The Prisoner's Art of Close-Up Impromtu Magic

Magic can affect you to the depth of you core. It is more than just age old secrets and average showmanship, it’s an art-form. I do the kind of magic that is close-up and impromtu, and I like this style of magic for a reason. Maybe the reason is mainly the fact that I spent 12 years of my life in prison perfecting it.

What is Close-Up Impromtu Magic? It is not stage magic, parlor magic, or just showing mere tricks to your friends. I think it’s one of the most challenging performance arts around, especially amongst all the technology that made things once impossible -possible. This possibility is played out by the interaction between the performer and his audience the moment they meet. While I worry about all the elements of my effect when presenting an illusion, the audience wonders exactly what they are seeing and experiencing before them.

Since I view magic as art, the usual question comes to mind for me is, “What can Magic be?” Before I go into my own theories and motivations, allow me to define “Close-Up Impromtu Magic.” It is a performance of what is unrealistic to a real audience, real close, and in real time. The audiences you come across are people you may meet anywhere, and thus, anyone can be your audience. These people can touch you, your props, and are even active participants in the magic effect itself. All these aspects lend to the fact of inherent spontaneity.



Impromtu comes from the word improvised, and this is why I think this art form is much more difficult than regular magic. This difficulty that I describe has pushed me to become better, and gave me a thirst to expand the breadth of my knowledge of all things related to performance. I consider myself an expert at Impromtu Magic; however, I wasn’t always so confident of my skills long ago. Like any laymen, I once knew nothing about the subject. How I came to want to learn magic is a very unique story. It’s not just a story on how I currently do magic, but why magic was applied to my troubled life and as an art form, how magic can be used to affect those around you. A great performance of magic can deeply and philosophically move you, as learning how to perform it my way moved me.


I was first introduced to magic by a door-to-door salesman. He sold a vacuum to my parents, and he did a great job of entertaining me with his charm. More than his charm that he possessed on hand, he pulled out this length of red rope. With the rope he had an enlarged die with a hole drilled into it. What I witnessed next, and the feeling that it evoked inside of me I still haven’t forgotten. I saw a man magically move a die up an inclined rope. He never revealed how it was done, but his presentation left a mark on my then 9 year old mind.



Magic played an insignificant part of my life until I found myself in a prison with the most dangerous, subversive, and cut-throat men inside barbed wire walls -when I was 15 years old. By that time, I had been abused, emotionally weak, homeless for a little over two weeks, and I joined a gang which ultimately helped contribute to my incarceration. At that time, the best you can do in prison was getting your GED and then maybe learn an uncertified trade. Facing a world in which you must check a box on a job application that indicates that you were once a felon, the best strategy for me was to augment my skill set in unexpected ways. I told myself that I would never starve or be in an eat-out-of-trashcan homeless person again. In the same self-agreement, I promised not to turn to crime to feed or benefit myself once released.






I worked and saved money for my first magic book called “Now You See It, Now You Don’t” by Bill Tarr. At that time we were paid 1.00 a day to do 8 hours of work, so it was a real decision for me. Of course, I was excited to receive the text, because in prison, it’s very difficult to get things that everyday people take for granted, and a book is one of them. I read each page of that book twice. I thought I discovered the Holy Grail of hobbies at that time. I practiced the effects I learned in those pages diligently in my cell night-after-night under dim tier lights.

The day finally came when I was fiddling with my deck of playing cards in the “Bullpen.” The Bullpen was a classroom sized room used to hold around 50 – 100 inmates waiting for the hospital, transfer, or other departments in the institution. Everyone hated being locked inside the Bullpen because it was crowded, intemperate, and dangerous. There have been times that arguments sparked up and the inmates on the short end of the stick ended up trampled or stabbed in the Bullpen. If you lost a single battle in there, surely, your reputation would follow you around the whole prison, and then you would have to survive the tiers, gym, and recreation hall. It happened to be a day where the Bullpen was full that I decided to play with my cards in front of all the guys in there. The attitude was pretty negative in the Bullpen until one guy asked what I was doing with the cards. I proceeded to smile and asked him if wanted to see a “trick.” (These days I would never call my effects “tricks,” I find that it demeans what I do.) I performed my own modified version of “The Changing Card” in front of them. The reaction and attention I received from a room full of murderers, rapists, and robbers was amazing. I succeeded in entertaining a “captive” audience that usually are not nice to those around them.



For the first time in my life, I felt in control for once over something, simply by learning something new –and it felt great. I didn’t have to do anything negative or costly to entertain or earn the focus of others. What I learned about myself was that I could sit in my cell and internalize the theories of magic and in turn, apply what I learned practically in front of people very quickly. I had adopted a skill that can be called upon anytime, anywhere, for anything I wanted. What I didn’t know was that I had much more to learn to get to the next level of magic. Soon enough, I was reading about science, psychology, war strategies, acting, espionage, social skills, body language, and much more to enhance my root hobby. Today, I perform magic philosophically. The goal I have for each performance is to ask without asking, the metaphysical question of “What is Real?” The perspective I have as a performer is one of a prisoner attempting to be free. What I learned is that all of us are locked up in some sort of way. So why not enjoy a possibility of the impossible? I think I have a great idea now after writing this blog. Instead of walking to someone and asking them if they would like to see “a trick,” why not just ask them, “Hey, would you like to be momentarily free?” That ought to shake their sense of reality and spark their curiosity at the same time!

Today, people usually don’t care why I perform magic, but even still, they like the fact that I do. I play various roles when I perform for my audience these days. The first role is one of a Philosopher. I get to channel Socrates and ask people in action to what they think is real, is true, and is of value. The second role I get to pursue is one of a performer. Imagine being an actor at a drop of a hat at any moment and in front of any audience and situation. That’s what I do. The last and most important role is representing the person that I am. Who is V, or Vouthynar Sovann? Honestly, nobody cares until I open up to them. Then we realize that we all have something to learn from one another and the perspectives we have. All this leads to a steady undercurrent at this point of my life. This underlying theme, that is made up of Magic, Performance, and Philosophy, walk the same path. They all represent what I wanted and still want most today. I wanted to push the limits and become free of the walls that were around me when incarcerated, and at the same time, those walls that were unfortunately within myself. There are moments when I look back and forward, and see walls erecting before me. The difference now is that I would work to scale those walls as I have done before, and maybe I can help others fly over them too.