Stage magic reached its peak in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when illusionists such as Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston fascinated audiences with feats of escapism, levitation and more. It had a resurgence in the late 20th century when David Copperfield, Penn and Teller and others brought their acts to television audiences.
In the age of reality TV stars and social media influencers, illusionists may seem like entertainment relics. So who’s still learning magic? What keeps the craft alive?
To answer those questions and more, we’re joined by George Alvarez, president of the Portland Society of Magicians, and Eric Pearson, founder of the magic performance group The Secret Society.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Stage magic reached its peak in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when illusionists like Harry Houdini fascinated audiences with feats of escapism and levitation and more. It had a real resurgence in the late 20th century when David Copperfield and Penn & Teller and other folks brought their acts to television audiences. But in the age of reality TV stars and social media influencers, Illusionists can seem like entertainment relics. So who is still learning magic and doing magic? Who is keeping the craft alive? George Alvarez is the president of the Portland Society of Magicians. Eric Pearson, who lives in Albany, is the founder of the Secret Society, a magic performance group. They both join me now. It’s great to have both of you on the show.
George Alvarez: Thank you for having us.
Eric Pearson: Thank you.
Miller: George. How did you first get into magic?
Alvarez: It was about three years ago. Come September, will be my third year practicing magic. My daughter is seven now, who was four then, and she was speech delayed, a little bit on the spectrum, and I wasn’t quite able to explain the universe to her in words yet, and I was looking for a way to connect. I stopped by my local magic shop in the Lloyd’s Center and got a book, and was thinking that magic might be a good way to connect with her and have moments that were beyond language.
I played with a few things, realized I really liked coin magic, learned a few tricks, started playing with my daughter, and we had some real moments of connectivity that were… I didn’t need to explain anything to her. I could just show her something, and there was a sharing of wonder and amazement, and then I was hooked ever since.
Miller: It’s fascinating because the first line you said is that it’s hard sometimes using language to explain how the universe works. To me, the heart of magic is that you’re doing something that goes against the way the person who’s watching it thinks the universe works. The audience goes there to be tricked, to feel that sense of, “Wait, what just happened?” And she responded to that?
Alvarez: Yeah, because it didn’t need narration, it didn’t need an explanation. She just was able to participate in the wonder as a spectator, and then she even went on to do a talent show with one of her friends, and they did a magic show at school, so she’s into it. She’s getting quite the talent under her belt.
Miller: You said it was coins that you gravitated to. Why?
Alvarez: I don’t know. I played with some cards and sponge balls and ropes and a few larger props, and I picked up some coins and just held them in my hand and did a few things and you just know sometimes; when you taste several different things like on a flight, a beer or coffee, and you just know which one is for you, and coins were just an obvious choice for me. So I am a coin-centric specialist magician.
Miller: OK, you do have some coins in front of you on a black felt pad that you brought. Good, because we didn’t have a black felt magic pad here in our stable of props. So thank you for bringing that. Hopefully I’ll watch you do something with those coins in just a second, but as I mentioned, Eric Pearson is here as well. How did you first get into magic?
Eric Pearson: Well, I do, in the world of magic, I go by Sensei Strange.
Miller: Sensei Strange?
Pearson: Yes, because I have a heavy martial arts background. In the ‘90s, I was about to move to Japan to study martial arts and I didn’t speak Japanese. A friend of mine went to a magic shop and came and put a red silk in his hand and it vanished. And that moment of wonder, I was like, “Well, I don’t speak enough language, but if I can go to Japan and give people that gift of wonder, it’s a way to connect with folks,” and I thought it would be a fun way to play beyond language.
Miller: It’s an amazingly similar story. Different things were going on in your lives, but sort of beautifully similar to George.
Pearson: Yeah, I think magic essentially is about connection.
Miller: OK, so you learned a trick or two before you went to Japan?
Pearson: Yes.
Miller: What was the trick?
Pearson: Well, I got into finger ring magic, and then I got into crystal ball manipulation, similar to like you saw David Bowie do in the movie, “Labyrinth,” and between those two, I kind of limped along, a few little rubber band tricks, limped along at some Japanese drinking parties, and slowly grew a repertoire and started performing at shows in izakayas and Japanese drinking establishments.
Miller: Did it work? Your first idea – I don’t speak Japanese. I’m gonna be in Japan and I want to connect with people. I’ll use magic as a way to do that. Did that work?
Pearson: Hit and miss. Like any human endeavor, it has successes and failures.
Miller: How did you, as George was saying, there’s something maybe hard to put your finger on about why you get attracted to certain kinds of magic, but where have you found yourself gravitating to?
Pearson: I run groups of people, I throw events, and so for me it’s almost going from “Here’s a trick” to crafting experiences where I’m trying to draw people in. We have a full evening together, where I’m bringing both magicians and patrons together to have an experience, so it goes beyond a single trick and it’s trying to build connection between performer and audience. Also, since I’m running a cadre of magicians, we’re making connections between each other as well, so we can try to grow this performance art in the valley.
Miller: All right, so George, you have three – apologies in advance to our radio audience, which is to say our entire audience, our audio-only audience – because this is probably a very visual thing you’re about to do, but I will do my best, or Eric, maybe, do you want to be the narrator as we go? We can do this together?
Pearson: I would love to.
Miller: All right, so George. What do you have for us?
Alvarez: OK, it’s a pretty simple trick, one of the first ones I learned as a magician, and basically you have three coins here. So if I take two coins and I put it in my hand and I take one coin and I put it in my pocket…
Miller: All right. So, you’ve got two coins in your left hand. You just put the other one…and they’re bigger. They’re like…
Alvarez: Morgan silver dollars.
Miller: What are they called?
Alvarez: Morgan silver dollar.
Miller: Morgan silver dollars. OK, so large silver coins. One is in your pocket. All right.
Alvarez: But then, since I’m a magician, there’s always gonna be three coins…
Miller: Wait!
Alvarez: …in the hand.
Miller: Oh, OK, all right, so now there were three… somehow in the hand that you put two in, right?
Alvarez: Now again, I’m using the same two coins. So if I take, again, two coins into the left hand, one coin into my back pocket. So what have we learned? There should be two, but because I’m a magician, there’s always gonna be three coins in the hand.
My magician friends, they know me. And they know that on my left hand, I can show you, there’s a small hole right there. And they don’t know how I’m getting the coin out of my pocket, but they know once I do, it’s simply going through the hand. So I’ll use my right hand…
Miller: Wait, just now, if you don’t mind pausing, you put a coin on the top of your hand, seemingly push it through, and then a coin fell from the bottom of your palm.
Pearson: That’s what I saw as well.
Miller: OK. Well, we’re gonna talk about what you saw in just a second because I’m fascinated by what a magician sees when a fellow magician is performing. But back to the tricks.
Alvarez: Put two coins in my right hand, which does not have the secret hole, and I’ll put this one away as fairly as I possibly can…
Miller: OK, now you’re putting a coin in your chest pocket.
Alvarez: But what have we learned? Since I’m a magician, there should be two, but there’s always gonna be…
Miller: There’s three. Somehow, always you grab two and three come out… every time.
Alvarez: Now, an older magician came up to me. I turned 50 in April, so now I’m technically an older magician. He says, “Let me show you how the older magicians do it.” And he was a little bit more flashy, he would wave his arms around, and be like, “Look, one in the hand, two in the hand,” and then take the third coin and put it so far back in your pocket that it can’t possibly get out.
But what have we learned? Since I’m a magician, there should be two, but there’s gonna be three, but if you’re an old magician, there’s nothing.
Pearson: And all the coins have vanished.
Miller: No more coins came out even though I watched you, and I’m three feet away from you.You put two coins in your hand the last time and none came out. Not three, not two, not one, but zero.
Eric, I’m not gonna ask you to tell the secrets of what George did, but I’m curious what you pay attention to when you see a magician doing tricks. Let’s say that you know how he did this. What’s going on? What are you watching? What are you appreciating in a fellow magician’s act?
Pearson: The spell that they weave, I like the words that are used. I like to watch the person that they’re performing for, a lot of times, so I was watching you, your eyes, your reactions. I’ve seen enough coin magic to fulfill me for three or four lifetimes, but I like to see a lot of effects through your eyes, somebody that perhaps is not inundated with magic every day.
Miller: When you see someone do a trick that you haven’t seen before, what’s your experience? When you don’t know how something is being done, what’s your experience of that magic?
Pearson: For me, that’s actually most magic. I don’t study coin magic. I don’t study all these things, because I enjoy that feeling of wonder and mystery that comes with it. I’m not an engineer that needs to spoil this all for myself. I love watching it. I love that feeling of wonder. So, yeah, I try to not learn too much.
Miller: Because you like that feeling?
Pearson: Indeed.
Miller: And that’s part of what drew you to this in the first place?
