 |
| Joe M. Turner |
One of the maxims of business: If you need something done, give it to a busy
person.
We have no idea where he finds the time, but Joe M. Turner should always be
our first source on virtually all magic information. He is the proverbial busy
person performing shows, giving lectures, making public appearances, teaching
magic, writing articles of interest to both magicians and the rest of the
population.
Frankly, just listing the activities have made us tired — but a
good kind of tired.
When we wrote about the upcoming production on the life, mystery, and death
of Chung Ling Soo, we knew there was more to the story.
The show will make begin
its run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August and has already received the
kind of good press you rarely receive in advance of an opening.
So what was the secret behind the mystery of Chung Ling Soo? How could a
theater group of non-magicians put on a show about one of our more enigmatic
legends that included the performance of magic effects? There had to be a
magician involved somewhere, we just knew it.
It turns out; Mr. Turner worked as a magic advisor to the show during its
formation in the Atlanta area.
Sure, that makes sense. Mr. Turner has plenty of spare time on his hands.
Why
there must be six or seven wasted hours in his itinerary each fiscal quarter he
could dedicate towards teaching and advising a theater group.
Emory professor, magic performer and lover of all things magic, Dr. Stuart
Zola, recommended Mr. Turner to the play’s director Adam Koplan.
Mr. Turner was
able to arrange his schedule to attend rehearsals, provide instruction, and
coach the performers in the proper presentation of magic tricks.
Let’s go off on a tangent/rant: We’ve loved the notion of television, motion
pictures, and even the legitimate theater. We think it is the kind of
entertainment that will inevitably replace radio and GAF View-Masters.
But when
a magician performed his act on the radio, we were entranced. Even though we
could not see Mandrake or Dunninger, we watched with our mind’s eye.
Magic came
to the more visual media and outside of magic shows presented by real magicians,
it became an embarrassment.
Is there anything worse than an actor performing as a magician? We realize
the obvious conflict with Robert-Houdin’s famous axiom but we think he really
meant, “a magician is a magician who is an actor playing the role of a
magician.”
If Mr. Robert-Houdin lived to see Greg Brady perform the Crystal Silk
Cylinder on the seventh season of the Brady Bunch, or David Cassidy levitating
the already gossamer-light Susan Dey on the Partridge Family, he would likely
have placed his head beneath his Light/Heavy Box and asked for full-power.
Where actors and directors take the time to learn how to perform magic as
magicians rather than as actors performing magic like they think a…
Continue reading Joe M. Turner Helps to Bring Chung Ling Soo from Dead
Recent Comments