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Magic Maker (Article)
____________________________________________________________________________________
Magic Maker: the life of a local magician
Tudor loves to “imbue” audience members by including them in his tricks.
By NATALIE HARRIS, from the Lexington County Chronicle
Magician John Tudor took the $1 bill and held it up for at least thirty children to see. He carefully folded it four times and then unfolded it, revealing a $100 bill.
“A hundred dollars!” the children gasped.
“I told you no grabbing,” Tudor said as he slapped small, grasping hands away from the bill. Some of the children had to be herded away by their supervisors before they would leave Tudor to observe the other vendors at the Columbia Marketplace on Friday, June 8, at the Columbia Museum of Art.
“It’s a trick,” Tudor told a group observing the same trick later. “If I could really make one hundred dollar bills, would I be standing on the sidewalk in this funny costume?”
Yet, at the same time, it was not just a trick. Tudor brings more to it than that. The West Columbia native says the difference between a trick and magic is that a trick is the performance; magic is the response the trick can elicit in people’s minds and emotions.
“A trick is kind of what happens and what you can figure out,” Tudor explained. “Magic is what happens in people’s minds, the ‘Ah!’” he gasped. “If it’s done well, an extremely simple trick can be extremely magical.”
Tudor got his start in the career of magic at the ripe old age of 6. Like many other children, Tudor’s first experience was with a magic kit that he received as a Christmas present. Like many other children’s kits, Tudor’s was practically destroyed in a year. He kept practicing because it was a creative outlet.
“I’m like the oddball in a family of star athletes,” Tudor said. “I used it to express myself and overcome shyness.”
Tudor was also intriqued by magic because, at the time he was first attracted to it, magician Doug Henning was transforming the art from dated tricks to a colorful medium.
“It was the most exciting thing that happened in twenty years in magic,” Tudor said. “I got to see and just stuck with it.”
After graduating from Lander University’s drama department, Tudor went back to practicing street magic and began pursuing a career in it. He leans on his acting background a lot to make his tricks “magic.’
“The formula is written by Robert-Houdin about 1850: ‘A conjuror is an actor playing the part of a magician,’” Tudor said. “You’re pretending you have magic powers. As an actor, you’re trying to stay in the moment, trying to experience the same emotions the audience is experiencing.”
“I always say there are two shows,” Tudor said. “One for the audience and one the magician is watching.”
“I would do school performances, and I used to think, ‘This is what it’s like to be a rock star,’” Tudor recalled. “The energy is exhilarating.”
It is those moments that really make Tudor’s career worthwhile to him. His job is particularly draining because of the traveling, long hours, and constant demands of energy. Still, Tudor enjoys fulfilling childhood dreams, traveling, working on books, holding camps, and starting the South Carolina Association of Magicians, or SCAM as Tudor likes to refer to it.
When he is not contributing to SCAM’s annual convention in January, offering shows, or delivering his summer lecture series, Tudor likes to interact with the SCAM clubs at his studio in West Columbia. One is for youth, and another is for all ages. His face lit up as he described the “music conservatory” atmosphere that prompts the participants to hold each other accountable for developing tricks and for critiquing each other’s tricks.
“That’s become one of the most rewarding things right now,” Tudor said. “That’s why I do it, for these moments.”
In those moments, Tudor says he touches real magic.
“I definitely believe in magic,” Tudor said. “That definition is not something I want to pin down too much. It’s like an emotional healing of what’s wounded.”
“It’s like an explosive, joyous energy,” he tried again. “But you have to believe. If you don’t believe it, they won’t believe it.”
“Modern magic is tapping into something deeper to begin with rather than just spectacle,” he explained. “In the modern era, it has come to deal with deeper issues of the human spirit.”
“That’s why I like to imbue others,” Tudor said, referring to times he pulls bystanders into his acts. “The response is hilarious sometimes. That’s what people need, to be uplifted and imbued. Then it all slams shut and it’s just a trick.”
“When something is really magical, it’s an uplifting experience,” Tudor said. “It speaks to something in the human psyche. I think it’s a very hopeful thing. It gives us a feeling of hope that we can transcend normal obstacles.”
To accomplish this, Tudor likes to use stories accompanied by tricks. He has a story about an old magician and the moon, which he illustrates by manipulating metal rings into shapes. As part of a stage routine, Tudor levitates a fairy-tale heroine, who is literally swept off her feet by love.
Tudor uses this same idea of empowerment and human transcendance as part of a routine for school children called, “The Magic Is In You.” Tudor uses tricks and personal experiences to encourage kids to make right choices and avoid illegal drug use and similar issues.
Tudor knows the impact of poor decisions. It almost killed him. In 1989, muggers shot Tudor and left him for dead. Tudor had to drag himself up a flight of concrete steps and scream for help. It came just as he passed out.
The doctor told Tudor that he would have bled to death had he not been carrying in his pocket over a main artery a penny and a nickel, which Tudor had used just a few hours earlier as a magic prop. The six cents kept the artery from being punctured.
Tudor attributes his physical survival to divine intervention.
“I had some magician’s manipulative power over the coins, but look what Greater Power had to be at work here!” Tudor wrote about the experience later.
“Slowly, I realized I had to give in, to believe, to accept my own blessings. Miracles happened in ancient times, why not today? My life had been miraculously spared. Now what would I do with it?”
Tudor is offering a camp for beginning magicians, ages 6 and up. The camp is from July 9-13 at the Edventure Children’s Museum in downtown Columbia. The kids will learn illusions. The camps costs $110 for Edventure members and $130 for non-members. For more information, call (803) 400-1151 or visit www.edventure.org/ camps.asp.
For more information about John Tudor and his services, e-mail him at john@tudormagic.com.
© 2009 John Tudor