Career & Entrepreneurship
In Conversation with Josephine Lee – Part 2
You might remember her as the stunning magician from Britain’s Got Talent who charmed everyone with her illusions and elegance. Josephine Lee is now all set to cast a spell across the world. Vivamost brings to you the leading lady magician up and close in her own words in our three part interview series. Read Part 1 here.
Source: Josephine Lee Archives
The Challenges
Vivamost: Tell us more about these struggles on representing a different gender on stage?
Josephine Lee: It’s been quite hard because there aren’t many women magicians. Women in magic are expected to fit in boxes and disappear rather than being on the outside performing themselves. I needed to try and find a new style, new ideas to make it work for me. I’ve had to use my creative side and try to design new costumes that would suit women, that look elegant, and still most importantly, work for the magic. Being a woman, I think, is something to be celebrated and I believe it’s still a work in progress for any woman trying to be magicians. It’s an exciting adventure to try and discover how to make magic work for women.
V: And you are doing it beautifully with grace. You have a charming smile that brings a whole new personality to the show.
JL: Thank you. I appreciate that.
V: Who all were involved in this creative adventure?
JL: Fortunately, working as a magician’s assistant for so long helped me meet people who have been very excited about the idea of me venturing out on my own. I have had plenty of help from various people in the industry. Together it was a journey of trial and errors and then learning from those errors.
V: Has being a woman made you face any gender inequality or other challenges?
JL: Not necessarily from people. But yes in terms of logistics like costumes and planning. As I said before, magic is mainly made for women being on the inside of illusions so it can be hard for me to think of creating a show, where I don’t have any other females in the show. Men hire women to be their assistants but I don’t want to put women in boxes. It would be great if I were the only woman and all my assistants were men, however, physically with magic, that’s very difficult given the difference in our body builds.
V: Did you have to deal with unfavourable reactions from audience because it is not a everyday scene for public to see a female magician on world stage?
JL: I guess as women are physically and naturally smaller we need to work little bit harder to match the stage presence of a man, you need a big personality and you need tremendous confidence as well to fill up that space. Nevertheless, if you prove yourself audience will eventually like you.
V: In this era of transparency, how well can a magician make his or her own name? The internet is filled with videos and content on revealing/debunking videos on magic tricks. The decoders didn’t leave you too alone, YouTube has multiple videos revealing your signature acts as well. How do you feel about it?
JL: I have thought many times about emailing these people and just kindly asking why they feel the need to do this, because I don’t think they understand how much work goes into creating an act. Not only the work, but it’s someone’s livelihood. I have come to the conclusion that I just feel sorry for them. I’d like to think that they have better things to do than try and destroy people’s careers but if they don’t, then I feel sorry for them. That’s all I can say.
The thing with magic is people are curious, it’s almost like a game to figure out how does that work? You become furious if you can’t figure it out but that’s the beauty of magic. You either come and think ‘Wow, that looks so amazing or, you come in you try and figure out the puzzle. Magic’s always going to be popular for this very aspect.
Working in Collaborations
V: This is the second time that you are collaborating with Peter. How the experience has been?
JL: Yes, second time! Peter has created fabulous work for the magic industry and I couldn’t me more excited to join him again this year. The possibility of working with him and learning from him is a privilege.
V: When you collaborate with artists from similar background like illusion, what goes into the process of planning the event? How do you make it exciting for the audience when you both do same genre of magic?
JL: Peter’s style is very different to mine. The first thing is to figure out who you are on stage and to create your own style. You are you and not someone trying to be someone else and that’s very, very important. So, Peter is Peter and I am me. I think, when you watch the show, you will see that we’re so different.
V: How important are the collaborations for artists?
JL: They are very important. The Magic industry is quite an interesting one for collaborations because a lot of magicians don’t like to collaborate. And, the reason for that is fear of your idea being stolen by other artists. It is hard to copyright our acts. So there are a great deal of magicians who fear to share because anyone can copy that idea and perform the same elsewhere. Then it is no longer the first magician’s idea. Having said that, I strongly believe collaboration is highly beneficial for artists in a competitive industry like Magic if you do it with right people. For instance, Peter Marvey and Friends is a team of skilled artists and also good-hearted souls. When you work with fantastic people like these who want to help with your great idea and like to see you succeed, you automatically thrive. You’ll see from this show everyone’s like a little family and I think that’s probably why everyone has been asked back from last year.
Josephine Lee is among the illusion artists in Peter Marvey and Friends – Stars of Illusions at Maag Halle, Zurich. To learn more about Josephine Lee, visit www.josephinelee.co.uk
