The Fairy Goblet of Eden Hall to Hunting Mammoths in the Rain - experiencing the paraxial through performance magic and mystery entertainment.

The performance piece Fairy Goblet of Eden Hall appeared in the Annemann's Jinx in 1941, it describes a ritual where each 'guest'' is invited to step forward to experience and share a vision of a past memory revealed to them by Titania's Fairy Goblet in a 'weird and uncanny manner''. Hunting Mammoths in the Rain was published in 2007 and demonstrates how an unearthly symbol discovered on an ancient rock can lead to a primal and olfactory experience for an audience. Both pieces represent key experiments in underground experiential performance magic. In such pieces the magician (or, more accurately, the mystery entertainer) acts as a facilitator guiding the guests/audience through a form of ostensive magical behaviour. This paper will explore a number of these performance magic experiments drawing on the notion of the ‘paraxial’ (Mangan, 2007), and will examine how the mystery entertainer places themselves in a performative grey area situated between illusion and disillusion. And how the notion of the paraxial has continued to manifest in experiential performance magic in areas such as séance, mystery entertainment, mesmerism and story-telling magic

Performing Fabulous Monsters: Re-inventing the Gothic Personae in Bizarre Magic

Bizarre magick is a form of performance magic that favours theatrical character, storytelling, overt allegory, symbolism and metaphor, and themes of the supernatural, fantastic, amazing and weird. While the form has its roots in Victorian stage magic, it realised itself as a movement in the 1970s through a counter-cultural reaction against the big boxes and card flourishes of a disenchanted, contemporary, mainstream stage magic. Bizarre magicians sought to re-enchant performance magic with the mysterious and the spiritual, (re)discovering meaning through storytelling and theatrical character. This chapter examines the adoption of popular Gothic representations in the stage persona of a number of key figures in bizarre magick. In performance, bizarre magick presents a complex series of meta-narratives within the form, often supplanting the literary in favour of popular Gothic (re)imaginings. These, often twice-removed, transformations/translations of classic and contemporary Gothic form and fiction are considered in the context of the bizarre performer's engagement, through both performance and theoretical writing, with the fabulously monstrous

Impersonating Spirits: The Paranormal Entertainer and the Dramaturgy of the Gothic Séance.

Magician Bob Neale talks about the notion of monkey movement in the practice of performing magic. For Neale the experience of performance magic is a playful movement between illusion and disillusion. The magician is the manager of this process playing a trickster by presenting magic (the illusion) but framing it as tricks (the disillusion). This chapter examines what happens when the disillusionment is taken out of performance magic, that is, when magic is performed as real within the frame of the Gothic Séance. The paranormal entertainer, who leads the séance, can be seen as coming out of a wider movement of performance magic known as the Bizarre. Bizarre magicians sought to re-enchant performance magic with the mysterious and the spiritual, (re)discovering meaning through storytelling and theatrical character. Many practitioners of the Bizarre would perform their magic tricks as real, a number choosing to remove any notion of trickery within their practice. Performers borrowed freely from goetic, pagan, psychic and Gothic cultural sources. Often known as hard bizarre this practice ultimately came under scrutiny by the magic community through ethical concerns of fakery and deception. The paranormal entertainer treads the fine-line of ambiguity within their performance practice. This chapter focuses specifically on the Gothic séance practice of the paranormal entertainer and the creation, through trickery, of a visceral experience of the dark and Gothic within the performance space. Borrowing from the folklore notion of ostension and by examining the staging of collective delusion; the paper will explore the creation of magic, spirits, the supernatural and the Gothic within the performance space of the Séance

Magic and Broken Knowledge; reflections on the practice of Bizarre Magick

This paper examines wider issues of disenchantment in conventional magic performance practice, ultimately exploring the spectatorship of bizarre magick which offers an alternative model of practice where the shift from enchantment to disenchantment is much less clear cut than in traditional conjuring. How bizarre sought to blur the distinction between real and performed magic is considered with reference to the notion of the magician or mystery entertainer as a facilitator allowing the audience to have the experience of self-enchantment within the performance itself. This discussion is approached with direct reference to the author’s own performance practice and research into bizarre magick and mystery entertainment

“Strange Ceremonies”: Creating Imaginative Spaces in Bizarre Magick

The Great God Pan (Raven, 1974) is a performance magic piece aimed at transporting the imagination of an audience out of the magician’s study (where the piece is set) and into fictional realms of fantasy and horror. This type of work is known as Bizarre Magick and is an underground form of performance magic. Many of the pieces in this genre borrow from popular horror fictions and seek to locate Fantastika in everyday physical locations through the creation of a charged sense of space where illusion is played as real. This article examines how these effects, through storytelling, intricate props, and often complex methods, allow practitioners to draw heavily on fictionalised histories of science fiction, horror and the supernatural to create site-specific “strange ceremonies” (Burger, 1991). These experiential theatrical pieces allow the magician (better described as the mage or sorcerer) to act as a facilitator guiding the guests/audience into imaginative spaces where fantastic fictions are made real. This article explores a number of these performance magic experiments and draws on the notion of the “paraxial” (Mangan, 2007) to examine how the performer relocates themselves and their audience in a performative grey area situated between illusion and reality

Call for papers

Call for Papers The Journal of Performance Magic: immersive magic and imaginary world