An Excerpt from Genii Magazine on Alex Boyce
By Jamy Ian Swiss
February 2024 Issue Vol. 87 No. 2
Max Maven would sometimes describe a certain breed of ambitious young magician as “a young man in a hurry.” Alex Boyce is not one of those young men. While he is only 27 years old, he is a very different sort of young man who, as another old saying goes, is going places.
Alex is a busy working pro based in New York City, with a catalog of shows and a résumé of clients and venues at which he’s performed—across the country, around the world, and in multiple television appearances—that belies his youth, and might well arouse the envy of many a seasoned professional even twice his age. How did he get here? One might say he did it the old-fashioned way. Most professionals will tell you: he did it the only way.
With an early interest in magic as a very young boy of five or six, his passion was fully ignited at age 11 by a visit to Tannen’s Magic, which led to his first time attendance at Tannen’s Magic Camp. At the shop he inquired about his earliest interest in illusions, only to discover that his weekly allowance wouldn’t be enough to let him take a Harbin “Zig-Zag” home that day. Instead, he purchased a couple of books on illusions, one of them being The Complete Jarrett by Jim Steinmeyer (2001). Steinmeyer’s annotated edition of arguably the most notorious book in the history of conjuring was the equivalent of learning to swim by jumping in at the deep end of the pool. To this day it remains one of Alex’s favorite books.
Alex’s first few days at Tannen’s Camp comprise a story that has been lived by countless young campers who arrive the first day being accustomed to being the best on the block—or in school, or even at the magic shop—only to arrive at camp and discover there are a hundred kids as good as you and a few dozen with skills you’ve never seen and hadn’t previously even imagined. But despite the opening days of crying to his parents that he wanted them to come and take him home, by the end of the week Alex would fall in love with magic on a whole new level, and couldn’t wait to come back the next year. From that first day till now, Alex has never missed a Tannen’s camp, since after his first seven or eight years he was promoted to counselor, and returns every year to share not just his knowledge but his passion, trying to kindle the same inspirational fires that were lit for him that very first week.
At camp, Alex met young, accomplished professionals who offered inspiration and guidance, including Kostya Kimlat and Michael Carbonaro (who was then an up and coming pro but not yet a television star). Alex recounts that what most deeply impacted him was “meeting magicians who were working, but not famous. Fame and riches weren’t the motivation—but seeing that people were working was a revelation.”
With a plan to apply to New York University, intending to major in film and television, Carbonaro gave Alex a key piece of advice: Do a magic trick at the audition. Alex chose a “Magician Makes Good” plot, and when it appeared that the trick had failed, the woman conducting the audition was visibly concerned, clearly saddened that the boy with high hopes had folded under pressure. When the climax came and the trick successfully concluded, she realized that she had been completely convinced by the young man’s acting, effectively welcoming him to NYU.
Having attended Monday Night Magic during high school, Alex’s silent dove act had reached the point where he was booked at the show and became one of our steady openers during his years of attending college in the city. But wanting to expand his working catalog into close-up magic, it would take him no less than four auditions to finally get booked to do close-up at the show. Following the first failure, he deliberately broadened his focus at the next Magic Camp, alternating his annual program focus between close-up and stage (the camp curriculum is no longer structured in the same fashion).
And about that dove act: Like most, Alex started out with mechanical apparatus for bird productions and vanishes. As he became more interested in the classical sleight-of-hand methods, as exemplified by Channing Pollock, John Thompson, and Lance Burton, Alex eventually decided to put in a phone call to Thompson, asking if he could study with John. Johnny said, “Come out to Vegas, we’ll talk.” Alex caught a plane soon after and ended up spending the first of multiple visits studying dove magic with the master.
