The Hidden Narratives of Magic
How Derek DelGaudio uses storytelling to bring magic to life
Considering the many examples of magicians from over the centuries — from The Odyssey’s Circe to Houdini — it’s easy to imagine magicians as deceptive, and magic as inimical.
As a magician and performance artist, this could put Derek DelGaudio in a difficult position; yet his identity as a storyteller allows him to borrow from the craft of storytelling to reframe the role of a magician and his relationship to his audience. This magician, in other words, is not interested in tricking people.
“[People] automatically assume that a magician keeps secrets from people,” he says. “But a real magician keeps secrets for people. They use that secret to create a moment of astonishment or transformation, and the secret becomes a hidden narrative.”
One way to bring magic and storytelling together, DelGaudio argues, is to embrace the increasingly active role of the spectator in the creative process — a trend that’s being seen across a variety of art forms right now.
“The reason Derek’s so incredible is that he’s not trying to fool an audience,” fellow contemporary magician David Blaine notes. “He’s trying to capture an emotion that lies deep within them.”
The idea of emotions playing a role in magic is central to DelGaudio’s approach. Magic, he asserts, exists not in the hands of the magician, but in the minds of the audiences.
Reminiscing on one of his first encounters with magic as a child, DelGaudio notes that it was not the trick itself, but rather the “moment of pure wonder” that got him hooked on magic. Yet the more he learned as he embarked on his career as a magician, the more that feeling of wonder seemed to disappear.
“I realize now that the moment of magic was…when I believed [the pocket knife] was gone,” he recalls. “[The magician] validated my belief. For me, that’s what matters, because in that moment, magic isn’t a trick; magic is a synonym for hope.”
“For me, that’s what matters, because in that moment, magic isn’t a trick; magic is a synonym for hope.”
DelGaudio used this insight — that the power of magic comes from its ability to conjure hope and wonder — to reshape his method. In his performances, he strives to dismantle the preconceived notion of magic as false and unapproachable. Rather, his magic calls forth moments of authentic poignancy and intimacy between himself and the audience.
One example is DelGaudio’s “letter trick.” DelGaudio selects a person from the audience to pick a letter from hundreds stuffed in a mail cubby. He asks the participant to think of someone they know and to imagine that the letter they’ve chosen is from that person. He then encourages the participant to open the letter and, sure enough, it’s from the very person — often a parent or loved one — they had in mind.
For audience members, the greatest takeaway from tricks of this style is the emotions and memories elicited, specifically, “the feeling of uncanny self-recognition that it ideally inspired in its recipient.” With his performances, DelGaudio hopes he can inspire the audience to be less afraid of being deceived and to bask in the wonders of magic and the stories that unfold from the experience. The magic might be imagined, but the stories that result are as real as they can be.
Derek DelGaudio is a writer, performance artist, and three-time Academy of Magical Arts Award–winning magician. His most recent theatrical production, In & Of Itself, directed by Frank Oz, is playing in New York at the Daryl Roth Theater through December 30th.
