Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Here Is Real Magic
WORK NOTES:
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BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.natestaniforth.com/
CITY:
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NATIONALITY:
Stephen Barr, sbarr@writershouse.com
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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PERSONAL
Married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, magician, lecturer. Breaking Magic, Discovery Channel, host. TED talk lecturer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Nate Staniford is a magician, lecturer, and writer. He is the host of Discovery Channel’s Breaking Magic. Staniford has toured the US for over a decade, performing at colleges. He has lectured about magic at Oxford Union and has given a TEDx Talk on the subject.
Staniford grew up in Ames, Iowa. After seeing David Copperfield perform, Staniford was intent on becoming a magician. He studied the magic of such magicians as Blackstone, Houdini, David Berglas, Paul Harris, and David Blaine and would practice tricks at home for hours. Staniford would perform his tricks for his classmates on the playground and loved the feeling of inspiring awe.
In adulthood, Staniford pursued a career as a magician, hitting the road and performing around the country. However, after five exhausting years, he was burned out and disheartened. Seeking inspiration, he traveled to India to explore the magic there. The trip inspired his memoir and first book, Here Is Real Magic: A Magician’s Search for Wonder in the Modern World.
Described by a contributor to Kirkus Reviews as an “amiable and engaging memoir,” the book documents Staniford’s relationship with magic, starting in childhood. He began learning tricks at age nine, and by age ten had mastered some small scale magic. He recalls being the new kid at school and inspiring awe and fascination on the playground by performing a disappearing coin trick. His new classmates were mesmerized and terrified, leading to a school teacher coming outside to breakup the commotion. When Staniford performed the trick for teacher, he/she too was awed, and Staniford highlights this memory as the moment at which he recognized the transformative power that magic can have.
Yet, as he pursued a life in magic, he found the world he hoped he would inspire to be unwilling to see magic. Additionally, the culture of magic had morphed into a very showy, Las Vegas-style of performance that drained the excitement out of the craft for Staniford. He found himself losing passion for magic and began to look elsewhere for inspiration. While on tour in Milwaukee, he came across a book about the magicians of India and the three-thousand year old traditions of magic in India. He read about cobras, fire-breathing, levitation, and fantastical tricks with blood, guts, and resurrections. Finding the spark that had been missing from his life for so long, he decided to go for a trip.
Staniford writes about being chased by an enraged cobra and meeting a one-armed monkey in India. More memorable, though, are the people he meets there. Most notably was a meeting with a magician and teacher in Rishikesh, India. The man told Staniford that his skill was solid, but he was lacking a sense of depth in his practice. He encouraged Staniford to perform magic for something deep within himself, rather than for a quick dollar on stage. Staniford took the advice to heart, and in returning to the US and a life as a magician, he dedicated himself to reject the trend of flashy, shallow magic.
While on his trip, Staniford took a flight over to England to visit world-famous illusionist David Berglas. When Staniford arrived, Berglas welcomed him and asked him to name his wife’s favorite flower. When Staniford stated, “Peonies,” Berglas pointed to the garden, where peonies suddenly appeared. Staniford admits that to this day he does not know how the illusionist pulled off the trick. In a way, he notes, he enjoys the fact that even he can still be awed and perplexed by magic.
A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote that Staniford “wonderfully captures the joys and struggles of becoming a working magician and what happened to him when his fascination with his craft faded,” while Poornima Apte in Booklist described the book as “a passionate and eloquent call to seek to renew one’s purpose in life.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 1, 2017, Poornima Apte, review of Here Is Real Magic: A Magician’s Search for Wonder in the Modern World, p. 14.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017, review of Here Is Real Magic.
Publishers Weekly, October 30, 2017, review of Here Is Real Magic, p. 70.
ONLINE
Chicago Now, http://www.chicagonow.com/ (February 13, 2018), Teme Ring, author interview.
Little Village, http://littlevillagemag.com/ (January 16, 2018), Genevieve Trainor, review of Here Is Real Magic.
Renton Reporter Online, http://www.rentonreporter.com/ (January 25, 2018), Terri Schlichenmeyer, review of Here Is Real Magic.
