Penn & Teller Teach the Art of Magic MasterClass Review

The Penn & Teller Teach the Art of Magic MasterClass was MAGICAL.

This MasterClass is what my ten-year-old self would have loved.

The little boy version of me who wanted to be a magician, who spent countless nights hunched in front of the TV watching David Blaine, Derren Brown, and, of course, the great Penn and Teller themselves.

The Penn and Teller Magic MasterClass spoke to the boy who received magic kits every birthday.

The boy who put on little shows in his front room where he’d make his brother “disappear!”

The boy who wanted to wow his friends.

I wanted the eyes on me in social settings, but I was deeply introverted so the only way I felt comfortable being the centre of attention was if I was giving a performance.

And when I hit my early teenage years I wanted to impress girls and magic was my way into that.

I actually successfully chatted up my first two girlfriends by showing them a disappearing coin trick 😉

And the Penn and Teller Teach the Art of Magic MasterClass brought all the joyful nostalgia of my magic-obsessed childhood tumbling forth.

Penn & Teller Teach the Art of Magic MasterClass Review

You know this is going to be an exhilarating masterclass right from the introduction.

The moment Teller starts talking for the first time felt like real magic, and he breaks his silence with an extremely thoughtful meditation on the nature of learning magic.

Of course, we’re told when you learn how a trick is done there is an initial feeling of disappointment (“oh, he just held it in his other hand”), but once you dig behind that, that’s real magic.

You learn about everything that goes into it – from the history of certain moves, to the technology involved, the physical skill, acting, and psychology.

When you know all of this, next time you see a magician perform your appreciation is going to be even deeper. 

As Penn says in the beginning of this course, this masterclass is for everyone but mainly for beginners in the art of magic.

From the person who has never done magic before in their life to someone who has dabbled in magic tricks with their friends and family.

And if you don’t intend to actually perform magic but are just interested in it, there is a lot of stuff about the history of the craft.

Having said that, I’m sure even if you are advanced in the art of magic, you’re going to want to enrol in this course just to hear about the craft from the great Penn and Teller.

You’re going to need a few simple props and you’ll want everything ready in your hands while you’re watching along.

There are a group of volunteers who are a stand-in for you and me – other beginners in magic who are learning alongside us.

You’re going to learn right alongside Penn and Teller and you have the advantage of being able to replay and slow it down until you nail the tricks.

This is the exciting thing, as Penn says:

“These are really strong tricks. We’re not teaching you garbage.”

And if you learn just the stuff they teach you, and learn these tricks perfectly, the world of magic opens up to you and you’ll suddenly have hundreds of tricks at your fingertips.

Once you’ve learned the tricks, the next stage is to go out and perform them for everybody.

In those situations you’ll learn something every single time.

You’ll find out what you can get away with, find out when you’re busted, and have a blast along the way.

As Penn says, “It’s a really special feeling you get when you’ve distorted someone’s reality, shown them something impossible. I’m really envious. The first time you feel that, it’s a pretty great feeling. And the high you’re about to experience is a high I’ve been chasing most of my life.” 

The first module in the Penn and Teller MasterClass kicks off with a very old sleight of hand trick that has been handed down through generations and appears across all the different cultures.

I loved the historical preamble to this trick. It really gets you in the mood to get into the trick and makes you want to learn it even more funnily enough. 

After the historical information, Penn and Teller dive right into demonstrating what the trick should look like.

The tricks are done with distinctive Penn and Teller flavour.

You have their patois and flourish and storytelling, but this is also mixed with Penn and Teller talking you through what’s happening as it’s happening.

Penn and Teller become teachers and performers at the same time.

And I’ve gotta say even these simple tricks look amazing.

You’ll be thinking, “How the heck can I get to that stage?!”

Even going into the tricks knowing they’re teaching sleight of hand, you can’t see how they’re doing it – until they tell you. 

We hear the first two rules of magic:

1. Never do the same trick twice.
2. Never tell the audience how the trick is done.

And then Penn and Teller proceed to spectacularly shatter these two rules by doing the same trick again and then telling us EXACTLY how the trick is done.

I’m telling you, if you’re not giddy like a school kid all the way through this masterclass you are not a true fan of magic.

I was positively smiling ear to ear and shaking with glee. 

After saying they are going to break those first two rules, Penn goes on to outline two more rules of magic (one of which is unwritten but certainly universally accepted) and then they both proceed to break all four rules all in the name of showing us how to do the tricks ourselves. 

Penn and Teller are fantastic teachers.

They are methodical, clear, and precise in their teaching and make the process of learning as streamlined and intuitive as possible.

I don’t have experience with other magic video courses, though compared to the many books I thumbed through in my younger years this masterclass is much easier to follow. 

What I really loved is the real sense of community with other learners laughing through the same learning process as me – it made learning a real blast.

And then, once you’ve mastered that little sleight of hand trick, they build on it and build on it until gets more and more complicated, introducing other props into the mix. 

Every explanation is beautiful and elegant and even in this masterclass there is a surprise lurking around every corner – it’s pure joy. 

Then once you’ve learned a few fundamental tricks and moves, Penn and Teller reel back and delve into some fascinating psychological and philosophical discussions about the nature of magic – what is magic? 

I personally found Penn’s opinions on the difference between the art of illusions and the art of tricks to be thoroughly interesting.

