On 2002-11-16 14:37, Lance Pierce wrote:
I think it’s safe to say that most of our audiences do not believe in magic. As such, how are we to present it to them? I’ve always been of the hope that I could present magic in some way that, even though no one believes it’s really magic, there’s no other possible explanation. If we can do this, then what happens is that the spectator’s mind goes into a loop that says, “No, there’s no such thing as magic…but that’s the only way this could have happened…no, there’s no magic…but that’s the only way…” At some point, the spectator has to side step her way out of the loop and offer something like, “Well, it had to have been sleight of hand,” or “Okay, he’s good,” or simply (and sometimes more honestly), “I have no idea.” None of these satisfy the spectator, but they all provide a way out. If we can get them into this kind of loop, what we need to do then is provide them a step out of the loop that’s better than the mundane one they’ll obviously take when left to their own devices. Put another way, once they’re in this loop, our theater can extract from it a sense of wonder or astonishment or a lingering sense of…whatever. We have many options available to us.