Nate Staniforth
“Just caught a Nate Staniforth show,” one reporter tweeted after opening night of the last tour, “and now I have no idea what to believe about anything ever again.” No rabbits. No top hats. No smoke machines. Nate’s shows feel more like jumping out of an airplane than a night at a comedy club. He abandons the ubiquitous style-without-substance bravado so often associated with magic and appeals instead to the imagination and intellect of his audience. The journey is wild, visceral and immediate, and like all great art, encourages us to open our minds and hearts, and see the world in new ways.
“When you’re young, it’s easy to be amazed,” says Nate Staniforth. “As you get older, that experience of astonishment gets harder and harder to find. Good magic isn’t about deception. It’s about trying to see things the way you saw them before they became ordinary."
For over a decade, Nate has toured the US college circuit as one of the busiest working magicians in the country. He’s given a TEDx Talk, lectured at the world-famous Oxford Union, and in 2018 the Harry Potter-famed Bloomsbury Publishing will release Nate’s memoir in bookstores worldwide. Here is Real Magic follows Nate's evolution from obsessed wunderkind to disillusioned wanderer, and tells the story of his rediscovery of astonishment—and the importance of wonder in everyday life—during a trip to the India, where he met a 3,000-year-old clan of street magicians.
Nate is a magician, writer, traveler, and host of the Discovery Channel’s international hit TV series Breaking Magic, but don’t think of this as a magic show. Nate abandons the ubiquitous style-without-substance bravado so often associated with magic and appeals instead to the imagination and intellect of his audience. With his forthcoming book Here is Real Magic, from the Harry-Potter famed Bloomsbury Publishing, Nate is your guide to finding more wonder in your life.
“Just caught a Nate Staniforth show,” one reporter tweeted after opening night, “and now I have no idea what to believe about anything ever again.” No rabbits. No top hats. No smoke machines. Nate’s shows feel more like jumping out of an airplane than a night at a comedy club. The journey is wild, visceral and immediate, and like all great art, encourages us to open our minds and hearts, and see the world in new ways.
“When you’re young, it’s easy to be amazed,” says Nate Staniforth. “As you get older, that experience of astonishment gets harder and harder to find. Good magic isn’t about deception. It’s about trying to see things the way you saw them before they became ordinary.
For over a decade, Nate has toured the US college circuit as one of the busiest working magicians in the country. He’s given a TED Talk, lectured at the world-famous Oxford Union, and in 2018 the Harry Potter-famed Bloomsbury Publishing released Nate’s memoir. Here is Real Magic follows Nate's evolution from obsessed wunderkind to disillusioned wanderer, and tells the story of his rediscovery of astonishment—and the importance of wonder in everyday life—during his trip to the slums of India, where he infiltrated a 3,000-year-old clan of street magicians.
Nate Staniforth
Contact: schwartz@7smgmt.com
Nate is a magician, writer, traveler, and host of the Discovery Channel’s international hit TV series Breaking Magic, but don’t think of this as a magic show. Nate abandons the ubiquitous style-without-substance bravado so often associated with magic and appeals instead to the imagination and intellect of his audience.
“Just caught a Nate Staniforth show,” one reporter tweeted after opening night, “and now I have no idea what to believe about anything ever again.” No rabbits. No top hats. No smoke machines. Nate’s shows feel more like jumping out of an airplane than a night at a comedy club. The journey is wild, visceral and immediate, and like all great art, encourages us to open our minds and hearts, and see the world in new ways.
“When you’re young, it’s easy to be amazed,” says Nate Staniforth. “As you get older, that experience of astonishment gets harder and harder to find. Good magic isn’t about deception. It’s about trying to see things the way you saw them before they became ordinary.
For over a decade, Nate has toured the US college circuit as one of the busiest working magicians in the country. He’s given a TED Talk, lectured at the world-famous Oxford Union, and in 2018 the Harry Potter-famed Bloomsbury Publishing will release Nate’s memoir in bookstores worldwide. Here is Real Magic follows Nate's evolution from obsessed wunderkind to disillusioned wanderer, and tells the story of his rediscovery of astonishment—and the importance of wonder in everyday life—during his trip to the slums of India, where he infiltrated a 3,000-year-old clan of street magicians.
Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's
Search for Wonder in the Modern
World
Poornima Apte
Booklist.
114.7 (Dec. 1, 2017): p14. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's Search for Wonder in the Modern World. By Nate Staniforth.
Jan. 2018. 256p. Bloomsbury, $28 (9781632864246). 793.8.
Middle-aged ennui strikes most of us, but it's a serious problem if it affects a magician. How do you perform illusions and mind-boggling tricks if your sense of wonder and awe is gone, if everything feels, well, ho-hum? Worse, says Staniforth in his magical memoir, modern American society has an antipathy toward magic. "The Western magician operates in a culture where magic has no place in the daily movements of society, so it exists in the face of civilization rather than as a natural expression of it." So the successful magician threw it all away, for a while, to find himself in India. The world's largest democracy once might have been known as the mystical land of snake charmers, but the country has been trying to shake this image, and sure enough, Staniforth encounters people who quickly disabuse him of his outsider notions. But Staniforth also meets elusive Indian street magicians and eventually comes to terms with what a sense of wonder truly means. A passionate and eloquent call to seek to renew one's purpose in life.-- Poornima Apte
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Apte, Poornima. "Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's Search for Wonder in the Modern World."
Booklist, 1 Dec. 2017, p. 14. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc
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/A519036134/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=725ee8eb. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018. Gale Document Number: GALE|A519036134
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Staniforth, Nate: HERE IS REAL MAGIC
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Staniforth, Nate HERE IS REAL MAGIC Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 1, 16 ISBN: 978-1-63286-424-6
A magician conjures up memories, dreams, and reflections on his craft.
In this amiable and engaging memoir, professional magician Staniforth, a former host of the Discovery Channel's Breaking Magic, reveals no secrets except about himself. The first part of the narrative is a portrait of a young man teaching himself to do magic and performing it, while the second is about a slightly older man in search of the true wonders of magic he had lost. He was a 9-year-old boy on an Ames, Iowa, playground when he made a coin vanish and reveled in the surprised looks on his playmates' faces. As he writes, "I learned that you can say something with a magic trick that is hard to say any other way." After he saw David Copperfield perform his magic, Staniforth realized he "wanted to do magic above all else." He read everything he could find about magic and discovered Blackstone, Houdini, David Berglas, Paul Harris, and David Blaine. He practiced for hours. When he first began performing, he wanted to "give the audience an experience that rose above mere deception." However, after five exhausting years on the road doing show after show, Staniforth became cynical about his craft; the real magic had disappeared. So he traveled to the other side of the world to India, the land of mystery, looking for magic. Traveling around with his filmmaker friend, he observed snake charmers, con men, holy men, mystics, gurus, and street performers, and he was chased down the street by a one-armed monkey. The author also learned about tantric yoga and the powerful Aarti ceremony by the Ganges River, which serves "as a way of thanking the holy river." Some repetition and meandering somewhat mars this section, but the author's descriptions of how he rediscovered real magic reinvigorates his story.
Magic can be unnecessarily flashy, but this book isn't flashy at all; it's an assured and thoughtful work about finding true "awe and wonder."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Staniforth, Nate: HERE IS REAL MAGIC." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509243940/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=c6704235. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A509243940
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Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's
Search for Wonder in the Modern
World
Publishers Weekly.
