The craft
Close-up, cards and minds
A first-timer's primer on the branches of magic a parlour show draws from: sleight of hand, card magic, the cups and balls, mentalism and escapes.
Find a show night ↗Why a primer helps
A magic show is more fun when you know what kind of trick you are watching, even if you never learn how it is done. The magician on stage at Alamo Plaza changes from night to night, so no one can tell you the running order. What you can know is the toolkit. Nearly everything in a parlour-scale show belongs to a handful of branches that magicians and historians recognise, and each has its own history and its own way of fooling you.
Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand is the foundation: the set of techniques a magician uses to handle objects in secret. Its older names are prestidigitation, from the idea of quick fingers, and the French léger de main, lightness of hand. Coins and playing cards are the commonest props, but dice, sponge balls, pens or sugar cubes work too. Close-up magic, sometimes called table magic, is the branch where these skills are shown within a few steps of the audience, usually across a table.
Card magic
Card manipulation, usually just called card magic, is built entirely on sleights with a deck. Cards caught on with magicians in the 15th century: they were cheap, versatile and easy to come by, and card cheats had already worked out ways to handle them. The lifts, passes, false shuffles and forces in a modern routine let a performer find, move or apparently change a chosen card without the audience seeing how. Houdini, before his escapes made him famous, billed himself as the King of Cards.
The cups and balls
If a magician sets out cups and small balls, you are watching one of the oldest routines in the art. Roman conjurers performed it some two thousand years ago, and Seneca mentions it in a letter. In the common version, three balls seem to pass through the solid bottoms of three cups, jump from cup to cup and vanish, and the routine often ends with something far larger under a cup, such as a piece of fruit. Houdini is said to have held that no one could be called an accomplished magician without mastering it.
Mentalism
Mentalism is magic of the mind. The performer appears to read thoughts, predict what someone will choose or influence a decision. The effects are produced by conjuring methods, by natural skills such as reading body language, and by an understanding of psychology, not by psychic power. Many modern mentalists trace their material to the tests of supernatural power staged by 19th-century mediums. When a mentalist names the card you only thought of, enjoy it as a puzzle you are not meant to solve.
Escapes
Escapology is the art of getting out of restraints and traps: handcuffs, straitjackets, cages, coffins and sealed boxes. For a long time the skill was used quietly, to make other illusions possible. Harry Houdini turned the escape itself into the act, and his feats, from handcuffs and padlocks to mail bags and prison cells, still define what escape artists attempt. On a small stage an escape is usually a compact routine with locks or rope rather than a tank of water.
How to watch
Magicians guard their methods closely, and a good show is designed so that you are looking in the wrong place at the right moment; misdirection is as much a part of the craft as fast fingers. Sit back and let it work. Flash photography is not allowed during the show at Alamo Plaza, and staying off your phone means you see more of it anyway. If you are called up as a volunteer, play along: being fooled at close range is the best seat in the house.
Frequently asked questions
What is close-up magic?
Magic performed a few steps from the audience, often at a table, using sleight of hand with small everyday objects such as cards and coins.
Is mentalism real mind reading?
No. Mentalists create the impression of reading minds through conjuring methods, observation and psychology, not psychic power.
Sources