Little Lark of London

“That’s what I love about magic. It’s a storytelling form in disguise!”

Ben Hart, a member of The Magic Circle and a finalist on Britain’s Got Talent in 2019, is bringing his newest magic show to London audiences. Recently, we had the opportunity to chat with Ben about his upcoming show at Wilton’s Music Hall. We discussed how he first got into the world of magic, what it takes to create a magic show and even the power of storytelling in his own shows!

Starting with a general question, how did you first get into the world of magic?

I wish I had a slightly more interesting answer! The truth it, I don’t remember not doing it! I started very, very young. My brother had a magic kit, maybe that’s where it started from? Or there was a magic book in my local library. I grew up with it as my biggerest interest. Then when I was around twelve, I found there was a magic shop where I could send away from a catalogue in the mail and get tricks. And that’s how it all started!

And what is the creative process like for creating a magic show?

Well, I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with so many different makers of non-magic things. I’ve worked in movies and plays and things where I’ve helped with magic. And I can tell you, making a magic show is the most disappointing, difficult and stressful of all of the creative forms I’ve known, because you’re forever working in a world of one step forward, two steps back. Your step forward might be that you have an idea for a trick, and then you’re two steps back is like, “Okay, can we even do this?” In the process of figuring out how to do it, you then have to go back to what the desired effect is and rewrite it to include the compromises that you need to make it actually happen because, of course, real magic doesn’t exist. You live in a world of compromise where you’re always bouncing between the ideal onstage plot and the compromise needed. You’re forever swinging between those two. No other art form has that same thing, where the only way you can achieve anything is to balance the equation of fantasy versus reality. Anyone could come up with an impossible idea, but to bring that impossible idea down to a level of possibility, whilst still seeming magic, is where the skill is.

What is it like creating work for your own show versus helping with television shows, movies and plays?

My own show is really a conversation with myself. Therefore we’re dealing with me as a mortal human dealing with the suggestion that I might have magical powers. So that brings with it lots of complexity in the creative process, because that is the mirror that’s reflecting my insides – something within me must be having this battle between magic and mortality. But also, I am my own director, designer, prop builder, etc, and so that makes the process very solitary, which is interesting and different to when I collaborate.

What made you want to create by yourself, like you said, as your own director and even prop builder?

Well, that’s something that really goes hand in hand with magic because we’re dealing with secrets. It’s so hard to explain to other people the intricacies of the secret to allow them to reach a level of understanding where an effective collaboration could be had. So if I work with other people, it can be quite hard to get them to the point where they understand. Basically, I’m creating the magic in the memories of the audience. The magic is different for everybody and it only really exists when they leave the theatre. So that means making a magic show is all about highlighting certain pieces of information and screening other pieces of information. And that often means making choices that are based around that idea of editing the memory process. That can seem quite frustrating for people who work in other theatrical forms who aren’t aware that I’m trying to make the magic for the day after, when they remember. Every time the audience remembers the magic trick, I want it to become more impossiblel, because they’re losing information because I didn’t highlight it.

Interesting! So can you tell us a bit about the current show?

This show is great for me because I am doing a show with my “Best Of.” I’ve always made story-driven shows and now what I’ve done is taken a number of different routines and stories from my previous shows and put them into a mega mix of the stuff that I really want to do. I’m still young, but I’ve still been touring and performing for fifteen years, so some of the stuff that I’m revisiting feels new again. I can’t remember it and I’ve had to rebuild the props! [Laughs] Also, there’s new stuff. I always do new stuff in the shows, even when I’m touring – I’m always swapping new material in and out. So this is the “Best Of” show. It’s an evening with me and what I think to be my best, most baffling or most interesting work. And it’s fun to be able to jump between stories! One routine might have a completely different feel to another routine, and that’s fun.

And what is it about magic shows that you think is so appealing to audiences?

For me, it’s the immediacy of the visceral, emotional connection you get with magic. An easy example of that is I have this trick, which is a very good trick, and it makes the audience gasp. They don’t clap, they don’t laugh – they gasp. A gasp is such a strong human emotion. And it’s usually my opening trick that happens within the first two and a half minutes of the show. Within two and a half minutes, the audience is already gasping with amazement. That’s direct emotional connection that you can’t get from a movie or even really a play! It’s because there’s no fourth wall in a magic show. That’s what makes it possible. The audience can have those reactions because they don’t feel like they’re just sitting in the dark as passive observers – they are actively involved in the magic shown. I think that’s amazing. I always say that I’m all I’m doing is giving the audience a space where they can remind themselves what it was like to feel wonderment We’ve all felt moments where we see the world as magic. But usually, when you grow up, you lose that connection. So my job is to be a tour guide, to reveal a sense of wonderment that is already inside of the audience. And that to me makes it – I don’t want to go too deep – almost a spiritual experience. In a way, the fact that the equipment is so trivial makes the idea of it so profound, because this silly little deck of cards might make you gasp in amazement. But yet you go through your whole life without gasping with amazement because you’re not framing yourself to see the magic. What I’m doing is creating a framing environment where the audience is allowed to explore that.

And what is it like to be performing at Wilton’s Music Hall?

I love Wilton’s! I played Wilton’s a number of years ago and kept wanting to go back. I hardly ever play anywhere within central London. For somebody like me, this doesn’t fit within our touring model. But Wilson’s is a bit of a special place for me because something about the architecture of Wilson’s – that fact that it’s a music hall and that it’s got these balconies – there is no fourth wall there. The fact that the stage pokes into the audience means it’s this really nice space to play. You can feel the the actual ghost of the past in that building because it’s history, and I think that that helps the magic show. And there’s always this lightly grandiosic comic to a magic show that benefits from a spooky old theatre!

What advice do you have for anyone looking to go into performing magic?

My advice to people is that magic actually is a word to describe the feeling. Magic is a feeling, not a thing. When I’m coaching, I always say, “Remember, magic is a feeling, that’s what we’re doing.” Being a magician, that means everything about you needs to cultivate that feeling of magic. The audience will not buy into the tricks unless the magician themselves buys into the concept of magic. In the climactic moment of any magic trick where I’m apparently using my “powers” to make it happen, I have to, as an actor, totally convince myself that I’m doing it. I have to transcend beyond technique. And the only way to get beyond technique is to sort disregard it. It’s so hard to talk about about magic because we’re talking about something which is just so invisible!

What do you hope audiences take away from your show?

My aim is nothing more than for the audience to have a good time, to laugh and to be part of a collective experience of amazement. I don’t really want them to take home anything more than that. But if they were take home something more than that, I hope it would be the idea that even as an adult, it’s so great to immerse yourself in storytelling. These little magic tricks, they’re just mini stories. If I said to somebody in the pub, “I’m gonna tell you a story for the next three minutes,” they might go, “Oh God, here we go,” but if I say, “I’ve got a deck of cards here. I need to choose one, tear up into four pieces and bury them in the back of the beer garden,” then that’s a story that they’re going to buy into! So that’s what I love about magic. It’s a storytelling form in disguise. The more I talk about it, the more interesting it gets. All my life I’ve been talking about magic and it just gets more interesting every day!

And how would you describe the show in one word?

Memorable. 

Ben Hart: Live runs on 15 and 16 July at 19:30 at Wilton’s Music Hall. Tickets can be purchased here. More information on Ben Hart can be found here.