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The performer will invariably dance around dishonesty rather than embrace it, indulging in a series of tiny untruths, not big lies.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
The real art is how the rubber band is handled with the finesse of a jewel cutter, how a mirror is used or concealed precisely, how a masterfulperformer can hint at impossibilities that are consummated with only a piece of thread.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
When Steinmeyer writes about the theater a century ago, he speaks as one who's met modern versions of the characters, who's even reconstructed their tricks onstage. So when, for example, he describes David Devant's Mascot Moth (which Steinmeyer reproduced in Doug Henning's Merlin),
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
His specialty was convincing each person that they had witnessed a near catastrophe.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
In his "Soiree Fantastique," Robert-Houdin's effect was presented as a magical box that could become heavy or light at will and thus protect itself from thieves. It was accomplished with a metal-lined box and an electromagnet beneath the stage-in the 1840s such magnets were little understood by the general public and not likely to be susp
... See moreTeller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Jean Robert-Houdin was famous for the opinion that a magician is actually just "an actor playing the part of a magician."
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
That photo, like Kellar's bold visit to the Egyptian Hall stage, wouldn't have shown him very much. It was actually the little tool that made the eyelets, and the felt-covered rollers-two simple additions that never looked very impressive backstage-that had made all the difference.