The Summer 2007 issue of Cabinet Magazine features an article by two London-based authors, Sally O’Reilly and Ian Saville, entitled I Can See Your Ideology Moving. From the start it grabs the reader with its droll humour, setting the scene as follows:

The scene: A windy seaside town in England. An arts festival (entitled, perhaps pretentiously, The Windy Seaside Town Biennale) is in full swing. An audience of skeptical locals, theater-seat-radicals and bloodthirsty performance-art lovers, sated after fish and chips and lashings of warm ale, is watching a man speaking to a picture of Karl Marx. More unusually, the picture speaks back to the man, for this is Ian Saville, socialist magician and ventriloquist, demonstrating his revolutionary art.
At the back of the hall, the art critic Sally O’Reilly watches curiously, almost unable to contain the questions that crowd her mind. The audience is laughing …

Not only does the story continue on to introduce the characters of Engels and Brecht - you have to adore anyone that can conjure such figures to not only prove a point but to provide humour - it more importantly serves to introduce us to the still-living figure of Ian Saville who, as it turns out, is a very real performer that has been performing a very real show, a “socialist magic act”, for the past 25 years.

I can report on nothing more than the impressions that I’ve received from reading the article, Mr. Saville’s website and watching the introduction to his show on YouTube (available via his site), but all that I’ve seen indicates that this is a hilarious, intelligent and very British show that should be getting much more attention than it has to date.

Nevertheless, Mr. Saville has garnered some tremendous reviews, such as:

“Would make the hardest liner laugh …. Ideologically sound and magnificently bonkers.”
-The Independent

“Ian Saville’s one-man show is a gloriously witty and consummately theatrical manifestation of what could become a whole new concept in political theatre. [...] Saville has taken the tired old tricks of the magic brigade and given them a whole new subversive meaning….An astoundingly funny display.”

-Time Out

Magnificently bonkers! A whole new subversive meaning! Great quotes, and only two of very many found on his website.

His shows have also won numerous awards, and he’s performed in some bizarre and grandiose venues, from picket lines to the Royal Albert Hall!

Though his Magic for Socialism website is not much to look at, and his awards and 25 year resume have not attracted the attention of the broader media - at least on this side of the pond - I for one pay my respect to anyone that successfully performs a show that bears the title Brecht on Magic.

Kudos to Ian Saville for creating, performing and continually pushing forward with such an unusual show for so many years. One has to wonder if it’s even possible to do here in the States.

Find Ian Saville’s Magic For Socialism website here.

*photo: Ian Saville holding his talking picture of Karl Marx. Photos Jonathan Allen. Via Cabinet Magazine website.
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tags: bertolt brecht, brecht, brecht on magic, cabinet magazine, ian saville, karl marx, marx, sally o’reilly, british comedy, magic, performance art, socialism

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at Sep 20, 07 | 6:39 am and is filed under Art, Just Noumenon Posts, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.