Joshua Lozoff: Life is Magic

Photo by Jeremy M. Lange

Click for larger image • Cutting the deck: magician Joshua Lozoff at his home

It makes a difference when your YouTube video gets a quarter of a million hits. Regional mentalist and magician Joshua Lozoff has noticed a few changes since his August appearance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us found legs on the video platform. “More folks are coming to my shows; it’s definitely a reference for people now,” he says. He’s made some changes as well, adding a number of new illusions and effects to his show Life Is Magic since his prior local performance at The ArtsCenter last year. For the first time, Lozoff will deconstruct a trick, deliberately showing how it’s done, as Penn and Teller have famously done with the classic ball-and-cups effect. “When they do that, you see the skill, intelligence, and creativity behind the illusion,” Lozoff says. “But I’m more interested in what happens when we replace the sense of mystery and wonder with knowledge. Will the audience really be more satisfied knowing how a trick is done, or is something lost when that happens?” —Byron Woods