Stage magic and illusion of the world

Stage magic is the art of the conjurer: sleight of hand, the great illusions, mentalism and the long history of the magic show. It differs from every other form here in one way. The audience knows it is a trick and agrees to be fooled, and the best performers are honest about that. This guide describes famous effects and the history of the art, and does not explain how any trick is done.

A short history

Jugglers and conjurers are recorded in ancient Egypt, Rome and China, and in medieval fairs. Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) is one early English book of conjuring, written partly to argue that witchcraft was a delusion. Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin made the modern stage show in Paris in the 1840s, Harry Houdini made escape an event, and the Las Vegas era turned illusions into spectacle. Skill, rehearsal and honest labour sit behind every effect, and a good performer can spend years on a single move.

Around the world

India has the street magicians and the old rope-and-basket stories of the jadu-wallah. China has a long tradition of acrobatic and conjuring theatre, and William Robinson, an American, took the stage name Chung Ling Soo and played a Chinese conjurer. Japan has tejina, the Edo-period art of sleight, and the Arab world has its own storytellers and street entertainers. Women performers faced fewer chances in the early stage trade and were often cast as assistants.

Honest deception

Magicians follow an informal code: do not expose methods to the public, do not repeat a trick to the same audience, and do not claim supernatural power. The code separates entertainment from fraud. Houdini and later James Randi spent years exposing mediums and faith healers who claimed real powers, believing that doing so protected the public. Ethical debates continue about the use of animals on stage, risky stunts and the borrowing of other cultures' costumes, and some famous acts have ended in accident or death, as with the bullet-catch trick that killed Chung Ling Soo in 1918.

Scholars and the brain

Researchers working with magicians study attention, memory and belief, and have shown how misdirection and cognitive illusions shape what people see. Stage magic has also been borrowed by fraudsters, notably in spiritualist seances of the nineteenth century, which is why performers and sceptics have long worked together. Performance, then, is the one form here where belief is not required of anyone, and that is why it can sit beside the rest of the guide without claiming to prove or disprove any of it.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Magic: Hieronymus Bosch and workshop / Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch / After H, Public domain, source

Bed of nails: Herbert Ponting, Public domain, source

Society of American Magicians: Anonymous Unknown author, Public domain, source

Chung Ling Soo: AndyScott, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Howard Thurston: Anonymous Unknown author, Public domain, source

Penn & Teller: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CC BY 2.0, source

Zombie walk: tangi bertin, CC BY 2.0, source

Harry Kellar: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Davenport brothers: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Stage magic and illusion