remember? If you’re like most people, it was probably a favorite uncle pulling a coin from your ear. Do you remember how you felt? For many people it is clearly a key experience – they remember it all their lives. Recently, I put “The Aerial Mint” back into my platform show – and was astonished at the reactions it got. When I went...

Imagination, Solitude and Creativity

Selecting the topics for these [articles] hasn’t been an easy task. But I’ve been guided in the selection by some of the questions that typically are asked by the magicians who attend the seminars that I’ve conducted. I began doing small seminars in January of 1983. I suppose in large part because l had lost faith in the educational value of the traditional magic lecture format...

Good Directors Cut!

Few things are more enduring than the Zen thought “less is more.” In the creation and brainstorming period of a new piece, nothing gets edited; everything is put into the heap. I tend to overload each new piece with many layers of esoteric symbolism in an attempt to make it more profound. One day, I was rehearsing a routine in my studio. After many disappointing attempts to get the...

Looking Beyond the Trick

When I was a beginner in magic, one of the things which I firmly believed was that in a magic performance everything centers on the strength of the magic trick. Among beginners — and sometimes even among those who have been involved with magic for a long time –specific magic tricks are often referred to as “reputation makers” or “show stoppers” or even...

Spiritual Strength & Introspection

Do you consider yourself a performing artist, more a magician, or is there even a distinction? I consider myself a hard-core magician. Any influences as far as performance art is concerned? I seriously studied the performance art movement in the 70’s and early 80’s. There were people like Joanna Went, the Kipper Kids, Laurie Anderson. I started reading “High Performance...