Illusionist and magician Scott Silven on his show ‘The Journey’ that will take you on a trip like no other
- Co-commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Silven’s interactive performance takes audiences on a virtual tour of his Scotland – and their own memories
- He started learning magic when he was five, took a hypnosis course when he was 15 and was performing in New York in his mid-twenties
Scott Silven wants to go travelling with you. No vaccine is required. No negative Covid-19 test will be necessary. You won’t even have to wear a mask. There are a few pre-boarding formalities, but you’ll only have to bring one piece of luggage: an object that means something to you.
The landscapes you’ll explore are the west coast of Scotland, where Silven grew up, plus a combination of his memory and your memory – and you’ll do it from your own home, because Silven is an illusionist and a magician.
His interactive performance, called The Journey, is part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, which co-commissioned it. One of its beauties, aside from the Scottish Highlands, is that it’s pandemic-proof.
Up to 30 participants can take part. As with any real-world audience, Silven can summon individuals out of that intimate digital cluster and, thanks to the wonders of technology, interact directly with their holograms. That’s 21st-century magic. Or, as The New York Times succinctly summed up At The Illusionist’s Table, another of Silven’s shows: Wow. Wow. Wow.
“It’s not about exploiting people’s emotions or memories to create a magic trick,” Silven says on a Zoom call from an atmospheric, dimly lit room. “It’s about using those moments to coalesce with my experience. They’re in their own homes and the audience is seeing me in my own home as well, just as you are now.”
It’s 3.15am in Scotland, 11.15am in Hong Kong but 10.15pm in Indiana, where Silven has just finished a live virtual show. Because he’s doing a North American tour, which involves two hour-long shows six days a week, he’s decided it’s easier to live life on US time. He says he hasn’t seen daylight since Christmas. Presumably that’s less of an issue for an illusionist than it might be for the rest of us.