Performing Magic on the Western Stage: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)

"Performing Magic on the Western Stage examines magic as a performing art and as a meaningful social practice, linking magic to cultural arenas such as religion, finance, gender, and nationality and profiling magicians from Robert-Houdin to Pen& Teller"--publisher's website Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-12 Life Magic and Staged Magic: A Hidden Intertwining....Pages 13-31 The Family Romance of Modern Magic: Contesting Robert-Houdin’s Cultural Legacy in Contemporary France....Pages 33-60 Magicians and the Magic of Hollywood Cinema during the 1920s....Pages 61-84 The Body Immaterial: Magicians’ Assistants and the Performance of Labor....Pages 85-106 Conjuring Capital: Magic and Finance from Eighteenth-Century London to the New Las Vegas....Pages 107-130 The Sacred and the Sleight of Hand in American Indian Gaming....Pages 131-150 Outdoing Ching Ling Foo....Pages 151-176 Intersecting Illusions: Performing Magic, Disability, and Gender....Pages 177-196 Through a Glass Darkly: Magic and Religion in Western Thought and Practice....Pages 197-216 Illusions about Illusions....Pages 217-230 Back Matter....Pages 231-240 Performing Magic on the Western Stage examines magic as a performing art and meaningful social practice. The essays in this interdisciplinary collection analyze the work of numerous western theatrical conjurers and several non-western magical performances in their historical context. Throughout, the contributors link magic to cultural arenas such as religion, finance, gender, and nationality. All of the contributors are connected to the internationally acclaimed Theory and Art of Magic program at Muhlenberg College, through which artists and scholars study the history, theory, and practice of the magical arts