And I also really loved the duo’s thoughts on the principles of engagement.

Then it’s straight into a module on the art of misdirection, which transitions nicely into a module on coin tricks.

The way the syllabus is set up, like practically all of the MasterClasses, is very impressive and clearly Penn and Teller have put a lot of thought into the best way to teach their craft. 

Here we see the wisdom of decades of craft compressed and distilled:

The strongest lie is the lie the audience tells itself. 

It’s a treat to hear the theoretical and have it backed up by example clips from Penn and Teller’s long career. 

I absolutely loved the module on coin magic.

Firstly, I love coin tricks because of their versatility and I think they’re worth learning because in social situations you or someone else will always have a coin on you so it’s an easy transition.

I watched this module many times and I’m still practicing to make things look smooth, but I’ve already got the working parts down thanks to Penn and Teller’s excellent teaching.

I got the trick using sound misdirection VERY quickly.

Obviously the thing to work on to make it smoother is patter and performance, but as for the mechanics of the trick I picked it up super quickly and spent the whole day crazily happy with myself. 

Then once you’ve learned a new trick, the syllabus is set up so that we take a step back and learn more about the philosophy of magic.

It’s a really nice dynamic, one that makes the masterclass feel extremely whole as a learning experience.

Learn a trick, then have a discussion about the craft.

Then it’s time to practice some sleight of hand and build up the foundation for more tricks, then we pull back and have a conversation about topics as diverse as deception, freewill, cause and effect, or how to exploit the human brain (which includes particularly fascinating discussions about “closing the door”, the uselessness of eyewitness testimony, and how at eight years old we’ve effectively lived half our life). 

• Pro-tip: MasterClass have an All Access Pass, which is crazy good value for money (check it out here).

I really loved the discussion on magic vs lying just because of the ideas it sparked in my mind.

When we get into the nitty gritty of thinking about how to get an audience to tell itself a story, suddenly you see deception everywhere.

You see it in the words politicians use, you see it in advertisements selling you things you don’t need, and you see it in the performances and stories that sweep you away.

It’s these parts of the masterclass – the philosophical and psychological discussions of performance – that make me think this course would be wonderful viewing not just for the budding magician but for performers of all kinds – whether you’re a standup comic or an actor, I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of the Penn and Teller MasterClass. 

I also really loved the module on the kind of magic that Penn and Teller hate – mentalism.

This was a fascinating reveal of how people who claim to have ESP or psychic abilities exploit those who come to them in grief, through a play-by-play demonstration of the exact tricks these people use. 

Of course, it’s not long after you’ve learnt how to do the French drop and a bunch of coin tricks before you get into one of my favourite aspects of magic – card tricks. 

The card trick module is really cool and one of the reasons for it being so great is that it’s not just taught by Penn and Teller.

They bring in Johnny Thompson, one of the greatest magicians in the world.

Seeing as Johnny sadly passed away in March, this was a very bittersweet lesson. 

Card magic is like learning chords on a guitar.

As Penn says, once you learn a few simple principles of card magic, you can “build your whole magic routine” based on that.

Card magic was one of my favourite – if not my favourite module – out of the entire Penn and Teller MasterClass.

I was grinning ear to ear thanks to Johnny Thompson who taught card tricks in the most endearing way possible.

This is A LOT of fun. And I’m going to have to show my dad this lesson because he loves card tricks and will get a big kick out of this one – but I’ll only show him after I’ve successfully pulled the trick off on him first 😉

The secret to every card magic trick – and magic in general – is this one simple principle, in Penn’s words:

“You’re giving them a choice that’s no choice at all.”

I really love that.

After card magic, you get to learn rope tricks too.

I haven’t replicated this yet but the walkthrough looks as effective as all of the other modules so far.

Another module I loved was the one on principles of performance.

This is where you learn effective rehearsal strategies and how to plan a trick right from the idea stage even when you don’t know how to pull it off yet (an extreme example being jumping out of an airplane with someone else handing you a parachute).

This is the hardest way to do magic but also the best way and Penn and Teller believe that some of their best tricks have come from this approach of planning.

I won’t give away Penn and Teller’s rehearsal blueprint but I will say it stems from this mindset:

Do the trick as though you don’t have to do any trickery.

On top of this I loved the guide about how to go about constructing your own repertoire of magic tricks, complete with recommendations of the big difficult books Penn and Teller learned magic from.

The only criticism of the Penn and Teller MasterClass is that I wanted it to be longer!

Penn and Teller are both sensitive souls with deep intellectual philosophies revolving around the human psyche and I came away from this masterclass with a whole lot more than the foundation of a magic routine.

I came away with a greater appreciation of how the mind works, morality, and what moves us as human beings.

If you don’t tear up during the module about the joy of magic, you don’t hold a true love for magic in your heart. This is where you hear Penn and Teller’s magic mission statement, the belief system that informs how they choose to conduct themselves onstage. Absolutely fascinating stuff and definitely gives you a lot to think about.

The Penn & Teller Teach the Art of Magic MasterClass is an experience.

All in all, the Penn and Teller MasterClass was a fantastic experience and one of my favourite courses in the MasterClass catalogue so far.

It’s a no-brainer for anyone with a heart filled with curiosity and magic and a desire to fill the lives of others with joy.

Check it out and let me know once you’ve mastered the whispering lady!

You can enrol in the Penn and Teller MasterClass here.