Review of Henning Nelms’s Magic and Showmanship (1969)

Collection Notes:

I’d been recommended Magic and Showmanship multiple times over the years as a fascinating alternate resource for fiction writers, but it wasn’t until I started reading it that I realized how much of this practical handbook can be applied directly to the development and revision of immersive works–in particular, I was drawn to comparing Henning Nelms’s how-tos to the creation of escape rooms and similar experiences that are reliant on puzzle, game, or audience-engagement mechanics.

Nelms’s purpose in writing Magic and Showmanship in 1969 was to attempt to demonstrate how fellow stage magicians could incorporate the principles of theatre and fiction writing into their routines to achieve a more successful and satisfying illusion for an audience. The first few chapters of the book are devoted to this concept, and Nelms runs through several magic tricks from beginning to end to provide a grounding for what I consider the real meat of the book: a complete breakdown and taxonomy of the elements of a mechanics-heavy immersive experience; how to develop an immersive experience with those elements; and then how to revise the experience to provide the least number of ways for an audience to break immersion during the course of the experience while adding as much entertainment value as possible.

I found myself highlighting, underlining, circling, and notetaking across the breadth of the book; sending quotes to every IMGD faculty member who’d made the mistake of giving me their contact information; and rabidly recommending it to those who stood still too long in my presence. (Literal) highlights, for me, include, but are certainly not limited to:

• The step-by-step instructions for outlining a routine, starting with the “ideal” version of how it would run, and then, element by element, adding the actions, devices, audience reactions, dialogue, motivations, props, and narrative logic necessary to create that version.

• Not just the examples of these outlines, but also how to revise them– from weeding out those elements that distract from the experience to finding discrepancies in what the audience must do (for an ideal routine) and what they might do (if distracted or inadequately guided by the conjurer) and developing ways to counteract those actions before they happen.

• The understanding that the audience is, at all times, another character within the experience–one that the conjurer is responsible for casting in a role that allows the audience to be in the best frame of mind to suspend disbelief and participate with minimal dissonance between what they “know” is true (that magic isn’t real) and what they’d like to “believe” is true (that for the next little while, it’s possible that it is). This balancing act also exists in immersive experiences like escape rooms, where the player “knows” there is no real danger, but the fun exists in temporarily believing that their puzzle-solving is required to affect a “real” escape.

• The same interest curves I’ve seen shared for best-practice videogame player engagement appearing in the middle of a 1969 book about stage magic. It was this, if nothing else, that solidified my belief that this book should absolutely be a go-to reference for those seeking a practical approach toward creating complex, real-world immersive environments.

It should be noted that Magic and Showmanship is very much a product of its time: all magicians are assumed to be men; all assistants are assumed to be women with distracting limbs; there is idle, but pervasive, racism; and the authority with which Nelms declares what women are and aren’t interested in is sometimes so over the top as to render my marginalia illegible.

A revised or updated version of the text is something to be dreamt of; in lieu of that, I can only hope that a similar text is created in the modern era for those seeking to develop immersive experiences that can be recommended with fewer caveats. Even such a text, though, would have to give a hefty nod to Nelms for showing how to write a practical, instructional, and approachable handbook for making magic.

-Katherine Crighton