The art of magic gets its turn in the theatre
Kate Taylor for the Globe and Mail..
Sitting at a table covered with a red felt cloth in his Toronto studio, magic producer David Ben demonstrates how a magician shuffles cards.
To the spectator sitting across from him, it looks innocuous enough, but lean up beside him and he’ll show you that he can see the face of every card as he fans through the pack with his fingers. Oh, there’s a queen. He stops and cuts the deck, placing the queen on the bottom.
On he goes, dexterously repeating the process again and again, demonstrating how he can locate high value cards, mark their position in the pack and then produce them on demand in the midst of a seemingly innocent shuffle and cut.
Magicians aren’t supposed to share their secrets with the public, and Ben figures that this taboo is a problem…