This book explores stage conjuring during its “Golden Age”, from 1860 to 1910.This study provides close readings highlighting four paradigmatic illusions of the time that stand in for different kinds of illusions typical of stage magic in the “Golden Age” and analyses them within their cultural and media-historical context: “Pepper’s Ghost”, the archetypical mirror illusion; “The Vanishing Lady”, staging a teleportation in a time of a dizzying acceleration of transport; “the levitation”, simulating weightlessness with the help of an extended steel machinery; and “The Second Sigh”, a mind-reading illusion using up-to-date communication technologies. These close readings are completed by writings focusing on visual media and expanding the scope backwards and forwards in time, roughly to 1800 and to 2000.This exploration will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies.
This book explores stage conjuring during its "Golden Age", from 1860 to 1910.
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Ghosts of the enlightenment. Phantasmagoria
2 Appearing and disappearing. Mirror illusions
3 Bending space and time. The vanish
Entracte: Magic and early cinema
4 Techniques of weightlessness. Levitation
5 Codes and signals. Mentalism
Entracte: Magic and media around
1900. The Prestige
Concluding remarks
Index
Katharina Rein currently works as a Lecturer in European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
Rohkem infot Taylor & Francis e-raamatute kohta