SHARING JOY THROUGH MAGIC

MICHELLE LEE ON GROWING UP AS A MAGICIAN’S DAUGHTER

→ By Cameron Pien (‘23) FEATURE

For most people, magic is a mystery. For junior Michelle Lee, magic has been a lifelong companion.

As the daughter of a professional magician, Lee accompanied her father to his performances and grew up behind the scenes of a magician’s world. “I usually just went to help clean up, but I watched from afar. And I saw that everyone in the audience was so happy, and I wanted to do that for people,” she recalled.

Her father, James Lee, said, “I’ve accomplished my goal of becoming a professional magician, and now, I’m sharing my knowledge of the art of magic with the next generation.” He began teaching his daughter how to do magic when she was four. When she was six, she started performing in shows. As Michelle Lee grew older, she refined her skills by attending workshops and joining organizations for magicians.

The magician community in Hawaii is relatively small (around fifty to sixty people according to Michelle Lee), and she describes it as supportive and welcoming. She’s part of a worldwide organization called the Society of American Magicians, and one of her favorite memories is performing at the Christmas show for the Hawaii chapter of the group when she was ten. “It had been one of my dreams since I was five to go on the show, and at that time I was still really small and hadn’t done extremely big performances. I was super excited about it since I was the first child of the club to do this show. The club was selling tickets and there were about eight hundred people watching, including newscasters” she said.

Michelle Lee comes from a family of performers who use their talents to serve the elderly community. Her mother is a piano teacher and does recitals at care homes, and so Michelle Lee and her father were inspired to start performing magic for the elderly.

Although many aspects of her act remain the same, Michelle Lee does have to adjust her presentation to suit her audience. “For community service, the audience reaction is sometimes different, because the people are older, so they’re not going to interact as much as if I was doing a show elsewhere,” she said.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Michelle Lee performed in three to four large shows a year, and she’d practice for a couple hours daily during the weeks leading up to the event. Planning for a show involves a number of factors. She said, “[The tricks I perform] depend where I’m going and on the audience. If it’s all younger kids, I can’t do anything they won’t understand. Normally, I’ll use doves…But if I’m at nursing homes, I don’t usually incorporate overly large props, because they’re hard to bring.”

There are three main types of magic: stage, illusions, and close up. Michelle Lee explained, “Stage and illusion go together. But usually professional magicians, like David Copperfield, will perform illusions, which are tricks like cutting people in half or tying people up. For stage magic, some people will also talk during larger card tricks so everybody in the audience can participate. But in my opinion, stage involves not talking, so you have a more elegant act. It’s just more appealing to the eye. Close up is smaller hand tricks with cards or silk that can be done in a shorter amount of time.”

Michelle Lee’s speciality is stage magic, and her favorite trick is the final one in her act. “Prior to it, I produce four doves from different places, and they’ll be in a big birdcage. I cover the cage, then throw it up and make it disappear,” she said.

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