To his surprise, there was never any discussion of money changing hands. Alex came, demonstrated his interest, and John shared generously, and taught rigorously. “It was not a jamming relationship in any way,” Alex explains. “Learn it the way it’s done. Turn your head this way; say this now.” Along with the knowledge, skills, and hard work, came something else that turned out to be profoundly important: namely, the stamp of approval. As Alex’s abilities grew and expanded under John’s tutelage, “I looked at myself differently.” Maybe he could really become one of those successful working pros he had first encountered at camp.
Today, there’s no maybe about it. Alex is not only a busy working pro, but he has earned the attention and respect of mentors and older colleagues, and found himself welcomed into the inner circles of working professionals, who see in him reflections of their own paths to progress. Alex has taken the advice, and followed the routes, of countless successful working performers: He is a reader and researcher, he seeks out mentors, he studies history, he studies the classics, and he tries to do as many shows as possible in a wide variety of venues and settings. He understands on a deep level that there are no shortcuts to excellence. And he achieves artistic originality not by way of novelty for its own sake or the latest online release, but rather by being sufficiently informed, sufficiently practiced, and sufficiently dedicated to creatively thinking about the work—so that eventually the creativity comes, and he finds ways to make the material his own, putting his own spin and above all his own artistic voice and personal point of view into the work. It turns out, as he writes on his website, that “It helps when basically every great magician I would meet after their shows would give me the same advice: read. It was the constant refrain. They’d all say it in their own way but they’d all say: ‘Read. Practice. Perform.’ It’s simple—but the best advice.”
One of the more impressive lines in Alex’s résumé is the one that reads, “Speakeasy Magick.” The unprecedentedly original format, which first opened in 2018 and then moved to its own custom-constructed setting in June of 2023, features a handful of New York’s elite close-up workers, with ticket prices ranging from $180 to $250. Alex is not only a part of the core cast, but he is one of only two stage acts, along with on-stage host Todd Robbins (creator and curator of the show), that appear nightly on the small stage. Robbins aside, the two feature stage acts—Alex and colleague Matthew Holtzclaw—work silently, and both are throwbacks of sorts who work classical material in a contemporary style.
In Alex’s case, he performs a fabulous bird act that combines classical sleight-of-hand dove effects, like Channing Pollock’s double-dove production, with striking original elements—including the unforgettable transformation of a flying paper plane into a live dove—all performed in a modern bespoke single-breasted, snugly tailored suit. This act, I would suggest, represents the epitome of the roadway to artistic and commercial success that I have referred to repeatedly in this column: a deep study of the classics; learning from genuinely accomplished mentors; endless focus on practice; and the hard work of originality that runs deep and provides genuine artistic muscle, not mere surface differences. The originality springs from within, slowly and carefully cultivated. I grew up believing “Nothing easily obtained is worth having.” There has never been any shortage of proof of that statement, but Alex’s work and career certainly serve to provide additional contemporary evidence.
The first time I performed at Speakeasy Magick, in the summer of 2019, there were two performers about whom I had heard and that I was particularly interested in meeting. One was Mark Calabrese, whom you learned about and from in last month’s installment. The other was Alex Boyce. I arrived early my first evening at the club to meet these fellows, and have the chance to sit down with them for a bit before the lights were lowered and the piano player sat down to play. When Alex and I settled at a table, he said there was something in particular he wanted to show to me, and he proceeded to perform a particular routine with long ties to historic performers and traditions, touched upon by multiple creative hands, including even my own.
It was a piece of magic that was entirely unexpected, and utterly astonishing, beautiful, mysterious, memorable. For a few moments during, I was riveted. And for a few moments afterward, I was moved, and I could not speak. Eventually I recovered, and blinked a tear or three away, and I shook his hand—one of two good ones in which the future of magic is well held.
Jamy Ian Swiss is an acclaimed master of the challenging art of sleight of hand. Swiss has performed magic throughout the United States for presenters ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the Smithsonian Institution. And he has made numerous television appearances in the United States, Europe and Japan, including U.S. appearances on CBS 48 Hours, PBS Nova, and repeat appearances on The Today Show and The Late, Late Show.