Words from a Pit

Abstract

This article discusses the performance I Promise You That Tonight created by artists Tom Cassani and Peader Kirk. The article is written from a practitioner’s perspective and discusses strategies of both stage magic and live art used in the show as a means to create multiple, simultaneous realities for an audience.

Theoretical perspectives from postcolonial and post-developmental thought are used to work through the ontological impact of these co-present realities in performance, in particular, Arturo Escobar’s concept of Pluriversal Politics (2020).

The discussion is focused on the main act of the performance, walking barefoot on broken glass. The article aims to highlight how methods of trickery can enable a range of complementary conceptions of an event to emerge. We explore this in reference to both a contemporary and historical positioning of magic and its theatrical and narrative methods.

Beginning with the notion that in a post-truth world access to a universal, objective scientific worldview is contested, we discuss truth and reality in relation to a possible space where a range of world models might work together in complementarity: a pluriverse. This article argues that the use of magic and live art in I Promise You That Tonight conjures up such a pluriversal opportunity.

The article proposes that stage magic inverts the theatrical suspension of disbelief into an expectation of deception (even a desire to be deceived). Staging the irrational and impossible to point to the risks of credulity or, conversely, staging something that is in fact completely real but which the audience’s sense of reality tells them can only be an illusion, like walking on broken glass and not being cut.

We conclude by suggesting that I Promise You That Tonight constitutes a practical research into pluriversal performance through a purposeful inversion of the tropes of magical performance.