2007-06 Dennis' Deliberations

Ring #258 is in Leesburg and is our first cousin. A number of our members in Ring #170 are also active in Ring #258. So it would not be unusual that the recent Leesburg sponsored stage show had representatives from Orlando. Roger Reid and Chris Dunn did a hilarious politically incorrect sketch. Okay I will say it! It was about a Polish magician (Gruchnick) and his assistant (Maryshka) played by Chris Dunn in drag (don't read anything into that) . Magic Ian did a bit. Dan Dyer was on stage as well as our former ring president, Richard Hewitt with a nice dove and rabbit act. In such an eclectic evening performance as The Savannah Center Show at The Villages, stacking the acts and pacing are important.

The real star and glue that held the show together was comedy magician and emcee, Jim Moody. Jim's comedy approach is to use a barrage of one-liners , a running gag of teasing a couple of male audience members on the front row and self-effacing humor. "Mike, your babysitter is on the phone. She wants to know where you keep the fire-extinguisher!" Anyone will quickly surrender to this classic schtick and have fun. Jim, is a seasoned performer and was loved by the older crowd.

Our own ring member , Kendrix Adcock , was the big act and star illusionist . He asked me to help him stage The Asrah Levitation as his finale illusion at the end of the show. Now you know how I got to be backstage at the April 25th show . We used his Asrah table but the rigging was from my prop collection.

The Asrah Levitation was created near the turn of the 20th century by Servais LeRoy. Jean Henri Servais LeRoy was born in Spa, Belgium, May 4, 1865. He died at the ripe old age of 88. LeRoy's creations include The Asrah, the Duck Pan, Stolen Jam (now called the Palanquin ), The Costume Trunk, The Magical Farm Yard and The Master Tray. His contributions to stage magic were monumental. He invented the wedge-base in illusions and was masterful in his use of elastic webbed traps. (today we use spandex) The Asrah Levitation has the lady laying on a table and covered with a light cloth. She floats up 10 feet high and vanishes in mid air as the magician pulls off her cloth cover.

The Asrah demands a complicated stage rigging, lighting and expert coordination. Earlier versions of the Asrah were rigged a bit different from the modern versions but they all basically work the same way. I have been performing and staging the illusion for 40 years.

The secret is well-known: A bed-table is used and the female assistant reclines on it and sinks into it. A thin and lightweight wire form that looks like her profile is placed where she is supposed to be laying. It is covered with a thin cloth . She is wheeled off stage unknown to the audience. The form is suspended by four threads from a pipe baton high above the stage. In front of the baton is a "border" curtain that hangs down about 4 feet from another baton about 3 feet in front of the baton that is suspending the wire form. The border hides the black painted wire form when it is in the "up position".

That is not all! There needs to be a patterned curtain as a backdrop in back of the whole illusion to hide the threads. Since the 1950s and the invention of Mylar *, most illusionists now use a sparkly "rain curtain". So don't think that everybody is going to be doing this illusion! I forgot to mention that there needs to be an expert puppeteer standing behind one of the curtain legs on the side of the stage "flying" the form with a control rope. Timing is critical. Also the lighting is vital. It almost demands a "followspot" for proper lighting. In fact, I own an expensive followspot mostly so I can perform this illusion properly.

The Asrah has to be the perfect illusion. It has no "emotionally low" parts. Most levitations emotionally fall flat when the lady floats back down. It is anti-climactic. With The Asrah she flies up 10 feet and she vanishes in mid-air. Dr. Thaddeus Seymour, former president of Rollins College and a magician, once told me that his dream was to one day perform the Asrah. So far I haven't had the chance to set it up at the Annie Russell Theater on campus and have him experience the joy of pulling off the cloth cover and hearing the audience gasp!

As it is in life, things don't always go according to plan but experience, skill and ingenuity go a long way to getting back on track. The Savannah Center Theater is not so much as theater as it is a multi-purpose room with a stage. The stage has a 20' by 40' proscenium but it has no grid or flying system. Thus, we had to hang the batons on the top of the fixed curtain system by using a tall wheeled scaffold. Kendrix's helper Jim, was the brave soul that scaled the 20 feet and hung all the system. It was a
2 hour set up for just the pipe batons. Challenge number two was that the mid-stage traveler curtain was too close to where we had to rest the form on the floor during the beginning of the performance, so we had to use a half dozen stage stands to tilt the curtain back at an angle.

Challenge number three: I don't have a 20 foot high Mylar rain curtain so we had to pin my 12 foot by 18 foot rain curtain onto the Black Commando Cloth traveler.

Finally, after close to three hours, we had the Asrah ready to work. We went over the stage cues and the lighting cues with the lighting director and followspot operator and Kendrix. A quick walk-through and light check and we had to surrender the stage to the rest of the acts and their tech rehearsal.