Pearson: Oh, yes, of course, yeah. That’s what’s really unique about magic, because most arts can show you something beautiful. They can bring you through an adventure and a ride. However, magic is unique because it directly confronts you with the impossible, and there’s a certain emotional response when you see something that is impossible. It’s awe. It’s unique, and that’s the one thing that magicians are. We’re kind of…we’re preachers of possibility and purveyors of fine impossibilities.
Miller: Do you get the sense, George, that we’re more drawn to that now, when sometimes it feels like there’s less wonder in the world?
Alvarez: And there’s also a lot of deception in the world. Like, there’s basically two major forms of what we would consider “good” deception. You see it in sports, and you see it in magic, where the object of one team is to obfuscate what they’re doing so the other team can’t figure it out. That’s part of the strategy, being deceitful to the other team and sneaky.
Magic is the same way, but it’s to the ends of entertainment and wonder and awe and having a moment, whereas most other deception is not. And a lot of it’s targeted at us on the internet, or we’re getting it from our politicians or from other people. So it’s nice. It’s a good flavor of something that normally we find quite distasteful.
Miller: Eric, the tagline of your group, The Secret Society, is “Magicians, Mentalists, Manipulation, Mischief.” What’s manipulation?
Pearson: Manipulation, as far as magic tends to go, it’s like the magician that has cards, that is pulling cards out of the air. This is manipulation magic. What I would do with the crystal balls, moving them around so it looks like they’re levitating, this is manipulation.
But also, in any particular magic event, we are manipulating your perceptions, and that is really, I mean, is magic real? I believe it is. And what are we doing? We’re manipulating what you see and what you feel, sometimes, in order to create this sense of awe.
Miller: George, as Eric said, one of the things he was paying attention to, in addition to where my eyes were, was your “patter,” in a sense. Your performance, separate from whatever magic you’re doing with your fingers, that made the coins go everywhere but where I thought they weren’t. How important is that performative aspect to magic, in addition to the pure physical craft of crafty fingers?
Alvarez: It’s almost an 80/20 split between the performative nature and the actual physical techniques. Showmanship is a big, big part of any kind of performative art, whether you’re a juggler, a comedian, anyone who’s on stage, especially talking and interacting and making relationships with the audience. To be a good performer is so important.
Yes, you have to have good technique. But how you couch that technique and the patter and the interactions and getting the participant involved, there’s so much craft of working with your audience, that without that magic alone is almost maybe good for a TikTok short, but that’s about as far as it can go. Like if you want to interact with other human beings, you need to be an entertainer.
Miller: Eric, how is the business of magic these days for performers?
Pearson: Oh, I’d say that’s probably like any business. It depends on your situation. I have found, in the Willamette Valley – Lebanon, Eugene, Albany – that I inhabit, all the bars and restaurants and breweries that I’ve been working at have basically all complained that businesses just kind of crashed since post-COVID. We have all these venues and we’ve been trying to advertise and get people going out again, and a lot of times we’re very small shows of between 5 and 10…
Miller: And that, you’re saying that’s not necessarily just because of magic, it’s because people aren’t going out, and if they’re not going out, they’re not gonna go out for anything, and then magic could suffer as a result.
Pearson: That’s my experience in the smaller towns.
Miller: George, I have heard, though, just today, in the building, I heard from two different Gen Z folks who said that they recently have either hired or been to birthday parties for people in their 20s where magicians were hired. And we’re not talking about kids’ birthday parties, we’re talking about young adults. Have you seen a resurgence among younger people in magic?
Alvarez: Yes, absolutely. One of my responsibilities and duties as the president of the Portland Society of Magicians is to be an ambassador to magic, to grow it, to recruit more magicians, because if you don’t make young magicians, you’re gonna run out of old magicians and then you’re just gonna run out of magicians.
Our website, which is portlandsocietyofmagicians.com, we have forms there where people can hire a magician or inquire about joining the club. And just in the last two years, I’ve seen it go from seven or eight requests a month to fifteen to twenty requests a month.
So as we make it more available as an entertainment venue for your events or for your bar or little pop-up shows, we’re starting to see more people be like, “Oh yeah, I would like to have a magician at my wedding,” or at the bachelorette party or at a birthday party. So I do think it does seem to be on the rise as an option of entertainment for people doing private events, and I see this as direct evidence in the increased number of bookings that we get just through our website alone.
Miller: George Alvarez and Eric Pearson, thank you so much. George Alvarez is the president of the Portland Society of Magicians. Eric Pearson, founder of the Secret Society, it’s a magic performance group.
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