Puppeteers and magicians are masters in directing attention. They make their audiences focus on one part of their performance and lose sight of the rest. This shows their skillful mastery of techniques, but also tells us something about our own way of perceiving. In this episode, Valentijn Byvanck talks with puppeteer and dramatist Rachel Warr & magician Will Houstoun. They discuss how directing attention can create positive change, how their skills can be used in other fields, and what we can all learn from it.

TRAINING THE SENSES

Knowledge is not only acquired visually at schools through language and text books. Learning involves all of our senses: we learn by listening, tasting, smelling, touching – and even by using our intuition. In the Training the Senses program, participants explore and discover a new vocabulary for their senses and a new way to transmit experience and acquire knowledge. Training the Senses is an ongoing series of workshops by Marres since 2016. The podcast conversations (since 2022) are moderated by Valentijn Byvanck, director of Marres.

For more information about Training the Senses and upcoming events check marres.org. For more info on this particular workshop click here.

ABOUT RACHEL WARR

Rachel Warr is a puppeteer and dramatist from England. She has shown her work at UK venues such as The Barbican Center and Little Angel Theater and at festivals in Singapore, Turkey, Czech Republic, Germany, France and Canada. Warr participates in a series of interdisciplinary research projects. In it, she compares the skills of doctors and puppeteers with surgical teams and clinicians, explores ways of transferring knowledge with a bio-scientist and illusionist, and works with a fashion designer on a catwalk show with 1.9-meter-long puppets.

ABOUT WILL HOUSTON

Will Houstoun is a member of The Inner Magic Circle and winner of the European Magic Championships. He has a doctorate in the history of magic and a literary scholarship from the Academy of Magical Arts in Los Angeles. His one man show Dr. Houstoun's Conjuring surprises the public with its magical finds and fascinating stories. Houston is Magician in Residence at the Royal College of Music/Imperial College London Center for Performance Science, researcher at Imperial College's Faculty of Medicine and researcher at The Victoria and Albert Museum Research Institute.