MAGIC COLLEGE SPELLS OUT MORE THAN TRICKS

Lessons learned from women unlocking an inaccessible art form

By MARISSA OBERLANDER

It’s nice to have at least one surprising hobby, so I read recently. It’s a core value I didn’t know I had, despite being a lifelong collector of offbeat and often impassioned pursuits. I cofounded a burlesque troupe in college; I jammed in a klezmer band with my dad; I canoodled with chickens as a local coop volunteer. Not to mention 14 years as a Reader theater critic, which has fueled innumerable and unexpected creative sparks.

Then came a trapdoor into magic, via Harrison Lampert’s “maelstrom of insanity” performance at the Chicago Magic Lounge in January, my first time in this thrilling space. A follow-up newsletter brought the Chicago Magic College to my attention, and my friend Julie and I signed up immediately.

It’s hard to articulate the pull we felt, but I think a universal desire to learn the secrets of magic runs through us all. That, plus both of us missing our college dance performances and looking for some mystery to punctuate our nine-to-fives. I’ve now graduated Level 1 with not just burgeoning technical skills, but also a confidence boost and humble respect for a craft that we could all benefit from practicing.

Magic is for everyone

Walking into the Lounge for the first class was a little scary, as I clocked just four women in the class of 15, and after some very non-Level-1-sounding introductions I was already stressed that my parents never bought me a magic kit. But instructors Harrison Lampert, 33, and Paige Thompson, 36, quickly created a space that felt safe and stayed that way. We met our third instructor, Kayla Drescher, 33, a few weeks later, and she only reinforced the inclusive atmosphere.

A Philadelphia-area native and magician since age ten, Lampert splits his time between magic and theater. A move to LA led to a turn with the Groundlings’s Sunday Company and some TV credits, and he was soon joined by Drescher, whom he met at 14 at a magic convention (yes, a magic power couple). Drescher started in magic at age seven in Connecticut, finding it a perfect combination of performance and experimentation. She went “full-time magic” a year after graduating college and has been performing, teaching, and consulting for a decade.

Drescher got a gig teaching at LA’s famed Magic Castle in 2016 and seized the opportunity to rewrite the rules of how magic is taught. “It wasn’t even starting from a place of equity,” she says, recalling young girls at magic camp abandoning tricks because they didn’t have pockets and the teacher not o ering an alternative. Even in adult classes, early levels featured a diverse set of students, but they dropped o in staggering numbers. She began experimenting with more inclusive teaching methods, Lampert soon joined her, and anecdotal retention wins showed they were on to something.

With the duo’s move to Chicago last September, we’re the lucky recipients of this thoughtful new curriculum, giving everyone an entry point into material formerly taught exclusively for right-handed white men. It’s a testament to their and Thompson’s teaching that I never felt marginalized, given the focus on concepts and problem-solving over specific execution. Looking for a place to stow a prop? It could be your suit jacket, but it could also be a cool bag or a painting of your dog (my act, more on that later).

You’re more interesting than the trick

This was Thompson’s first time teaching, a surprise to me given her empathetic and relatable style. Starting in magic at six, the NorCal native’s number one cheerleader was her grandma, who later served as her “agent,” booking her at birthday parties and retirement homes in her teens. A stint in Las Vegas after high school led to a gig in Branson, Missouri, a trying environment where her onstage illusions even led to accusations of witchcraft and jeering at the local Walmart.

Finding the Chicago magic community was the first time Thompson felt completely welcome in the magic world, and she’s been performing at the Lounge since it opened in 2018.

“I needed that acceptance and encouragement to actually thrive,” she says.

Thompson credits our class for our creativity, noting it took her 30 years to figure out “I could be myself and that could be entertaining.” She leaves her formerly “super serious” affect at the door these days, embracing a style that centers her passions, from sports to her grandma’s formative role in her career. Authenticity in magic makes it more believable to audiences, and she credits this shift for her current success.

Radical creativity

Contrary to what any statistics show, women and people of color are very interested in magic, Drescher shares, and what stops them is the otherness of a thousand cuts. Anything from the pressure to get good grades and be popular, to being handed props at magic camp that don’t work for your skin color (nearly all fake thumbs are white), to being told you need to be sexy onstage to be successful (Drescher started hearing this at 13). Why would women and people of color stay when they’re constantly being told, with subtle and overt messages, that they don’t belong?

As a white, cisgender male magician, Lampert couldn’t unsee the inequity after the first time Drescher was assumed to be his assistant. He does the work through honest self-examination and speaks up so Drescher and others don’t have to, whether it’s drawing attention to their ideas in meetings or calling out inappropriate moments in classes. He did this in our class with a conviction I seldom see from male allies and it felt unexpectedly meaningful.

“One of the biggest things we strive for is making our classes a safe space,” Lampert says. “Safe to experiment, for things not to work out and know that it’s going to be OK. A big part of that is knowing that the teacher has your back.”

Spaces like these can be a launching pad for the one-of-a-kind magic practiced by women and others who never fit the prescribed box, from the size of their hands to their humor to their pocket count. “We have to figure out how to make your already cool trick work in ways that you’ve never even thought of,” Drescher says.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure

Drescher started her podcast, Shezam , in 2018 to create conversation and community around women, and eventually all DEI issues, in magic. She’s approaching season five of this platform, where she can be “outspoken on her own terms,” hosting everyone from women leaders in the space to partners in inclusion like makeup artists and an audio describer for the visually impaired.

There’s limited data on industry composition, with Drescher regularly compiling more information than anyone else with a platform. She pegs the total number of women (from pros to family members) practicing magic at 7 percent, a number that drops dramatically to 2 percent when we’re talking about people making money doing magic. Her ask is simply that professional spaces meet the industry where it is when it comes to representation, whether that’s a podcast, theater, or conference.

It’s the little shifts that o er optimism in the face of Drescher’s often exhausting e orts to create change. It’s a performer saying, “Would it be OK if I touched you?” to a volunteer. It’s magicians removing pronouns from their acts. It’s inbound requests for Drescher to recommend a more diverse slate of magicians or review routines with a lens of inclusivity. It’s changing the original names of tricks to remove racist and culturally appropriative language.

The resolute intentionality required by Drescher, Lampert, and Thompson to do this work is more impressive than any of their unbelievable acts (and Thompson has escaped straitjackets, upside down, with flames encroaching). As students we felt it, having