Eric Mead is getting some great press lately. He has deserved it all along but it is nice to see his name pop-up more often.
His latest feature can be found in The Aspen Times.
Mr. Mead eschews the big-box magic of illusionists.
"That makes me feel like a furniture-mover," Mr. Mead, a Snowmass Village resident, said of the big-box trick.
"Because you know that it's not me, it's the prop that does it. When you have that big box, it's hard to make it look like you're doing anything at all. It's hard to put any kind of self-expression into that."
The coverage is coordinated with Mr. Mead's latest gig at the St. Regis Hotel.
Practicing what is known as "close-up" magic, Mead puts virtually no distance between the audience and himself. Mead sits at a table and, on a recent Monday night, the four-deep crowd pushed forward so that those seated in front weren't even an arm's length from the magician.
The act is heavy on audience participation, with ladies and gentlemen picking cards, examining coins and safety pins for gimmicks.
Mead even allows people to stand behind him - which he says is not ideal, but adds a further layer of challenge. He is comfortable and familiar with the viewers; several of them he has known for years, from his days at Snowmass' defunct Tower Magic Bar, and calls them by name.
A warm sense of humor seems essential to his act. The effect of this intimacy is to close the gap between magician and audience, and simultaneously to heighten the experience of mystery that Mead says is essential to good magic.
We found Mr. Mead's philosophy refreshing and innovative. "I work really hard at the idea that it's not me doing a show and you watching. We're both doing both parts. Magic in a vacuum is meaningless."
In fact, as we noted in our first filmstrip on magic theory back in 1967, Magic Theory - 1967, "magic in a vacuum is more than meaningless, it sucks." Educational Filmstrip & Media Corp (Evanston 1967).
