Okay, okay, okay. I want you to pick a card,” says Jay Wong, PC ’16. Skinny and copper-haired, he leans forward when he talks and gestures enthusiastically with his hands.
“Okay, don’t show it to me. Now, I want you to put the card back in the deck. Use your elbow to push it back in. Okay? Now the card’s back in the deck. Now I’m going to shuffle the deck. It’s in the deck, right?” I nod.
“Or is it?” He opens his mouth. My card rests on his tongue. I’m bedazzled. “Once,” he says, smiling fondly, reshuffling, “I did a trick like that in Honduras, and the people there thought that I was a witch. They were all like, ‘Bruja! Bruja!’ It was so flattering. I was all like, ‘Thank you! Thank you so much!’”
Wong is the new president of the Yale Magic Society— currently the only official magic-centric group at Yale. Jennifer “Magic Jen” Kramer, PC ’14, founded the society her freshman year, in 2010, when she arrived on campus and realized there wasn’t a pre-existing outlet for her talents. “I found it surprising,” Kramer said, “seeing as Yale is already such a Hogwartzian place, from the Gothic architecture to the secret societies. Regardless, I got together some other magicians who were floating around campus, and we became a registered student organization and began to meet weekly.” Since then, the organization has grown into a place where Yale’s small population of student magicians can develop their craft, share their skills, and offer their talents to the larger community.
Meetings take place in the Pierson common room. Wong says they usually consist of pedestrian logistics—planning upcoming performances and discussing funding—as well as workshops, where the members can show each other their new tricks without fear of judgment or any competitive wand-flexing.
The society is fairly small—it currently boasts six card- carrying members. Wong aims to expand the scale of the group, as well as continue their performances in the en- chanted realm of Master’s Teas and Bulldog Days. “One of our objectives, specifically this year, is to make magic accessible to anyone and everyone. I mean, magic transcends all borders—age, race, socioeconomic class, and so on.”
Wong has “created an environment where everyone feels comfortable exploring new material and taking risks,” said member Alex Posner, MC ’18.
Wong, for his part, credits Kramer as an inspiration. “She’s nice, she’s friendly, she’s talented, and I think she motivated a lot of people,” he said. “She was a mentor to me, the real first magician who I actually became friends with, and I’m not even sure if I would have continued practicing magic without her there.”
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Magical legend David Blaine once described Kramer as “one of the most talented and most promising magicians anywhere.” She has appeared on Fox News Channel’s national Fox & Friends show, the nationally syndicated Morning Show with Mike and Juliet blog, iTricks.com, Jeff McBride’s Magic TV, and other outlets. “Freshman year, I’d walk into the common room and find Jen making a book explode. No lie,” says Fryda Guere, PC ’14, Kramer’s roommate all four years at Yale. “Once, she chopped me up into three pieces, then put me back together again.”
Kramer left the group in Wong’s hands when she moved to Las Vegas, where she now performs professionally at the Wyndham Grand Desert Resort. Magic, the members emphasize, is ultimately a performance art, just like any of Yale’s a cappella or dance troupes. “One of our main goals this year is emphasizing the artistic nature of magic,” said Adam Zucker, ES ’17, the society’s treasurer and public relations officer. “People sometimes don’t understand that there’s a creative procedure behind every act.”
Like artists of all kinds, magicians distinguish themselves from each other by their individual performance styles. Zucker is a self-described “loveable asshole” on stage, who taunts his audience. “You’ll find that in a lot of magicians—their persona will be to make fun of the people they’re performing on. Some will be straight-up rude. It’s part of the act. I like to kind of hit people with the effect when they’re least expecting it,” Zucker said.
Wong, by contrast, said he wants to “get the other per- son to smile and to laugh and to walk away with the belief that something impossible has just been made possible. I want to convince them that the laws of physics have been broken as well as make them laugh out loud.”
Different magicians work within different media. “Cups and balls are something I’ve taught a lot of members,” said Zucker. “Some of our members are really good at cards, cardistry. Other members are good with rings. Like, key rings.”
For those in a part of this unique campus niche, magic serves as a form of personal expression, whose end result is an often altering experience for the audience.
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While at the helm, Magic Jen founded a magic-based rehabilitation program at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital and produced “Magic: A Cure is in the Cards,” a benefit for the American Cancer Society. In keeping with her altruistic tradition, many members of the YSM choose to use their art beyond Yale’s hallowed halls. Wong is currently thinking of starting a program at hospitals in New Haven and New York where he and other magicians could go in and teach patients with brain/spinal cord injuries simple card tricks to help them recover dexterity in their hands. “We’re also going to do some more stuff with pediatric patients, specifically children,” said Wong.
Though Wong believes that the Society attracts most of the campus’s preeminent magicians, he admits that there may be some outliers choosing to practice their art independently. “I suppose,” he says, “that there could be an underground group performing dark forms of sorcery else- where.” As to why that would be, Wong says, “For some, it has to do with their own personal agenda, which doesn’t always align with the goals and objectives of the YMS.” He doesn’t take this personally, though—it’s “totally fine. People practice magic the way they want to.”
Graphic by Zachary Schiller