Kendrix likes to set the mood for his opening illusion , The Quantum Leap ( a Modernistic type Palanquin), by using two large floor-mounted ornate candle-stands with lit candles. Jim Moody informed us that any kind of fire was forbidden. Bummer! Since the Rhode Island Night Club Fire a few years back, fire is now mostly forbidden on all theater stages, so folks toss away your Fantasio candles, Fire Cages and Dove Pans. Magic Ian had to slash his act to follow the rules.

Ken's choreography was done by Joannie Spina ( Copperfield's chief female assistant for years) and reflects a visual jazz and ballet fusion to the sound of rock music. Ken's two female dancers were superb in action on stage as was Michelle, Ken's wife and efficient backstage prop coordinator. Also well-trained was Anthony and Glen Foster as his male assistants. Glen is also an illusionist with his own show.

Illusions performed were Quantum Leap, Modern Art, Origami, The Blue Box, Twister, Arm-Vanish, Bits and Pieces and Asrah. Here is a montage on You-Tube of some of the illusions Kendix did at The Villages.

There were two shows, and early and a late. During the first show, we were very rushed in spotting the Asrah table and form and the back threads got twisted . As the form arose , I pulled the cord and it went up slightly tilted forward. Of course, I was in a panic with no way to communicate what to do to Ken and he was equally mortified. (Make a note! Next time have at least one assistant on stage with an ear piece to communicate with the stage coordinator).

The form rose up about 6 feet with an increasing tilt and when I felt that it was going to arbitrarily dump the cloth, I gave a pull and made her vanish. Spectators that watched the action from the front said that no one was the wiser that we were not doing the full classic Asrah vanish. The effect was that she rose and vanished with the cloth falling into Ken's hands.

On the second show, everything worked perfect. As Thurston said in his patter, "She vanished like a fading cloud!". This Asrah performance was captured on tape and hopefully will be on You Tube. All the other illusions went off flawlessly and Ken got a lot of compliments from the crowds and fellow performers. I was pleased.

Illusionists need to have a complete understanding of the age demographics of their illusion audience. That issue is more important that ever in today's magic climate. Ken was "right on" with the age of the crowd. Ken's style is still popular in Las Vegas, and Convention and Cruise venues but changes are happening as the younger generation replaces us old folks.

I found out this past month that younger audiences 15 to 20 are not at all enthusiastic about the illusion styles of the 80s and mid 90s. As many of you know, I am a fill-in teacher for Orange County Public Schools. Because of my qualifications in science I took a job for the final 6 weeks of the school year finishing up for a resigned teacher that had 2 honors Chemistry and 2 Integrated Science classes. The last day of class, after the test review, I told the science class that I would show them some examples of magic illusions to inspire critical thinking about what they see.

First of all "critical thinking" is a lost art for most high school students today. The biggest shocker to me was how much they loved Criss Angel and to a lesser degree David Blaine and how they hated almost everything from David Copperfield and the mid 90s "World's Greatest Magic" series. They poked fun at the dancing, the illusions and the style of that mid 90s series. I can not repeat what they said about Jeff Hobson and James Dimmar! The only "hit" of those show samples was "The Amazing Jonathan".

On a final note: The Kendrix Show was packed and out of the theater well within the time limit. The secret was that he uses a large utility trailer and the props are rolled off and rolled on with very little time-consuming assembly and disassembly. Almost all small-crew illusionists (Stan Kramien, Mark Evans, Phil Morris, Vince Carmen et.al.) simply carry a big enough vehicle to do this. It saves time and wear and tear on the props. If you can afford a large stage crew and you have over-built props then full crates can be the option. The advantage of crates is that if you roll your truck or trailer, your props will probably survive. Don't laugh! This has happened to Bill Neff,David Copperfield, Andre Kole and others.

Next month I will walk down the memory lane of my 33 years in Orlando with stories of Harry Wise, Lee Bernard, Clarence Godwin, Wayne Scott, Michael Ramm, J.L. Harding, Joe Conrad, Carlton Beck, Mark O'Brien, Bev Bergeron and Dan Stapleton's 1976 Halloween Show in the Lake Eola band shell where we accidentally played "musical white shirts"!

Dennis Phillips

*Dupont's polyester research lead to a whole range of trademarked products, one example is Mylar (1952), an extraordinarily strong polyester (PET) film that grew out of the development of Dacron in the early 1950s. Polyesters can be formed from ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid. Polyethylene terephthalate is the basis of synthetic fibers such as Dacron, and terylene. Polyester film (PETF) is a semi-crystalline film used in many applications such as videotape, high quality packaging, professional photographic printing, X-ray film, floppy disks, Magic Asrah Rain curtains etc. Polyesters are made from chemical substances found mainly in petroleum and are manufactured into fibers, films, and plastics. With the rising price of oil, look for big increases in the costs of these products.
Source from: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpolyester.htm