A Good Talk About Tricks

Joshua Jay Bewilders Bath

 On Friday 11^th April, Joshua Jay presented a lecture for the Bath Circle of Magicians. Many members were already familiar with Josh’s magic through his Talk About Tricks column in Magic magazine, so expectations were high.

 Josh opened the lecture by performing a selection of card effects from his close-up set.  These were of the Triumph and Oil & Water variety, each highly polished and well-routined to build to a surprising finale. Josh performed this set ‘in the round’; surrounded on all sides by a standing audience.

 Whereas lesser performers might have been intimidated by this prospect, Josh’s apparent ease and enthusiasm in performing this kind of material transformed our resilient band of cynics into something just short of the L&L invited audience. This performance served as both a good introduction and an example to aspiring close-up workers.

 The lecture that followed tipped an array of strong and versatile close-up material: all well-within the reach of the intermediate performer. My favourite item was Josh’s handling of Troy Hooser’s Chinese coin effect. Each phase was direct, magical and presentationally more impressive than the last. Whilst all of the effects were essentially close-up, the size of the audience didn’t seem to reduce any of their impact.

 I was impressed by Josh’s ability to stick to a well-structured script whilst maintaining an air of informality. Explanations were broken up by the occasional ad-lib and the odd difficult question was smoothly answered and, more importantly, easy to ask in the first place.

 The focus of the lecture was pure methodology. In addition to performing and explaining each of his effects, Josh outlined the creative process behind their development. Throughout the lecture, it was clear that Josh had put a lot of time and thought into both developing and explaining his material. At such a sickeningly young age, Joshua Jay’s reputation as a world-class teacher of world-class magic is certainly well-deserved if his performance for our little gathering is anything to go by…

 Oli Foster April 2008

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Simon has kindly agreed to write a report of the Mark Oberon lecture which I will post on here ASAP.

Presednt: Dominic Mansi

Secratery: Oli Foster

Tresure: Paul Macleavy

01275 463355 paulmacleavy@hotmail.com

 Committee member: Simon Lane

 Committee member: Dave Alexander aka Hickory

01225 340734 davehickory@hotmail.com