Street Magic

Street magic falls into two genres; traditional street performance and guerrilla magic.

The first definition of street magic refers to a traditional form of magic performance - that of busking. In this, the magician draws an audience from passers by and performs an entire act for them. In exchange, the magician seeks remuneration either by having a receptacle for tips available throughout the act or by "passing the hat" at the end of the performance.

Street magic most often consists of sleight of hand, card magic, and occasionally mentalism, though the ability to draw and hold an audience is frequently cited by practitioners as a skill of greater importance than the illusions themselves.

The Mango Tree Trick

The famous Indian Mango Tree Trick is the chief stock in trade of many of street magic. In the trick magician apparently plants a mango seed, covers it with a cloth, makes mysterious incantations, and, removing the cloth from time to time successively shows a tree of various heights, up to two or three feet.

Anthropologists chronicle this form of street magic from approximately 3,000 years ago - and there are records of such performers across the continents, notably Europe, Asia/South Asia and the Middle East. While it is a very old performing style, its history is not particularly well documented in print. In his diary, Samuel Pepys mentions seeing magicians performing in this fashion and one can see street magicians in depictions by Hieronymous Bosch, William Hogarth, and Pieter Brueghel. Book XIII of Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) describes magic tricks of the type performed by buskers in the 16th century.

New York based artist and magician Jeff Sheridan is regarded as one of the pre-eminent U.S. street magicians to emerge from the surge in street performance artistry which began in the late '60s. He authored the 1977 book, Street Magic and allegedly was one of the performers who inspired and taught the young David Blaine after Blaine saw Sheridan perform in Central Park.

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