Meet The Team - Joshua
By Damian Jennings - Thursday, February 28, 2019
Who are you and what do you do at Vanishing Inc. Magic?
I'm Joshua Jay, and many years ago, I co-founded Vanishing Inc with my best friend, Andi Gladwin.
What got you into magic?
My dad, who was not a magician, did a card trick for me, and interestingly, would NOT tell me how it was done. So I went to my room and figured it out for myself. And the act of engineering the trick was what got me hooked. To this day, that's still the part of magic I like most: solving methods. And the trick? I would later find out it was called "Out of This World."
What sort of magic do you do now?
I've become mostly a parlor magician. I still love close-up but more and more I'm performing on small and medium stages.
Who are you magical heroes?
There are so many! Juan Tamariz, Guy Hollingworth, Rune Klan, Tommy Wonder, Dai Vernon, Max Malini, and dozens more.
What’s your favourite magic book?
The Books of Wonder changed the way I look at magic. The Workers series by Mike Close were also transformative. As a kid The Collected Almanac was my go-to because it was this HUGE collection of challenging sleight-of-hand, and Stars of Magic was this book I could pick up and learn material from any page. And more recently, Caveney's Wonders has astounded me because of its breadth and scope.
What’s your favourite magic trick?
Whatever trick I'm working on.
What’s one bit of advice you can share you’ve learned over the years?
When young magicians ask me this, I find the best advice I can offer is, you have to REALLY love magic to be involved in our craft. Everything else is secondary. I see pros in New York who are, essentially, trapped in magic. They do shows because they need to live, but they long ago lost the love for magic. I see people at our conventions every year who are like zombies, there only because they always come.
What Vanishing Inc. tricks do you perform most regularly?
At the moment "Balance," but also "Prism" and "Phantom," and "Inferno." Of other people's material, "Glance" is a hands-down favorite, and I'm THOROUGHLY enjoying Andi's writing on Edward G. Brown, which has just come out.
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