264.44 (Oct. 30, 2017): p70. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's Search for Wonder in the Modern World Nate Staniforth. Bloomsbury, $28 (256p) ISBN 978-1-63286-424-6
Magician Staniforth, best known for his Discovery show Breaking Magic, wonderfully captures the joys and struggles of becoming a working magician and what happened to him when his fascination with his craft faded. From an early age, ever since he made a coin disappear on the playground, Staniforth knew he wanted to be a magician, not only because of the "open-mouthed wonder" his playground trick evoked from his audience but also because the moment was even "far more amazing for" him than it was for them. But as he strove to be like his heroes Houdini and David Copperfield, Staniforth burned out on the traveling magic circuit and lost touch with the reason he became a magician in the first place. Asking himself, "Where do you find wonder after you have lost it?" he traveled to India to watch magic shows and feel like he did when "he didn't know the secrets." In New Delhi, he meets and old street magician who says: "The real magic is your hard work. If you do hard work, that will show you magic. " During the course of his trip, Staniforth rekindled his passion. He ends his books with suggestions on how to "bring wonder back into your ordinary life." The result is a personal story that conjures up the wonder and magic of life without any trickery or deceit. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's Search for Wonder in the Modern World." Publishers Weekly,
30 Oct. 2017, p. 70. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A514357791/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=17de07a3. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514357791
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Nate Staniforth brings real magic to Evanston this Friday, February 16
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By Teme Ring, February 13, 2018 at 4:03 pm
Nate Staniforth became a magician when he was nine years old. At ten, he had an epiphany. He was the new kid at school and one day on the playground he gathered a group of classmates and made a coin disappear. The coin’s vanishing was so flawless, so convincing, so magical that the kids screamed in joy and terror. Thinking they had witnessed the supernatural, they fled. The school’s scariest teacher stormed over, demanding an explanation. Nate again made the coin disappear and the dragon’s face transformed from fury to wonder.
Nate, who hosted Discovery Channel's Breaking Magic, will make you believe. His new book Here is Real Magic details his life as a magician and purveyor of wonder. He is searingly honest about how initially the grueling demands of touring wore him out. One night, he was so drained that he wrote an agonized text to his wife Katharine detailing his burn-out … and accidentally sent it to the booker at his next gig.
He had to find a way back to his original inspiration, his desire to share awe and joy. But how could he bring that real magic to his audience when he’d lost it himself? Where in the world is real magic? The answer is “everywhere” but also “nowhere” if you’ve forgotten how to look.
In adulthood we become exhausted. We’re bombarded with obligations and distractions and insanities large and small. We suffer from a deficit of magic. All of us or at least most of us. Even magicians.
But Nate is not a person who lets his life leak away. He was intrigued by a book he’d read during a miserable night in a hotel room in Milwaukee. The book was about India’s magicians. Their three-thousand year-old traditions include cobras, breathing fire, levitation, blood and guts and miraculous resurrections and nothing that resembled Las Vegas.
Nate left for India. He would be chased down a riverbank by an enraged cobra and cornered by a one-armed monkey. But he also witnessed otherworldly feats, reverence for the spiritual side of magic and ways to incorporate those transcendent rays of wonder into his own act.
Later, he traveled to England to visit famed illusionist David Berglas. Berglas welcomed Nate into his home and asked him to state Katharine’s favorite flower. When Nate answered “Peonies,” peonies appeared, even blossoming layer upon layer in the garden. But that was not the end of the story.
real-magic-coverYou can get the behind-the-scenes scoop on Nate’s international adventures by reading his book Here is Real Magic. It is both wonderful and full of wonder. Come to SPACE in Evanston this Friday, February 16 to experience his magic in person.
Nate kindly spoke with me by phone about how he lights up the stage with real magic, the most amazing illusion he’s ever witnessed, and how to keep the wonder going on a daily basis.
Why a magician?
Teme: How did you decide to become a magician?
Nate: I remember being a little kid doing magic and thinking that the reactions I got from adults were incredible. I think every little kid looks at the adults around them and wonders how they became so stern. What happened to them?
These adults would watch a piece of magic and for a moment they became little kids again. It made that loss of whatever it is that we lose when we get older really visible and obvious.
I saw it everywhere. Teachers, parents, parents of friends and then in the audience when I started doing shows. I saw a transformation in the way people acted most of the time and the way they reacted once they saw a piece of magic. It was just impossible to ignore.
I felt like I had discovered this mystery. What is that loss? What do we lose with age and how do you get it back?
Teme: I look in the mirror and think, "What happened?" It’s like in adulthood there’s a descending cloud of grimness. But I love how you say in your book that you don’t just grow up once.
Nate: Yes. I don’t think you just grow up once. You can grow up again and again and again. That was an important thought for me. You don't get to choose when you grow up the first time, but you can choose to do it again on your own terms and to keep doing it.
It's easy to shrink your world down to the size of your certainties and your struggles. My favorite moments are those that pull me outside of that and remind me, "Look around you. Wake up, and really see."
Teme: What is an example?
Nate: I love looking at the night sky. I love watching sunrises and sunsets. It's more about how you look than where you look. You can find that sense of astonishment anywhere. It's a matter of remembering to look for it. But don’t limit those grand moments to sunrises or sunsets or the night sky. Those are the obvious places.
I'm excited about the idea of finding it everywhere and anywhere. Adults are very good at making things ordinary. I love it when you can see something as it is, not just as you assume it is. It's easier to say than do, but whenever I succeed the result is great.
Teme: How do you succeed? I think it's hard for adults.
Nate: In my own life I’ve noticed the seductive nature of patterns. It's easy to fall into the pattern of doing the same thing all the time. The way you travel to work, the things you eat, the things you do. We're all very good at making the world small and manageable. But there's something to be said for making a practice of pushing those boundaries on a regular basis.
My book was an exercise in that. I know all about getting up in front of an audience and doing a show. Even though a performance can raise its own set of challenges, that is a known problem for me and I know how to solve it.
The idea of writing a book was a fascinating and terrifying jump into a world that was completely unknown to me. All of a sudden I was in far over my head and that's disorienting and also, certainly, amazing.
What is real magic?
Teme: Your book’s title is Here is Real Magic. What does that mean?
Nate: The experience of magic is the process of waking up and seeing things the way you saw them before they became ordinary.
A great magician isn't telling you anything new. A great magician is reminding you of something you've known forever, but forgot in the daily business of living.
India's impact.
Teme: How did your show change after your travels in India?
Nate: I became far less worried about being an entertainer. When I came back from India I saw with absolute clarity that my job as a magician was to share the experience of wonder. A great magician creates wonder. That's the goal and the beginning and the end. Anything else is just wrapping paper.
Teme: And wonder is not just surprise. I like the way you distinguish the two in your book.
Nate: Yes. Surprise is easy. You can surprise someone at a haunted house. But wonder is this strange combination of fear and joy. The fear is easy to create, the joy is much harder.
Magic in bloom.
Teme: What is the most amazing magic trick that you've ever seen?
Nate: The most amazing magic I've ever seen is the peony illusion that David Berglas did when I went to visit him. I don't even know if it was an illusion. Maybe it was real. I still don't know how to think about that. It is just staggeringly impossible.
I've spoken with a number of other magicians about it. No one knows how to explain it, but they all seem to think it was some kind of an illusion. Normally as a magician, when you see a piece of magic you can understand how you would go about creating the illusion. This is the only piece of magic I have ever seen where I don't even know where to begin.
A part of me really wants to know because I'm a magician and I would love to give the experience to someone else. Part of me is very glad that I have one moment in magic that is just unassailably perfect.
The Audience.
Teme: In your book you talk about memorable audience reactions. Do you have a favorite of all time?
Nate: I would be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that it's really fun making people jump and scream and yell and clap. But my favorite responses are when the audience doesn't do any of that, when they just sit there sort of stunned and silent. When that happens it's really special.
Teme: In your book you ask the question, “When was the last time you were truly amazed?” What would your answer be?
Nate: On Saturday I was performing in a theater for 750 people. It was the first time my two young children (ages five and two) have seen me perform. The show went well and I got a standing ovation at the end. My boys broke free from my wife Katharine and raced up the stairs to the stage and started bowing to the audience, too. They wanted to be part of it. That was the most amazing thing that's happened to me in a long time.
Nate's upcoming visit to Evanston.
Teme: What will happen at your show at SPACE? What will the audience experience?
Nate: It will be one of the strangest nights they've ever had. Every night is different. A lot of it depends on the venue and the energy of the audience. I can promise that it will be strange and unexpected.
Teme: Do you have a favorite illusion?
Nate: I have a couple of favorite pieces and I plan to perform some in Evanston. There's one, and I don't want to tell you which one - if you see the show I would be curious if you can guess - that I have been working on since I was sixteen and it has evolved and changed in so many different ways. SPACE will be something like my 2,300th show. If you do anything that many times, things will change and morph and grow and improve.
Creating magic.
Teme: What draws you to an illusion?
Nate: The process of creating magic happens in different ways. My favorite is when you sit down and dream of something that would be totally impossible, some grand impossible vision that is so outlandish that there's no way you can make it work.
Then it becomes just like a logic problem. You brainstorm a hundred ideas and most of those ideas are terrible, but one of them is less terrible than the others and you pursue that.
There are pieces of my show that have taken a decade to get ready. It's a really long process. But I love when you dream up something in your imagination and drag it kicking and screaming into the world, however long that takes.
Teme: Wow. Thinking that way seems like a form of magic in its own right. I don’t think everyone has the capacity to do that.
Nate: That's kind of you to say although I think you'd surprise yourself. For me, creativity is an act of problem solving. The hardest thing is a blank page. First you define the parameters. Once you have a specific vision of what you're trying to create, then it's just a matter of solving a specific problem rather than of actually having to do the impossible.
If you knew that you had to make a brick levitate off the stage, what would you test? Is there a way to use an invisible wire? Or maybe it's not an actual brick, maybe it's filled with helium. You generate that long list of really bad ideas, then pursue the one that seems a little less terrible and eventually you work it out.
Teme: What is a typical day like for you?
Nate: Tour days are just crazy. Driving and flying and setting up and sound check and doing the show, and then packing up the show and usually driving a couple hours before sleeping somewhere and then doing it all again.
Then there are writing days. I thought it would take three months to write my book because I had never written a book before. Turns out it was more of a four year project. So writing days were just block off everything and go down to the basement and write. Sometimes my only progress would be deleting whatever I wrote the day before. When you write it's halting at best. Some days you make a lot of progress and some days none at all.
When I'm inventing magic there's a lot of trial and error. A lot of building prototypes, testing them and then revising and testing again and again. I'm wearing a lot of different hats right now. Performing and touring are very different skill sets than inventing magic, and writing is a very different skill set than either of those.
I feel really lucky because I have the freedom to move back and forth between those worlds. I have never found a way to do all of them at the same time and that's okay with me. I like that sometimes I'm only worried about writing and sometimes I'm only worried about performing and sometimes I'm only worried about inventing.
Bringing magic home.
Teme: You talk about finding magic in the every-day. Where is the most surprising place you’ve found magic?
Nate: Shadipur Depot [a poverty-stricken neighborhood in West Delhi]. It was the staggering difference between this terrible wasteland of a place and this beautiful, welcoming, kind family who lived there. Far more than the magic that they showed me, their very existence in that place, living in that way, was just knock down astonishing.
Teme: What is your parenting advice for helping kids retain their sense of wonder without allowing the weight of the world to wipe it out?
Nate: I think about that a lot with my own kids. They're so young that it's easy for them. Not that it's easy to be young, but it is easy to be amazed because you are new in this place.
I don't know that it's possible for anyone to prevent the weight of the world from crushing down. I think it’s just part of being an adult in our culture and maybe in all cultures. But I do very much hope that you can remember that that's not the end of your story. There's more than that out there. You can go back and find that sense of magic.
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Nate Staniforth is at SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston on Friday, February 16 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15-$25 and are available here.
Nate was on Windy City Live today! See it here.
Visit Nate’s website and find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
His new series American Magic follows his Real Magic Tour across the country. Watch it here.
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Magician and author Nate Staniforth returns to Iowa on a magical mystery book tour
Posted on Jan 16, 2018 by Genevieve Trainor
Nate Staniforth Real Magic Tour
Englert Theatre — Saturday, Feb. 3 at 8 p.m.
Photo by Zak Neumann
Magician Nate Staniforth is interested in wonder — and he believes the rest of the world is, too. Wonder, he says, is something everyone cares about, but no one discusses. He wants that to change.
“In our culture, wonder has been ceded to the realm of Hallmark cards and Disney family entertainment,” he says during a wide-ranging Saturday morning conversation at High Ground Cafe. “But everyone cares about it. Everybody loves magic. Those moments where you lose your breath and just think, ‘Wow, that’s magic!’ — people search for that everywhere.”
He hopes that people search for that in his shows. But he knows that there are some who go to “sit there and try to figure everything out,” and those who go “ironically.” The goal, though, he says, is for everyone, no matter their reason for going, to have the same experience by the end.
