One Thousand
It doesn’t matter what’s happened one thousand times before, it only matters tonight. And tonight, it's official, they say: I’ve hit one thousand performances of Speakeasy Magick. The show may begin at eight every night, but I find it starts earlier for me, around 6:30 when I step up out of the subway on 23rd street. Manhattan appears and so does its people. The production of the city is accompanied with rushers, amblers, strutters, smokers, chatters, laughers. It’s twilight and time to transform into and of something else. There’s scaffolding on the Flatiron Building. It’s been that way for a few years while they’re turning it into condos. Even underneath the mesh of the netting the building still has an elegance that states “This is New York.” Even though I walk by it every day on my way to the show I still look up to admire it. Maybe to take a piece of that declaration with me as I start the evening.
The delightful and painful irony occurs every day when I walk down the stairs backstage. No matter what happened at the last show, no matter the enthusiastic response, or how perfectly tight the moves may have been, it’s time to start over. None of the previous hundreds of shows count for anything anymore and we begin at the beginning and every detail becomes important once again. Last night’s success does not dictate tonight’s success. Time to prepare.
I sit and begin to assemble all the pieces I need. Arts and crafts. Rolling. Folding. Cutting. Stamping. Then a little practice on stage to get in tune and stay in shape. People begin to move around me. Sound check. Bar tenders cut limes. Chairs are rearranged. The other performers arrive. Dirty jokes.
In university a class of ten of us toured Julius Caesar to jails and elementary schools for an entire semester. I was Caesar in a gym, in a classroom of “youthful offenders” and Caesar quite literally in front of Riker’s Island urinals which became a stage and detainees an audience for Shakespeare. The sound of men peeing into the metal receptacles behind us as we spoke. “Yond Cassius had a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.” How do you have clarity in the story? How do you get them to listen? To care? The everyday challenge of working as an ensemble became apparent. We were all twenty years old with differing ambition, work ethic, talent. Questions of how to be part of the ensemble came up on the bus over the bridge back home. When to lead? When to follow. Lead clear or softly? Follow soft or directly? How were you to know what moment was time for stewardship and when it was time to listen more and then listen more and more. Working as an ensemble is a practice and requires practice they say. Ok. Like a dance- the best lead and follow simultaneously and together. Practice.
With the call of the time, thirty minutes to show, I take off the clothes and put the suit on. Tie. Shoes. Birds are ready. Patti Lupone as a voice in my head. “Our responsibility from the moment we hit the deck is to relax the audience. And that is what is called command.” Command. No forcing it. Then once you have command over them what do you do with it?
The show starts, the piano rings and vibrates and pulses and we’re off. I hum loudly.
Many terribly boring hours wearing the black uniform and laying on the ground of the classroom “hooing,” “ha-ing,” breathing. A voice to cut through the noise and be heard. Can the voice be loud but feel soft? Reciting a soliloquy through a kazoo. A cork between the teeth and a make-up mirror to check the lip shapes. “Two households both alike in dignity.” Rolling my eyes one moment at the absurdity and stupidity of it all. Tears another day realizing the complexity and majesty of if all.
I sit down and introduce myself. The music and cacophony of voices fill the room, but somehow everyone nods that they can hear me. So, I remove a deck of cards. A card is selected by a lady on my left and signed.
I’m fifteen at magic camp. Vito Lupo stands at the front of the room. Our pens hover over our notebooks ready to make permanent any wisdom he might share. “When you show an object to one side of the audience look at the other. When you switch to show it to the other side, your gaze moves so everyone is engaged for the entirety.”
I take back the signed card and show the men this way but look at the women that way, then switch. I cut the card to the center, shuffle, then my hand spreads the cards across the table from my right to left.
Teller sits down amongst the rest of the audience. Without his suit and taller partner, he goes unnoticed. I work. He smiles, applauds and then I finish. After he says “Why do you spread the cards left to right so that you can read them but we can’t? You really should spread the cards so they’re correct for us to read but upside down for you instead.” Of course.
My hand spreads the cards across the table from my right to left, not my left to right.
