The Dying Art of Magic
Performance Research November 16, 2024 Augusto Corrieri
Stage magic, though secularized and theatrical, retains a link to mystical and shamanic practices by playing with the boundary between life and death. The essay examines UK magician Tommy Cooper's uncanny onstage death during a live television broadcast in 1984, analyzing his variety act for echoes of a mystical ceremony and the possibility of journeying to the afterlife. It also considers Penn & Teller's nail gun stunt, which the magicians reveal as a sham, fostering critical spectatorship that can be read as a form of lucid dreaming. Their antics dissolve the performance and the audience's attachment to reality, aligning with mystics and sages. The instability between life and death, theatre and reality, opens a different understanding of magic as precariously positioned between trickery and conjuring other worlds.