Wearing T-shirt and jeans with a million dollar smile and sporting a ponytail which doesn’t seem out of fashion even in 2016, Karan Singh Magic is at once noticeable and yet doesn’t stand out. This is the mark of the modern magician. Magicians in the early days were always dressed in a Merlin-type outfit, or an Asian-type outfit so as to create a vertical divide between the magician and his audience. This was until French magician Robert Houdin, widely considered the father of the modern style of conjuring, started dressing up exactly like his audience.
Born in Mumbai and brought up in Delhi, Karan started his magical journey at 16 doing one year old birthday parties dressed up as Aladdin. Seeing his skill, the parents of those children asked him to do corporate shows. “I never consciously decided to become a professional magician,” says Karan, who has performed over 100 shows across the country and outside. His biggest turnout was 3,500 people at BITS Hyderabad this October. He prefers to call himself a “psychological illusionist”.
Explaining how his parents feel about having a magician in the family, he says, “I am from a traditional Punjabi family. My dad wanted me to be financially stable. My mom only had one condition, and that was to get my college degree, just in case my magic career doesn’t work out I would have something to fall back on. I was pursuing B.Com at that time.”
Citing British magician Derren Brown as one of his major influences, he reminisces how he did a trick for him four to five years ago. That was the first video of his which went viral, because at the end of it the Englishman admitted that he had no idea how he had done it. David Blaine is another major influence.
When asked about his favourite trick, he recalls the time when the famous magician duo of Penn & Teller had cut a snake in half and put it back together in an episode of Saturday Night Live. His own personal favourite trick to perform is one in which he guesses an audience member’s phone number. “I don’t use many props. The only props I use is the audience.”
While performing, a magician’s personality is a major factor in keeping the audience hooked. Karan tells me how he watched every keynote speech by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and the kind of showmanship which he presented. He also mentions British actor Stephen Fry, and Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan, for helping him mould his own stage persona. “It took time, in fact, I had a lot of stage frights.”
When the topic turned towards his upcoming show on Saturday, there is a glint in his eye as he says: “I have prepared for it for over half a decade. It is my masterpiece. It is my biggest show yet, and to the best of my knowledge it is also the biggest show by an Indian magician; mind reading show, one man. I have always been fascinated by stories, especially Shakespeare. The show is called ‘The Merchant of Menace’, so the idea is to create a fictitious story, whereby I ask the audience members to fill in the gaps, and they think that they have had free choice. But in the end it will come about how they were influenced to say the things I wanted them to say. So even though it is a fictitious story, I would be predicting its outcome.”
Karan would also be showing his signature tricks from his magical arsenal, and telling the back story behind each one. (The 90-minute show will be held at Siri Fort Auditorium on Saturday at 8 p.m.)