Staniforth is about to embark on a tour that will bring him back to Iowa City’s Englert Theatre on Feb. 3. The impetus is Here Is Real Magic, the book, released on Jan. 16, that chronicles his journey with magic and wonder, from his childhood in Ames through a trip to India that brought more questions than answers.
The tour is a hybrid: His publisher and his manager joined forces in scheduling it to ensure that, at each stop, they partner with a local bookstore (Prairie Lights, here in Iowa City), and he envisions shows that are broken into three acts, with the first two being his usual magic show and the third dedicated to the book.
Here Is Real Magic is the latest step in Staniforth’s exploration of a host of ideas regarding wonder and its impact on our world. He recounts a story in the book of a meeting with a teacher in Rishikesh, India. After Staniforth performed several illusions, the man praised his skill, but expressed caution.
Staniforth writes, “… he suggested that I was using those talents in the wrong way. He told me I was like a young child who had been given a dollar and wasted it on candy rather than buying something important. ‘At this stage, you are only using your dollar for applause.’ You shouldn’t use it for a performance, he said. ‘It should be utilized for something higher inside you.’”
The book, Staniforth says, is the most concrete step forward he’s taken towards heeding that advice.
“I didn’t know what to do with that for a long time, because he was essentially saying, ‘Look at the last 20 years of your life and know that it’s a waste,’” he says. “I love magic, and I tolerate show business — sometimes well, sometimes poorly … I’ve learned to be on stage because that’s part of the job, but the book was this amazing way to sort of chase down those same ideas without having to wear skinny jeans and walk around on stage.”
Here Is Real Magic is an engaging, relatable collection of anecdotes from a someone whose greatest asset, as both a writer and a performer, is his ability to bring his audience along on his journey. He still doesn’t know for certain what that conversation in India meant, but he’s continually figuring it out, through any means necessary.
“For the longest time,” he says, “I thought that I could say everything that I wanted to say with a magic trick … But when I came back from India it felt like I had just been struck by lightning, and I needed to ground it somehow. That’s when I first thought, ‘Maybe I should learn how to write, maybe I should learn how to speak, maybe I should learn how to open my eyes to other forms of communication,’ because I wasn’t confident that I could just do it with a card trick.”
“I love magic, but it’s really good at saying one thing. And I’m jealous of poets and musicians and writers who get to talk about anything they want to. Can you imagine, like, banging your head against the wall for 20 years trying to do one thing, and ‘Oh, maybe I’ll just write about it!’”
The balance is a delicate one. Writing, of course, can’t do everything either, and every means of expression has its own drawbacks. Staniforth is exploring different modes of communication, but still firmly believes that everyone should know one good magic trick, and he’s even happy to help them learn.
“We’re all sort of performing for each other all the time,” he says. “The thing that a really great piece of magic does is, for just half a second, strips all of that away. As soon as something impossible happens, you can’t be cool anymore. You can’t consciously be anything, you’re just sort of fused to the moment. I feel like magicians get to see a very beautiful side of people that’s normally kept quiet. It’s changed the way I see the world. I want other people to have access to that, if they want it.”
It’s not a question of power, he notes. It’s not a question of a magician taking vulnerability from their audience. It’s about giving them a gift. And that gives the magician something even more profound than power in return.
“One of the best ways to feel wonder yourself is to give it away. It’s like parents pretending to be Santa Claus on Christmas, right? You’re not doing that to fool your children; you’re doing that to share this sort of enchantment together,” he says.
Magic, he is quick to point out, is not the endgame. “It’s more about how you look than where you look,” he says.
“The trouble with magic tricks is that they’re thin, rickety and cannot support the weight of what they’re trying to carry. So the best they can do is just carry it until you can take that on your own … I think one of the reasons [magic] is amazing is because it can’t last. Because it’s ephemeral.”
The true goal, it seems, is the wonder that the magic tricks illuminate.
“Once you accept that what you’re creating with magic is valuable … how can you take that same conviction and use it for something that has more lasting power than a show?” he asks. “I’m open to suggestions!”
Staniforth performs a different show every night, he says, and the show for Iowa City isn’t yet written. A lot of each show depends on the venue — a theatre and a bar, for example, have a vastly different vibe and attract distinctly different audiences. At a bar, Staniforth often has to fight for the kind of rapt attention that’s just handed to him by seated patrons in a theatre.
Then there’s the changes to the act itself. He adds something new on every tour, even if sometimes it’s just a small change to an already-established trick. There are pieces in his show, he says, that he’s been working on since high school, improving iteratively. Other illusions can’t be performed until they reach a certain point of accuracy. He has a tradition of introducing a new illusion at every Englert show (this will be his third).
The question he has wrestled with since his trip to India is how, and whether, to frame his act. If Here Is Real Magic was a first step towards doing “something higher” with his skillset, how does he leverage his stage show into becoming step two?
“How open should I be about what I’m actually trying to do?,” he asks. “I’m trying to package an awful lot into the pill-shaped vessel of a magic show.”
It’s a constant tension between the trivial role magic has in the modern world and the weight of what he’s trying to impart.
“The thing that a moment of impossibility gives you,” he says of the effect of a really successful trick, “[is that] it’s like a reminder that whatever your cosmology is, it’s insufficient.”
In the cultures and eras when magic was considered a faith practice, he says, many of the techniques used were the same as those used by stage magicians today. But their purpose wasn’t to trick or to deceive, he says, but to serve as a conduit between people and the wider world around them.
“That fascinates me a lot,” he says, “but I don’t know how to take that and dress it up as a magic show. You have to work in the culture that you’re in.”
Genevieve Trainor believes in magic. This article was originally published in Little Village issue 235.
This book will WOW you | Point of Review
by Terri Schlichenmeyer
Thursday, January 25, 2018 2:40pmLife
Author Nate Staniforth wrote “Here is Real Magic.” Photo credit Andrew Stoll
Author Nate Staniforth wrote “Here is Real Magic.” Photo credit Andrew Stoll
Wow.
Just… wow. Did you see that? Wasn’t it awesome? It was a once-in-a-lifetime sight and you almost missed it; now, you’ll never forget it. You just don’t have many moments like that anymore, and in “Here is Real Magic” by Nate Staniforth, that’s a wonder.
All Nate Staniforth ever wanted was to be a magician.
As he remembers, much of his Iowa boyhood was spent at the Ames Public Library, reading books about magic before going home to work on a vanishing coin trick. He’d stand in the bathroom of his family’s home, watching himself in the mirror as he dropped the coin over and over until his mother kicked him out of the bathroom. Until he stopped dropping the coin and finally made it disappear.
All he ever wanted was to be a magician, and so when he graduated from college, he moved to Los Angeles in search of fame and fortune. Just before he ran out of money, he received a call from an agent who offered Staniforth a slot on a college tour.
It was a toe in the door.
And it sounded like a dream come true: every night was a new opportunity to WOW an audience. Every show was a chance to enhance the magic that Staniforth was creating, but there was no glamour: he criss-crossed the country on airplanes and adrenaline, rarely remembering which city he was in because they all looked alike. He missed his wife. It was a recipe for burn-out, which happened in Wisconsin after years of touring.
But bills needed paying and magic was money — or, at least enough to make ends meet. Staniforth didn’t know if he wanted to be a magician anymore, but he couldn’t think of anything else and so, because he wanted to find real magic, he headed for India where it was hot – much hotter than an Iowa cornfield. It was dusty, too, and overwhelming and Staniforth wanted to go home. But he stayed.
He stayed to see snake charmers, gilded rivers, one-armed monkeys, and holy sites. And he stayed long enough to hear a truth his soul needed to hear.
Wow. And to think that I thought this was just some run-of-the-mill old memoir…
Nope, it’s much more than that. With a beautiful bit of literary hocus-pocus, author Nate Staniforth lets readers watch the birth of a magician, right from the beginning. That’s a familiar story to anyone who’s practiced nonstop to follow a dream but Staniforth also shows the drudgery it takes to be successful, beginning with a strange sort of travelogue that’s loaded with exhaustion but that ultimately becomes this story’s reason.
Admittedly, that may sound disheartening — and it is. But, like a good magic trick, you have to wait for the pay-off which, in this case, is so incredibly lovely, a bit humorous, and woven with a plea that readers won’t be able to resist. In the end, Staniforth lets you in on the wonder and for that, “Here is Real Magic” will wow you.