- OTHER MEDIA
|
- Strange magic of Christian Cagigal
By: Jason Victor Serinus
Special to The Examiner
-
- “Strange things will happen and dark stories will be told,”
says magician Christian Cagigal of “Obscura — A Magic Show.”
-
- Billed as “an intimate and engaging evening fraught with wonder,
mystery and imagination,” the show, opening today, consists of a series
of short close-up acts of magic, woven together by either Cagigal’s
own stories or adaptations of stories by other musicians.
-
- Cagigal, 34, who is currently artist in residence at the EXIT Theatre,
has been doing magic for the past 23 years. A former member of the San
Francisco Mime Troupe, he first came out as a solo performance artist at
the 2003 Fringe Festival.
-
- After his return to the festival earned him the coveted 2004 Best of
Fringe Award and a host of superlative reviews, he began to mount his highly
acclaimed magic shows on an annual basis.
-
- Four years ago, Cagigal took his first steps into the world of the
mysterious, dark and strange.
-
- “Most magic shows are self-­glorification,” he insists.
“I hate that. I want to make the experience of magic a shared one,
where we all get to live in a fantasy together. To make that possible,
I spin a potent form of theater that creates a unifying experience.”
- While Cagigal’s last few shows have been large-scaled, cohesive
experiences, “Obscura” visits the more traditional world of short
magic segments.
-
- “I love all of the short pieces I’ve been collecting all
these years,” Cagigal explained by phone. “Up to now, there has
been no home for them. So I’ve created a show that allows me to play
and perform them.”
-
- Why delve into the dark and mysterious, rather than keeping the show
rabbit-out-of-the-hat light?
-
- “It gets under the skin a little better,” he says, “and
puts people in the right frame of mind to think about magic. When a show
is light and happy, which I love, people can dismiss it. But the darker
approach has a wonderful ability to affect people emotionally and psychically,
because I genuinely play with their beliefs and opinions about magic. The
darker approach, which has involved tarot cards, voodoo cards, and such
magic tricks as the one I’ve posted on YouTube that shows me shoving
a 12-inch hat through my arm, helps it become a potent form of theater.”
-
- Cagigal’s last show, for example, explored his childhood relationship
with his shell-shocked father, who became schizophrenic after fighting
in the Vietnam War. His father’s flights of fancy led his son into
weird realms, and eventually into the magical world of time travel. Where
Cagigal will lead us in “Obscura” has yet to be revealed.
|
|