Audiences flock to Broadway each year for a dose of "theater magic." And some of this spectacle and wonder is actually created behind the scenes by magicians.
One show making the impossible seem possible on stage is Paranormal Activity, which opened on Broadway on Aug. 25. In it, theatergoers are witness to a haunting.
Chris Fisher, a member of the prestigious Magic Circle society, is primarily responsible for the illusions in Paranormal Activity. He's one of a handful of illusion designers who collaborate with the costumes, props, lighting and other theater teams to surprise audiences. The U.K.-based magician has also helped make a life-sized battleship appear in Stranger Things: The First Shadow and wizards battle in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
NPR spoke with him about his work devising illusions and directing actors in pulling them off — and about what makes magic and horror work on stage. These are excerpts from that conversation.
On what makes a good jump scare
It's hard doing scares on stage. We use this feeling of sort of drawing you in — and then nothing happens. And then drawing you in, drawing you in — nothing happens, nothing happens. And then, just on an offbeat, something happens. That's a technique we use in magic all the time, just subverting when you think something's going to happen. "Catching you on the offbeat" is what we often call it in magic.
With American audiences, there is always a bigger reaction. We get jumps in the U.K. but, in America, it's amplified. And it's often infectious. As soon as someone jumps, they make someone else jump and the second jump is even louder than the first one, which kind of heightens it even more.
On the fine line between "scary" and "hammy"
Something can be scary and really get you, and you can be shocked and laugh afterwards. Or something could become hammy, it could become sort of a little too much. And then people laugh because it's just silly as opposed to actually being shocking. [An example is the play] Blithe Spirit, where things fly across the room and it's really overt.
Less is more sometimes. I often refer to something called the Jaws effect — the fin coming through the water, the music going duh-duh, duh-duh, is scarier than the mechanical shark. It's much more scary, what's in your imagination.
On why it's hard for actors to learn magic
Magic is fiddly. It's awkward, it's hard. But that's the reason why I'm coming to work [with actors]. Actors have a very, very demanding job, particularly in this show, which is they've got to stay naturalistic. The play only works if they are playing that naturalism and making us believe in those characters. And so as soon as you're asking them to do something contrived, it can go against the grain. You know, suddenly you can get flustered and that naturalism can break.
On how to use misdirection, a main tool of magic
We talk a lot about misdirection. It might be, for example, that you're holding something in your hand that you don't want the audience to see. And often when actors first have something in the hand, the hand is very, very stiff and it really looks abnormal. But the other hand is really loose. So you can straight away know that something looks odd.
So we talk about just keeping the body free. And we talk about, if that hand is holding something, and you're looking down at your hand, the audience will look down at your hand, because we naturally look where [others'] eyes go.
Whereas if your hand is nice and relaxed by your side and you look over there, we'll look over there. There's no reason to suspect that there's something in your hand unless you draw attention to it. Magic is practice, practice, practice.
Meghan Sullivan edited this story for broadcast and digital. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
Copyright 2026 NPR