Magic Tonight Gets Snap'd

Our show was refigured recently in SNAPd Magazine (or just SNAP, depending on exactly which edition you're reading). They're a free print and online publication which covers the GTA by region. Magic Tonight was featured this month in both the Mississauga North and the College editions.

Live magic and fine dining were combined for an unforgettable night out, hosted by sleight-of-hand performer James Alan.

The magicians , James Alan, and special guests Michael Close and Matt DiSero performed an astonishing show from magnificent mind readers, to hilarious comedy magicians to breathtaking illusionists (sic). Guests enjoyed this magical night with delicious gourmet dining.

You can see pictures from the shows on the SNAPd websites (links above) and if you live in the areas, find the print edition which should be appearing in their stands shortly.

See a shrinking Michael Close, a rubber chicken wrangling Matt DiSero, an overexposed Ron Guttman lots of smiling people.

A week of Funny Faces

Any time we have a show, we try to preserve the memories with photos — smiles, shock, astonishment, bewilderment, wonder. The gallery over at Abracadabaret.com has a substantial collection. I've shot some myself. Other times I hand off the camera to see what someone else captures. Sometimes the photos are gorgeous, and other times the lighting is substandard, or the background is just strange. But through these photos — sorting them, cropping them, shooting them myself — has taught me a great deal about the performance of magic. Magic is an extremely difficult thing to photograph. Magic isn't static; it's based almost entirely on transformation and change. If a woman vanishes and I take a photo, a woman not in a photograph is not particularly impressive. It's the change from woman standing there to woman not standing there that makes for magic. Even mind reading, which some now consider to be magic in its purest form, is categorically unphotogenic. If I take your secret thoughts and speak them out loud, the resulting picture of our faces might be indistinguishable from the photo we'd get if I had just told you an exceptional "Knock-knock" joke.

And as I'm fond of telling young magicians, if you make cards magically spew from your mouth (a cool trick if ever there were one) don't take a picture of it. To the outside world, it simply looks like you are chewing on a fan of cards.

Most of the people who appear on the show are "talking acts". That means that a large portion of the photos taken will capture the face in the middle of a word. Not the most flattering position. This week, I was sorting through photos and the strange and funny faces seemed to jump out at me. So here, without anyone's consent, is a collection of The Funny Faces of Magic Tonight.

Thanks to Ron Guttman, Jason Palter, Brian Roberts and the irritatingly photogenic Keith Brown for not punching me.

Magic Tonight happens every week in Mississauga, Pickering and Toronto. Readers of this blog can use the code reality for a special discount when buying tickets online.