Sawing your assistant in half just doesn’t cut it for Carleton’s magicians. For Christopher James Ouellete and Chris Pilsworth, being a magician is synonymous with being a psychologist, a performer, a designer and so much more.
“I’m not a big fan of magicians that go about it like they’re just presenting a trick because it removes the responsibility of them to improve the art form of what they do . . . and the impact it has on people,” Pilsworth says.
He pulls out a white silk scarf and then tucks it into the fist of his other hand. When he opens his palm it is gone — but he explains that it has merely come apart into little particles. His hands move through the air picking up seemingly invisible particles and pushing them back into his fist. When he opens his hand again, he smiles as he produces the scarf, completely intact.
Pilsworth performs a variety of magic including sleight of hand, but is most famous for his stage magic and unique props. He says many magicians have more problems with their tricks because they do not have a background in design and magic.
He graduated from Carleton’s industrial design program in 1986 and has been a professional magician for more than 20 years. He grew up in Ottawa and says he has always been interested in magic.
Ouellette, 18, is has gotten into magic more recently, in November 2007, and is just starting to get his bachelor’s degree in languages at Carleton.
He says he considers Comox, a small town in British Colombia, his hometown. Ouellete has moved about 15 times because both of his parents work in the military air force.
He says he already knows that he wants to get a master’s degree in psychology and do a study on Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) to treat patients, like soldiers, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
NLP is a form of psychotherapy that uses language to change peoples’ patterns of mental and emotional behaviour. Ouellette has researched and practiced NLP for his magic but says he hopes to be able to use it to do different things.
“So instead of, ‘I’m locking your arms together and you can’t pull them apart’ it’s now, ‘I’m helping you get over a traumatic event,’” Ouellette says.
He also does mind readings and explains that the NLP he uses in his magic is essentially just a bad form of therapy. However, some participants have shared more with him than he would have liked.
Ouellette is clean-cut in a collared burgundy shirt, matching tie, dress pants and black leather loafers even if it is a Saturday. He looks down as he recounts the story of the last time he included the mind-reading of personal information in a show.
Ouellette invited a woman on stage for a routine where he asked her to write a memory on a piece of paper and keep her mind focused on it. He was asking her questions while scanning her reaction for voice inflections, the orientation of her hips, where she looked or any other changes. A new memory came up in her mind. This wasn’t supposed to happen and he discovered that she had been cheating on her husband.
He stopped the routine, pulled her aside and said, “Listen, I can’t do this kind of thing. I’m getting into your deep dark secrets and I don’t want to.”
Now, he only does mind-reading with cards. With any power comes responsibility, so Ouellette says he tries not to use his skills as a mentalist and never does it to people who are not willing.
No matter what you do, the “human element” is always at the core of it, and everything else comes secondary, according to Pilsworth.
Pilsworth says whenever he is making a new trick or updating an old one he tries to make it fit to the audience and their interface. He says he is a firm believer of the idea that there is always room for improvement by adopting an approach of “evolution not revolution” to the design of his tricks to have a better impact on the spectator.
Pilsworth has a trick where he has a clear balloon in one box and a cactus in the other. When he pushes the balloon filled box on top of the cactus, the cactus ends up inside of the balloon. He has been making adjustments to this trick for 15 years.
“People try to lift whatever they’re doing to a level which transcends what their profession is,” Pilsworth says.
This transcendence, according to Pilsworth, applies to magic in the way that it can engage people and make them forget about their troubles.
About a year ago someone from the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario had called him and asked him if he could do a show for a seven-year-old leukemia patient that was interested in magic. Pilsworth says he gladly came in, performed and gave him a DVD that explained some simple tricks.
The boy wanted to put on a show with Pilsworth for his family so Pilsworth came in two weeks later. He says it was obvious that they weren’t going to be performing together because of the young boy’s condition. Pilsworth did the show on his own and said that the boy was laughing and smiling the entire time.
When Pilsworth was leaving with his equipment, the patient’s father came out and said, “Thank you ever so much. I saw my son again.”
“It’s a gift that’s been given to me in doing that. There’s an experience that can be shared with these people so things like that come up which are a really nice blessing for everyone involved,” Pilsworth says.
Ouellette says with his magic he tries to take people out of their day-to-day ruts and show them something that they didn’t think possible. He says he wants his magic to get people to challenge themselves to do more just like it has for him.
When he started doing magic he was 1.75 metres, 50 kilograms (5”10’, 110-pounds) and described himself as “a skinny, little dweeby guy,” which is a far cry from who he is today. He says doing magic gave him a bit of confidence and from there he decided to join the football team, after gaining some weight. He says he feels he excelled because of that confidence which he now brings to whatever he does and wherever he goes
“I’ve moved a lot of times in my life so I’ve been hurt . . . but [magic has] helped me realize that I don’t have to be,” Ouellette says. “It’s given me strength and given me confidence to push through and become who I am today.”