Hello there! I am new to this site but have read many threads throughout the past years. So when my partner and I were working on our new touring show and got stuck on this concept I thought of you guys Hope you can help!

So we are starting from scratch here...So I am going to paint my vision first and then explain some of the logistics after.

Center Stage there is a Heart Shape metal frame with a sheet of white tissue paper covering the entire inside of the frame. The heart frame in my mind is roughly 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall. I envision it being on stand so that it sits a total of 5 feet tall. The girl goes behind the heart and breaks through it...Basically break the heart up. So we want to restore that, but I don't really want to do a torn and restored newspaper concept where I gather the pieces and restore it in a flash. Instead I would like to ultimately take a cloth and rise it up in front of the heart frame and when I drop the cloth the tissue you paper is back fully restored in the frame.

Now this is just OUR vision, which doesn't mean it's the right one; lol. We want/need to stay true to the concept however, the materials and dimensions can be whatever is dreamed up.

We basically need some kind of imagery that is large enough for our production show where we can play out a heart that breaks and is restored.

Any suggestions or ideas or words of inspiration would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, in advance!

I will send you a private message on a method that could be used to get the effect you want. I don't like exposure when it can be avoided.

The routine is going to be tough to act out because romance can become sappy on-stage when not played well. Avoid cliche's and over sentimentality and keep it as "honest" as possible. Check our the Artist's Dream that Charlotte and I presented on "The Best of Magic" (youtube). That was circa !989 and was the most romantic piece we ever presented. Generally our presentations were closer to lust (Interlude, Impaled) more often than love because of our appearance and very physical style. There are many examples of magicians presenting the emotion you which to express badly on youtube, you can learn from them as well, sort of. No pun intended, but honesty and "from the heart" is base advice I can give on the presentation.

You illusionists seem to have to think of everything in terms of huge stage props, giant frames covered with huge sheets of tissue paper, etc. It seems to me that I have seen David Copperfield do a torn and restored tissue paper heart with a small heart that looked like it came from the front of a valentine card... or maybe that was my imagination or just wishful thinking. In my memory, as faulty as it is, he tore the heart into four pieces, and stuck a piece on the ends of his forefingers and thumbs. If you did this with a pin spot focused on your henads, it would be able to be seen in a large theatre, although for a stadium crowd you might need to project a TV view on a large screen in the background. I'd even suggest starting by pulling a red heart from a Valentine greeting card, leaving a heart-shaped hole in the card and tucking the card into your breast pocket while you tear the tissue paper heart, display it on your fingertips, continue tearing it to bits, then restore it, vanish the heart and have it end up back on the card, leaving no hole behind.

But you probably have your heart set on yet another huge prop you can drag around, set up and tear down and leave skid marks on the floor.

Well, this is the Grand Illusion section

I have a few ideas on how this could be accomplished. A lot depends on who is building it, but if you want to engage someone to design it for you drop me a line.

Have you considered "telling" the story and having the heart break apart piece by piece (I am sure we can all relate). The heart could be created so it looks like it is made of stained glass and the pieces could be plexi-glass. The illusion of stained glass would give the reason for the "lines" in the heart, where the individual pieces would break apart. Another option would be to have one solid colour of plexi-glass (red) simulating the stained glass, and the "solder" be made of flash string. Step 1 - curtain goes up and heart is restored. Step 2 - couple embraces behind stained glass, string is set on fire and a solid piece of glass is seen. Glass gives you a great visual and some very appealing options for lighting

Why do people who are anti-illusion post here anyway? As Chris said.....this is the "Grand Illusion" section.

Krendl, I was going to suggest a paper tear/flash restoration, but I see you are going a different direction. I think Jonathan and Kevin have wonderful ideas, spellbinders is also really good if you wanted to go smaller.

Personally I don't mind setting up and taking down props.....that's why God invented stage crews.

LOL W_S! I actually like Kevin's concept. Johnathan is full of innovative ideas...so it would be cool to find out what he has in mind.

He is definitely right, though...some of the onstage romance stuff can get VERY sappy.

I'm just amazed that Spellbinder actually had a suggestion that didn't require you to build it out of PVC pipe, or something that Wiz Kid Qua-Fiki performs.

The point is visibility and movement. The gentlemen mentioned the use of a female assistant in the routine. A narrowly focused follow spot (a pin spot is what you use to illuminate a mirror ball) would exclude her interaction which might be very important to his presentational vision. Grand Illusion allows the interpretations of magic using the entire physique, why do some magicians vision of magic always stop at the wrists?

David did those pieces using image magnification for live performances and a closeup shot for TV. Not everyone can afford IMag, thus visibility becomes critical. If you perform in a 500 seat theater, try doing Twisting the Aces, it doesn't work. Grand Illusion is a style of magic created for large venues. The largest venue for me was 28,000 people, which required IMag even for the largest illusions. That kind of gig is rare, but 500 to 1000 seat theaters are not. This doesn't mean illusionist can't think small. Cyrano, Linking Finger Rings, Sands of the Desert and 5 card Repeat are effects I present regularly because they well play at a distance. Metaphysics is an intimate theater show I wrote and perform whose mood would be destroyed by IMag. Knowing your venue isn't narrow thinking, it's smart thinking.

I am merely trying to get the original poster to see that what he is suggesting is akin to attempting to do the Zig Zag lady with just the picture painted on the front of the cabinet and no woman inside. When you saw a woman in half, you usually have two things going on - sawing a box in half and... oh yes, there is a live person inside the box at the time. If you just saw the box in half and restore it with no one inside, you don't have Grand Illusion, but you do have a great big cut and restored trick.

Magic occurs in the mind. The Grand Illusion is not about props, but in building empathy between the audience and the performers and getting the audience to care about whether that poor captive woman on stage is really in danger of being killed or not.

If you want to draw an audience into a situation where they care about the state of the performer's love life (i.e. a broken heart) you need more than a prop heart to tear and restore, no matter how big. You can do it better with a well-told story and a length of (Gypsy) thread than you can with a big box and hoping they catch the symbolism because it happens to be in the shape of a heart.

Spellbinder:

...and this is where the magician's acting ability comes into play. Even using large props requires a performer to be just that...a performer.

Unfortunately, it is this aspect that is often often missing in all types of magic.

The Gypsy Thread can become an allegorical tale, with a cast of one. My comments reflected the desire of the performer to involve the girl and in my PM I gave him advice on how to construct a method. Spellbinder I agree with you that the "worship of the prop" is found all to often In Grand Illusion. All my work on my sawing Clearly Impossible, work that has spanned 20 years, was to reduce the illusion's (prop) footprint to nil. No one is arguing the power that a story driven manipulate piece can have. But, once you add a second character, their relationship and how it is read by the audience becomes the concern. Can it be presented with the use of simple props, of course, but that doesn't mean it has to be or that choosing a different scale is less magical and artful.