Reality Magic: Seeing is believing, or fainting

05 December 2014 - 02:08 By Yolisa Mkele
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SHOCK VALUE: Steven Frayne - aka Dynamo - is full of surprises
SHOCK VALUE: Steven Frayne - aka Dynamo - is full of surprises

As far as magicians go, Dynamo - known to the British government as Steven Frayne - is on a par with Merlin, Albus Dumbledore and Aladdin's Jafar. He was recently in Johannesburg as a guest of Discovery Channel.

The UK-born magician has one of the most watched shows on DStv. That's because his repertoire of head-scratching enchantments includes levitating children and himself, walking on water, creating fire with his mind and vanishing through floors.

Had he lived just two centuries earlier, he would have been burnt to cinders. Fortunately he lives in a time when the reaction to the extraordinary has simmered down significantly.

"I have had people faint, run away screaming and just stand frozen, completely gobsmacked. That's the amazing thing about what I do. I can never predict how people are going to react - and the reactions are what makes the show exciting," says Frayne.

"After I performed for Snoop Dogg, he pulled out his laptop, found a beat and did a freestyle rap about the magic."

In his show Dynamo: Magician Impossible, this easy-going sorcerer visits different parts of the world inciting incredulity in the native populations.

In the show's first season he took a stroll on the River Thames. Two seasons later he was in Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town, where he conjured an impossibly full bucket of fish from what was previously a handful.

"When I spent time in Khayelitsha the one thing I found there was a yearning for food. So it felt only right that I should leave them with something of value. It was my way of giving back," he says.

He insists he's not trying to recreate himself as Jesus.

"When I think of ideas for the show I try to create an impossible moment. A lot of things in religious history are incredible moments so there'll always be some parallel," he says.

Instead of religion, Dynamo draws on his life experiences.

"When I was young I didn't know how to swim. I'd get picked on and thrown in a dam. At the time I wished I could walk on water. That was the inspiration for that trick, and it's the same with most of them. I try to draw from my own life and what I see around me," he says.

The risk of something going wrong while walking on a river is high, but the magician maintains the real magic lies in being able to work on the fly.

"I'm improvising all the time, so sometimes when a trick doesn't go in the direction I was hoping, I'm able to change it into something different because the audience doesn't know what's coming," says Frayne.

  • 'Dynamo: Magician Impossible' season four on DStv Channel 121, Saturdays at 3pm
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