Christian Cagigal, a storytelling magician whose sly charm and soothing voice can be hypnotic in a quietly creepy way, prefers not to reveal the overarching narrative of “Obscura,” the intimate evening of theater and magic he performs Oct. 15 through Nov. 2 at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley. “I do close-up magic with playing cards, tarot cards and old photographs while telling stories about death, war and the devil,” says Cagigal, on the horn from his Colma home. A San Francisco State theater alumnus and former member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Cagigal has been creating and producing his own shows for a decade, many at San Francisco’s Exit Theatre, where he has worked as an artist in residence since 2006. Cagigal’s interest in clairvoyance and matters of the spirit was stirred by his father, Julio, a Spanish immigrant who joined the U.S. Army, served in Vietnam and came home with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems. [...] Cagigal was also into the fantastical movie worlds of Disney and Steven Spielberg, and the magic of David Copperfield, whose early work, was “all narratives and short vignettes,” Cagigal says, before Copperfield’s act took on more of a “modern music video style.” In case you hadn’t heard, singer and pianist Diana Krall has a bad case of pneumonia that has forced her to postpone her fall U.S. tour — including her Nov. 13 show at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa — and the planned release later this month of her new album, “Wildflower,” on which the tour was based. A screening of Swiss director Reto Caduff’s 2009 documentary about Haden, “Rambling Boy,” will be followed by a Q&A with Haden’s widow, Ruth Cameron Haden, and the sterling tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts from Haden’s film noir-inspired Quartet West.
Reported by SFGate 22 hours ago.
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