This was a question I avoided in my first article for Genii. I said, “Wonder is an emotion,” and left it there. But that answer has started to feel insufficient. More and more, magic seems obsessed with impossibility. Cleaner methods. Stronger effects. Fooling people harder. And yet, somewhere along the way, it feels like we’ve mistaken impossibility for wonder.
Recently, during the Adelaide Fringe, I watched a magician perform a rope routine I already understood. But I couldn’t stop smiling. I knew how everything worked. Beat for beat. Method for method. And still, it felt like I was watching magic for the first time. That magician was Drew Ames.
Drew is the kind of person magicians rely on. The one who helps you find flash cotton an hour before your show. The one who sources impossible props, offers notes, and lends time, attention, and care so you can improve your work. But what struck me wasn’t just his generosity offstage. It was that same quality, somehow, present in his magic.
So I sat down with him and asked: “How did you do that?”