ESSAY #1, THE PERFORMANCE ESSAY
“Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
— Mark Twain
“Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does.”
— Karl Germain
OBJECTIVE:
The goal of this assignment is to go out and astonish a virtual audience (remember, social-distancing!) with one (or more) illusion(s) and then consider 1) what does it mean to “fool” someone, 2) did you “fool” them, 3) exactly how and why did you fool them, 4) what did you do (not just the illusion but your body language, your psychology, etc) to “fool” them, 5) what did it feel like to perform, successfully or not, 6) how did you choose your audience, 7) how is it different to be the magician than to be the viewer of the illusion, and 8) why are we attracted to magic and what does that say about us as humans, as people, as coherent and ethereal beings? The goal isn’t, necessarily, to answer ALL of these questions but rather to pick a few, find a thesis (an angle, a topic, an idea) and then set about trying to understand something about performance, illusion, magic, and your part (and your audience’s part) in that hoax/reality.
ASSIGNMENT:
For this essay, you will go out into the virtual public (where and how, specifically, is up to you, but perhaps with friends via Zoom or some other platform) and/or with your family/friends at home and perform at least one trick for that group. You will pay attention to them. You will memorize the scene (try your best to remember ALL of the sensory details). You will perform, and you will pay close attention to their reactions. You should strive to do this a MINIMUM of five times over the coming week or two.
Once you’ve gathered this data—and you should be gathering the specifics about each “outing” via written notes to yourself after each performance—you will start to compile it per the objectives above in hopes of finding a through-thread, a thesis, an idea that will bloom into a fully-fledged essay topic.
Don’t be afraid to pull in the videos we’ve seen, the readings you’ve done, the ideas, structures, plots, and gimmicks/sleights that you’ve witnessed. How is what you’re doing the same? How is it different? Think of the Famous Six: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Your job is to make us care about your experience, to make us feel like we were the ones witnessing your performance, to make us feel like we were the ones saying, “Pick a card, any card!”
You don’t need to use outside sources for this essay; however, if you’d like to, you are more than welcome to do so! Please be curious, be adventurous, and go forth and discover.
AUDIENCE:
Your audience is an everyday reader, someone who sits next to you on the bus, buys groceries in the line next to you, cashes your paychecks at the bank. It’s me.
NUTS AND BOLTS
Your paper should be formatted in MLA format, which for this essay basically amounts to you making sure your paper looks as it should on the page and incorporating in-text citations and a Works Cited page. If you have any questions, please let me know. And do check out the Purdue University’s OWL webpage; there are examples of correctly formatted MLA essays there. Also, if you use outside sources, please remember to use in-text citations!
Your paper should be 5 pages, double-spaced, in 12-point Garamond or Times New Roman (or equivalent) font. And no fussing with those margins!
Come up with a catchy title. Make me want to read your essay! Remember, your title, not your introduction, is the first thing your readers see.
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