As we get to the ending all I have to do is flip over a card. I slow way down and get quiet as I’m trying to build up to the climax.
When it’s summer in southern California and yet the heat is on something strange is happening. It’s so damn hot in the room at 1am that I’m sweating in a t-shirt. But that’s how Juan likes the room so that’s how it will be. And funny enough, I’m cool with that. The six of us have flown from around the country for three nights with Juan Tamariz. He teaches. He shows us his notes. He answers questions. He asks questions. He is magic. Some lessons he knows are best experienced than explained. We enter the room and a deck of cards has been cut into three piles on the table and each is laid into the shape of a star. “This is magic that is so good that this is the three Michelin star trick!” He stands in the doorway and removes his shoe. “If I step over the shoe to try and touch anything you stop me. Say ‘Juan- No!’ You must prevent me.” He asks me to name a card. The Five of Hearts. Any pile is chosen and he proclaims the card is not there. He’s right! Another pile is chosen and the card is not there either. He tries to sneak over the shoe “No Juan!” He sheepishly backs away and grins. He doesn’t touch the cards and yet the card is gone from the entire deck. It was just simply gone. “Point anywhere you like.” The one sitting next to me points to Juan’s breast pocket. “Not my hat? Not behind the painting. Not the cup on the counter?” The pocket. Juan gets quieter and slows down. Tension. She reaches into his pocket and removes the only card. Slowly it’s flipped over. The Five of Hearts. We erupt in a release. He didn’t teach us this one. But the signed Five of Hearts with a shoe drawn on it came home with me. How does he make it feel like magic?
I’m about to flip over the card. I don’t speak. I breathe slow. I hold and hold and hold longer than I can ever feel comfortable doing even after one thousand shows. Then finally I let the rubber band stretch…. And SNAP. The card is flipped over. They lose themselves and I watch. Time to start over again for the next scene.
Steve Martin said something about anyone can be great once. But to be good all the time…
Halfway through the night I step on stage for another moment. The lights change.
I spent hours at a light board in high school. Cuing the next light change on the actor’s line and stepping up on a ladder to refocus a par can. “Ready Cue 134. And Go.”
The lights change and it’s time to begin this moment. A thousand go arounds and it’s new again because it always is. In order: whispers, silence, screams, applause. I bow and lift my hands; a bird perched on top of each into the pool of light.
Las Vegas. The Great Tomsoni’s heavy tuxedo on my shoulders. So many details. Every decision has an impact and can make it better. Specificity in everything. But my hands aren’t even half the size of his huge mitts. His fingers wrap around the egg and I try to duplicate it but I can’t. Some issues that plagued me take minutes for him to fix. After seventy years he knows the best way and somethings that were hard become easy. Other bits of information take months after to get a hang of. He’d retired his birds and so we practiced with balled up socks. In lieu of the creation of a dove at the fingertips, a sock flopped. He explains and I try and jot it all down in a leather notebook. Learn the working repertoire. The snow-white egg in the dark interior of the bag. The roulette balls on the chiffon silk. The cards that answered questions. He shows me every adjustment to make. But it became clear that what was important wasn’t all the very specific details but a mindset. Deception through choices. Engagement and theater through choices. Natural actions and motivated choices not just for card tricks and cups and balls. Greatness achieved in every moment of magic. Extreme empathy of understanding the audience’s mind.
The end of show comes for the thousandth time. I fly down the stairs and whip off the jacket and the tie. Tomorrow, it starts all over, and different memories I’m sure will accompany the evening. 1001.
Sincere thank you to the Speakeasy Magick team and to Jamy Ian Swiss for his invaluable insights and feedback on this essay.
Alexander Boyce’s appearances include Speakeasy Magick, The Magic Castle in Hollywood, and Lincoln Center. He’s worked wonders as a magician around the globe for clients like Amazon, Google, and NASDAQ. Bizarre Brooklyn, a production he co-created and starred in, was featured by The New York Times as a selection for best theater of the year. He lives in Brooklyn, and considers himself lucky in that he gets to share the magic that he’s so passionate about with audiences all over the world.