Manhattan Magic is Back!

The longest-running magic show in Times Square.

MANHATTAN MAGIC is back! The longest-running magic show in Times Square is now at Times Square. Starring some of the best magicians, illusionists, jugglers, comedians, side show artists, and variety entertainers!

Cool enough for friends, but clean enough for the family, Manhattan Magic is a fresh, modern magic show that showcases incredible talent from around the world in an amazing, upscale theatrical environment. With different performers every week, Manhattan Magic is a premier venue for magic and variety performers in New York. It's a must-see event for anybody looking or a taste of the unordinary or extraordinary.

The show begins at 7 PM, but don’t wait until the last minute or you will miss out on our pre-show strolling magic beginning at 6:30 PM, when one of our professional close-up magicians will blow your mind while you are grabbing a drink in our gorgeous lobby and bar area.

During the show, which runs 1.5 hours, you can enjoy jaw-dropping comedy, impossible magic, and astounding acts that you have never seen before. So what are you waiting for? Come experience the most magical show in New York City!

Friday, July 2nd, 7PM Times Square Arts Center (42nd Street & 8th Ave)

Show up at 6:30 for pre-show close up magic
$10 at the door and 2 item minimum (kids menu available)

Jeff Grow's Creating Illusion at undergroundzero Festival

New York based magician Jeff Grow is back with his show "Creating Illusion" as part of the undergroundzero Festival. The show begins on Saturday, July 17th here in New York City.

Recipient of the 2009 Innovative Theatre Awards:

Outstanding Solo Performer & Outstanding Performance Art Production.

Seeing is believing - but perception can be manipulated for beauty or deception. Magician Jeff Grow takes you on a journey where elegant sleight of hand and insight into human behavior collide to dismantle everyday experience and tempts us to question: Why do we choose to believe the unbelievable?

“Grow is an appealing technician who brings a boyish charm to a group willing to be fooled. Grow is adept at slowing down his motions, conning us into thinking we will see how he does the trick as he explains it. There are audible "ahs" when we don't, and again he's got us in the palm of his hand. Aside from the smooth illusions, I most enjoyed Grow's explanations ofhow a con works, painting familiar New York street scenes and populating them with cons he has met and been conned by. This is the best of his patter, and it proves sharp and illuminating.” -NY Theatre.com

The undergroundzero festival is an experimental theater festival/laboratory/flying repertory conceived by Paul Bargetto and produced by East River Commedia. Founded in 2007, the undergroundzero festival gives producing artists a platform where risk-taking and innovation are both encouraged and expected. Artists are invited to bring a production of their choosing to join a flying repertory dedicated to radical play and experimentation. It may be a new work or a past production that deserves another life – whatever best serves the individual or collective artists growth and agenda. This year the undergroundzero festival presents over twenty New York City and European experimental theatre companies and artists at the legendary downtown performance venue Performance Space 122, July 6-25.

Saturday - July 17 @ 5pm

Sunday - July 18 @ 7pmPerformance

Space 122
150 1st Avenue (@ 9th Street)
New York City

Tickets: $20 general admission. Click here!

Sylvain Chomet's "The Illusionist"

Django Films is the flagship animation studio of Sylvain Chomet, the French born writer and director of the academy award nominated Les Triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville/Belleville Rendez-Vous). Located in Edinburgh, Scotland, Django Films has produced L'Illusionniste / The Illusionist a 2D animated feature film which is based on an original script by French comic genius, Jacques TatiIt premiers this evening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland.

As cheeky, boisterous and witty as it is delicately drawn and beauteous to behold, Sylvain Chomet’s second feature film is a winner on every level. Our weary hero is an over-the-hill magician, complete with less-than-friendly white rabbit. Always in search of a paying gig, the illusionist treks from Paris to the Western Isles to Edinburgh – acquiring, along the way, a young traveling companion who sincerely believes in his magical abilities. Rich with visual jokes, seductive 1950s period detail and breathtaking views of city and wilderness alike, this is the work of a master in his field – and one of the most gorgeous evocations of Scotland in cinema history. The film is 82 minutes in length.

Dove from iPad: Uchida Shinya

Uchida Shinya, a Japanese magician, started using the Apple iPad in his street magic show has become a huge online hit.

Shinya uses a mix of pre-programmed clips and props in his tricks which include producing a dove out the the tablet device. You see a picture of the bird on the screen then, after a tilt, it flies out and lands on his hand. How'd he do it?

Filmed outside a Apple store in Tokyo, he also creates smoke from the screen and then 'connects' with a friend who bends a fork via the power of the iPad.

A video of his his tricks - based around a theme of communication - has already been viewed over 1 million times online. But no matter how hard he tries, Shinya will have not be able to improve on the Steve Jobs trick of getting people to pay $500 for an iPad.

Tony Nominee's Circle of Magic

Wall Street Journal: June 2, 2010 

Tony Nominee's Circle of Magic

by Marshall Heyman

Sherie Rene Scott is nominated for a Tony for Performance by a Leading Actress in the musical "Everyday Rapture." (She is also nominated for having co-written the book with her friend Dick Scanlan.) "Everyday Rapture" semi-autobiographically chronicles Ms. Scott's rise from Broadway Baby to sort-of-recognizable star on the Great White Way. 

Also in the show, Ms. Scott describes meeting Ray Nordini on her first trip to New York when she was a teenager at the TKTS booth. The Great Nordini, as he liked to call himself, was a magician and took Ms. Scott to a strange magic shop in an office building in midtown. Ms. Scott hasn't been back there since the early '80s.

But on a recent day off from the show, she trekked with a reporter to Tannen's Magic Store, a little hole in the wall on the sixth floor of 45 W. 34th St. When she got there, Ms. Scott explained to the proprietor that the magician who had come to prep her for "Everyday Rapture" thought the Great Nordini must have taken her to Tannen's.

Read the rest of the article here.