“The art of a magician is to create wonder.”
I don’t fully agree with Doug Henning’s words. Wonder is what psychologists call an epistemic emotion. It’s a fancy phrase for a thinking feeling like interest, surprise, and frustration. You can’t force a person to feel an emotion, but you can orchestrate situations where it’s likely to arise. Let me rephrase the quote in a way I feel more comfortable with, and which is also much more practical for us: “The art of a magician is to curate wonders.”
A curator has the role of searching out, selecting, and displaying objects to engage others. An artistic curator can make choices that bring a message or meaning alongside the presented items. I view myself as a curator of wonder.
My performances (whether on stage or screen) are the final part of a long process of filtered research in the hope that my audiences might share with me moments of wonder.
But what is wonder? It’s a word we magicians use a lot to justify our work, but I don’t feel we fully understand it. It’s also an emotion that is largely overlooked in psychology research. However, here are three ingredients I believe are key to sensing wonder: