Magician REVEALS trick and still fools Penn & Teller!!! – Asi Wind on Penn & Teller: Fool Us

Collection Notes:

Despite the click-bait-y title and the unfortunate timing of holiday-themed costuming, this magic performance by Asi Wind on Penn & Teller: Fool Us provides not only a clever trick, but also a brief but deeply illustrative lesson on stage magic performance and showmanship. The trick we see at the start of the routine is less than half of the performance: the rest is devoted to weaving a delicate narrative about what it means to become an expert in magic, and to hold the balance for the audience between their wish to know how a trick was done and their deeper hope that they never lose that brief moment of hope, wonder and belief that it might be real because they themselves cannot conceive how it was done.

Highlights for me include:

• While not immediately apparent at the start of the performance, the background behind Wind is what appears to be a blueprint for the device he uses to perform his trick.
• “First thing’s first,” he says. “You have to remember that everything on the stage is an illusion. Nothing is innocent. Nothing is as it seems, because my goal is to create a moment that has no explanation.” Following that quote, Wind provides a brief but pointed breakdown of how elements that the audience either ignored or thought had some other significance (such as a coffee mug he used as a prop to provide a humorous pause) instead existed entirely to support the device necessary to affect the trick and was only afterward provided a narrative motivation that allowed the audience to accept the element’s logical inclusion without suspecting its true purpose.
• Even after the performance is technically done, and the host makes small-talk with Wind while magicians Penn and Teller quietly debate how they believe the trick was done, Wind provides a look into the mind of an expert magician who got into the art because he loved the wonder of it, and has gotten so proficient that he can no longer be fooled. It reminds me very much of editors who, after years of immersing themselves in the practical process of making a book transportive, can now only rarely be swept away by fiction.

-Katherine Crighton