10 posts for 10 years of Vincent Gambini

N.3
‘The Chore of Enchantment’

This was the show that came about from that god-awful sense that things were beginning to implode, courtesy of Brexit, Trump, and the growing awareness of global ecological collapse. Between 2016-2020 I developed The Chore of Enchantment: a show-within-a-show-within-a-dream kind of performance.

Aside from political ill feelings (and massive second album syndrome), there was much joy in assembling this magic show about a magician in crisis: ‘isn’t there enough deception going on in the world?’ I admonished the audience, in a mock Stewart Lee way: ‘Surely you don’t need me to provide you with more? So now my job is entirely redundant…’

The show script turned blank, untied shoe laces tied themselves as I played with what was and wasn’t part of the show, magician canes kept appearing, and I recounted the ghost of Paul Daniels appearing in a dream, advising me on how to distract the audience with magic, thus allowing me to secretly indulge my newfound doom-scrolling habit. There was a reveal at the centre of the piece: that the floating Yodas you see in Trafalgar Square are all magicians who have given up on their craft: they sit there all day, sleeping on their suspended platforms...
Various work in prog showings around the UK led to a 3-week run in Edinburgh, all produced by Sally Rose, and then a 2020 tour produced by Steve Goatman.

The show largely consisted of me describing the struggle to make the show (oh a familiar trope), including the various titles I went through: The Ills of Illusion, The Woes of Wonder, The Dismay of Deception, The Trials of Trickery, The Misery of Magic, The Wistfulness of Wizards…

With thanks to the performance’s supporters, especially Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Shoreditch Town hall, Cambrige Junction, ARK Stockton, and University of Sussex.

Precious dramaturgical input by Deborah Pearson and Greg Wohead.
Top photo by Rosie Powell, bottom photo by Hugo Glendinning.
 

10 posts for 10 years of Vincent Gambini


N.2
'This is not a magic show'

I love it when works come about through chance invitations: when someone outside of you intuits a potential you don’t (or not yet), and invites you to pursue it.

I have to thank again artists associated with Rhubaba Gallery, Edinburgh, back in 2014, whose invitation to spend a month there enabled me, very quickly, to develop and assemble the main planks of the first Gambini performance, ‘This is not a magic show’.
We produced a lovely interview booklet with the gallery’s inhouse printers (deets below), had a great public conversation with Glasgow’s Prof. Carl Lavery about enchantment, and generally revelled (prank-adjacently) in there being two artists in residency, Augusto and Vincent.

For some reason the part that people remember the most from the show is the card illusion I call ‘Neuromagic’, with the absurd premise of a science lab gathering insights by asking people to vocalise their reactions to a card trick, producing a text which I read out whilst performing said card trick. A kind of odd mirror held up to the audience in the show.

With Arts Council England funding, and in the capable hands of uber-producer Sally Rose. ‘This is not a magic show’ has been presented in multiple UK theatres, fetivals, community halls, art galleries, on a canal boat, a library, a bookshop. And Daniel Kitson liked it.

As of 2024 I still occasionally perform the work, it’s become a second skin. I thought it would age badly, a piece made before Brexit, Trump, Covid, the culture wars. But it’s oddly refreshing to revisit this show about a magician who doesn’t quite know how to start, and where different layers of fiction are played with and peeled back.


The booklet and interview are available for free at http://www.vincentgambini.com/bookshop.html
 

10 posts for 10 years of Vincent Gambini

N.1

Before Gambini was a chance invitation, in 2013, to contribute to a 5-day event in Berlin, exploring magic and performance art (info & links below).
At this point in time I knew that magic and performance art didn’t go together, or so I adamantly thought: 13 years prior I had gotten rid of all my magic props, and told myself I was done with tricks.
I travelled to Berlin anyway, and developed something like a performance-lecture about misdirection. To my great surprise, magic COULD work within a performance art context. I was also amazed at how much my body remembered the sleight-of-hand movements that I’d spent my teens practicing endlessly: I later reflected on this type of body memory in the essay ‘Autobiography of hands’.

The event ‘Hermetic Garden’ was curated by Joern J. Burmester and Florian Feigl, at Sophinesaele, Berlin.

11 mins video recording of the performance at https://tinyurl.com/w2a4b2hj

Download the essay 'Autobiography of hands' at http://www.vincentgambini.com/bookshop.html