Performance Potter as Magician
A magic show is a communicative transaction between performer and audience, according to B. Keith Murphy in "Magic as Cooperative Deceit." As a communication in my example, the speaker is the potter/magician, the message is the meaning attached to the raku process being presented; the channel consists of both verbal instructions and non-verbal demonstrations of what to do with the pots; and the receiver is the audience, who sometimes watch and at other times participate as puppets of the orchestrating potter. Potter, Tim Andrews, is well aware of the magician analogy when he writes about an English potter John Bev who demonstrated raku in a department store in 1952 in Kingston on Thames, Surrey. The artist removed pots from the kiln " like rabbits out of a hat, to the delight of onlookers who had previously decorated bisqued pots" (16).The audience responds with gasps of astonishment and applause. Normally in magic, the magician tries to make the audience believe that she is doing something contrary to natural laws. While that deceit is not necessarily present with the potter, the audience using their own experiences about the rapid heating and cooling of objects, resulting in thermal shock and breakage, deceive themselves about what is probable with raku firing.
The potter as magician gives only the amount of information that is necessary to perform the trick of firing a raku pot, and for novices the information is not very technical. Laypersons, as Murphy suggests, tend to create complex rather than simple explanations and thus are easily fooled (92). The raku novice may devise complicated explanations about the firing skill of the potter that keeps the pots from bursting, but seldom will novices realize that a special clay has been mixed that will withstand thermal shock. Magicians, after all, never tell how a trick is done, and raku performers will not divulge the chemistry processes unless asked. Misdirection is a tool of the magician as she helps the audience to focus on one thing while she manipulates something else. Raku participants, not knowing what to look for in the performance, watch the glow of the kiln until the magician with his magic wand tongs pulls the pots from the heat. While the potter knows to look closely for the glaze to sinter during the early melting stage, bubble during the middle, and then turn molten in the last stage before removing the pot from the kiln, the novice, misdirects herself by watching only the orange glow of the pots. Although the potter is definitely controlling the performance, the novices get the impression through their painting of pots and watchfulness over the kiln that they are helping the miracles to occur.
