With Magic, There Is No Such Thing as Total Invention

Is originality overrated?

Nothing in art is more thrilling than a new idea. And the cliché is the enemy of anyone with standards. And yet, have you looked around at the culture lately?

Reboots, sequels and franchises pack movie theaters. Jukebox musicals remain popular on Broadway. TikTok virality is often built on repurposed songs and dances. The amount of derivative work makes you wonder if the demand for the new is in decline. The acceleration of artificial intelligence into our lives raises the stakes. What can artists or writers do that ChatGPT cannot? We need an answer quick.

By dramatizing the anxiety behind the question, “A Simulacrum,” a fascinating play of ideas disguised as a magic show at Atlantic Stage 2, lingers in my mind, growing in stature upon reflection the way collections of tricks rarely do. Ever since Penn and Teller burst on the scene, every magician seemed to be deconstructing illusions while doing them. But this peek behind the curtain is something new, while, as its title suggests, not being original at all. That paradox becomes part of the point.

The show is a reproduction of a series of conversations over several years between the magician Steve Cuiffo and the director Lucas Hnath (both are credited as playwrights) about the development of this work. We only hear Hnath, on a recording played by Cuiffo, the sole one onstage. Hnath asks Cuiffo to show him a trick, and after he does, multiple times, artistic tension between collaborators emerges.

The crux of their conflict is that Hnath, an artist from the world of theater not magic, appears unimpressed with how many of the tricks derive from previous magicians. He is indifferent to a familiar but amazing trick in which Cuiffo rips up a newspaper and puts it back together. Show me something new, Hnath says, as if that is the only thing worth doing. Come up with a “total invention.”

Cuiffo, who has an amiable if strained smile, a precise gait and spiky hair, is stymied if not baffled by this request. “It’s all a variation of something,” he says of magic. “All methods are variations.”

This is something I have heard magicians say offstage. The idea is that there are a limited number of tricks, and every one of a certain stature in the field knows them, more or less. So the difference between being good and great is less about the radical novelty of the illusion than the packaging, the persona and the rigor of the performance.

In other words, there is no such thing as total invention. This idea is built into so many magic shows, including the current hit, “Inner Circle,” by Asi Wind at the Gym at Judson in Greenwich Village. The dialogue around theater tends to be slightly different. Its history is full of revolutions and breaks from the past with occasional acknowledgments of influence integrated into the work.

I’d argue that this is a difference in style and rhetoric more than substance. All art is built on influences, old forms, inherited tropes, even the greatest examples. Shakespeare was an inveterate plot thief. On a recent podcast for The Economist, a quiz asked employees to guess whether lyrics were from songs by Bob Dylan or a ChatGPT imitation. They didn’t do that well. Dylan is often seen as an avatar of originality, but of course his singular mind operates not unlike ChatGPT, collecting, synthesizing and processing references.

Cuiffo is a skilled if more ordinary performer, who is open about his debts. He begins tricks by reading from old books of magic or citing something that Houdini did a century ago. Hnath balks, suggesting that quoting sources crowds out what matters, the revelation of who he really is. To his directorial eye, that appears to be where originality lies. In the self. And he sets out to get Cuiffo to to be vulnerable, to embrace failure.

Cuiffo wants no part of it. He prefers to hide behind his craft. If he could have one real magic skill, he says, it would be the ability to disappear.

Magic has historically maintained a narrow emotional palette. But this is changing. Derek DelGaudio’s 2017 stage show “In & of Itself” (which became a documentary on Hulu) was the last real reinvention of the form because it found a way to not just surprise people but also move them. Its most bravura trick is rooted less in a display of mastery than one of vulnerability. Its big crescendo, which involves a quiet reading of a letter by an audience member, is more private and personal than magic typically has been. “A Simulacrum” aims for a similar if more subtle effect, in a more downbeat, even melancholy mood. It’s a show that is less about magic than the toll doing it takes.

That image of the confident, in control showman who always comes out on top, it’s nothing if not predictable. That makes it a useful tool for misdirection, a setup for a surprise and reinvention.

At one point, Cuiffo does a fairly modest-looking card trick, the one where he gets closest to claiming originality. “I’ve definitely made it my own, in a way,” he says. Asked how long he worked on it, the magician says 14 years. Hnath asks him to do it again and when he does, the director says, with a touch of cruelty: “That’s it?”

Making art look effortless is the hardest and least appreciated work. Whatever Hnath says, he clearly understands that, and his show aims for a casual, off-handed style, as if the audience just walked in on two people working on an average day. The magic tricks are beautifully done, but not especially unusual. Cuiffo performs the final one with a minimum of patter. He does it for his wife, whom you hear on the recording but don’t see. She hates magicians and magic, which adds to the drama and the poignancy. The trick is a nice feat, but it isn’t played for a big ta-da.

The magician gets more reserved as the show proceeds. His physicality and patter recede and he projects an odd melancholy. By the end, it’s not even clear that he likes magic. For the big finale, he mumbles, “Yeah.”

It’s the least triumphant end to a magic show I have ever seen. Is this exhausted understatement an honest reflection of his feelings about his work or might it just be an attempt at doing something new? Or both?

In art, the new and the old are inextricably tied together. The balance shifts, work to work, but you can’t divorce one from the other. You don’t leave this show thinking that originality isn’t essential. Far from it. It’s just rare. That only makes it more precious.