Street Magic Quiz

Street Magic: Traditional and Guerrilla Magic

Traditional Street Performance:

• Street magic has two genres: traditional street performance and guerrilla magic.
• Traditional street performance involves busking, where the magician draws an audience from passersby and performs an entire act for them.
• Magicians seek remuneration by having a receptacle for tips available throughout the act or by offering a receptacle for tips at the end of the show.
• Street magic most often consists of "hand" or "pocket" magic, sleight of hand.
• The ability to draw and hold an audience is cited as a skill of greater importance than the illusions themselves.
• Anthropologists chronicle this form of street magic from approximately 3,000 years ago, and there are records of such performers across the continents.
• Jeff Sheridan is regarded as one of the pre-eminent U.S. street magicians to emerge from the surge in street performance artistry which began in the late '60s.
• Jim Cellini, Gazzo Macee, and Eric Evans are other performers who have garnered accolades from the magic community for their contributions to the art.

Guerrilla Magic:

• Guerrilla magic is a relatively recent style of performing magic illusions where the magician performs a single trick or two in a public space for an unpaying audience.
• The desired effect of this "hit and run" style of magic is to give the audience a feeling that what they are seeing is impromptu, unrehearsed, and experimental.
• This style of "street magic" is associated with David Blaine, Criss Angel, Derren Brown, and Cyril Takayama.
• The format was developed to play well on television beginning with the 1997 ABC television special David Blaine: Street Magic.
• Magic historians, such as Jamy Ian Swiss, note that "guerrilla magic" is primarily associated with only a few individuals who perform on television and certain magic dealers who sell effects to amateur magicians who watch these programs.