A Celestial Celebration
JANIA TAYLOR
“Magic by Jania”
Jania Taylor must be one of the most versatile magicians working today. Equally comfortable with an elegant stage manipulation act, strolling close-up, or comedy, her full performance calendar in recent years has included corporate gigs, school assembly shows, Western festivals, riverboats, and even a AFE tour. She also does trade show and MC work, motivational speaking, historical lectures, and performances for magicians, who have seen her work at the Magic Castle, at Monday Night Magic in New York, at the Abbott’s Get-Together, the Magic Collectors’ Weekend, the IBM and SAM conventions, the Unconventional Convention, NYCAN, the Winter Carnival of Magic, and the Glass City Conjurors Conclave, which she has helped to organize on at least one occasion.
Jania was born in Archbold, Ohio, on September 20, 1962. Her parents, Ross and Sharon Taylor, owned and published the Archbold Buckeye weekly newspaper, and Ross had more than a passing interest in magic. When Jania was a sophomore at Ohio University in Athens, her dad asked her to go with him to Abbott’s to buy tricks for a magic show he was planning at the newspaper. During the show she served as his assistant. “We were horrible,” Jania admits, but sometimes even a bad show can pique a person’s interest. A trip to the Columbus Magi-Fest in 1983 sealed her fate, and she dropped out of college to enroll in the Chavez school, where she studied with Neil Foster. Only the third woman to complete the course, Jania still loves to do the card fans, billiard ball productions, and zombie routine that she perfected there. Foster taught her self-confidence and a strong work ethic, both of which have shaped her success in magic.
Over the years Jania has expanded her repertoire to include different performance styles. She can do silent manipulation set to music, and several years ago she developed a Western-themed act, inspired by the time she has spent in Arizona during the winters. Her “Cowgirl Up” comedy magic show offers both a stage show and a “card cheat” close-up act, and it has been a perfect fit for bookings such as the Prairie Peddler Festival in Butler, Ohio, where she has appeared, dressed in an 1880s costume. Now named “Charmin’ J,” her Western character has conjured for sixteen seasons at the Yankee Peddler, the longest running festival in Ohio—2023 will be its 50th year. There she performs four times per day for three consecutive weekends. She weaves stories of “gamblers, hustlers, and cheats” in with the magic. Jania says that her original idea was to promote the act to guest ranches, but it has snowballed and taken her into markets that she had overlooked.
During her career she has created multiple themed school shows: “There’s Magic in Books” draws on her own childhood struggles with reading to show young people that they can persist and become good readers. “The Magic of Recycling” and “Nutrition Magic” promote positive messages about the health of the environment and the body. Back during the 2001-2002 school year, she performed nearly 250 safety-themed shows in Ohio and Indiana, logging 14,000 travelling miles. Continually seeking new ways to grow as a performer and a business-person, Jania has become quite an expert in promoting and booking a magic act. That is fitting since her great-grandfather was William O. Taylor, the carnival barker at the 1893 World’s Fair who coined the term “ballyhoo.” Over the last 20 years, her list of corporate clients has grown to include Ford, Kraft, McDonald’s, KFC, Prudential, TGI Fridays, AFLAC, and Archway Cookies.
As a result of her success, Jania has been able to give back to magic and to her country. After applying to work with AFE (Armed Forces Entertainment) in 1999, Jania was finally granted a tour of Alaska in 2004, which gave her the opportunity to entertain the families of service personnel at Army and Air Forces bases in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kodiak Island, and other places. Travelling alone with her one-woman show, she hefted four bags around “the Last Frontier,” doing seven one-hour shows in two weeks. She has also donated her time to serve multiple terms as a Regional Vice President of the Central Plains States for the SAM, and she shares her booking experience in a lecture for magicians titled “Getting A Gig is a Full-Time Job.” She even offers a paid service to colleagues to critique their marketing pieces and can be reached through her website at www.magicbyjania.com.
She continues to branch out into new markets. She now features holiday-themed programs for Christmas and Halloween, performing in the latter as “Wanda the Wacky Witch.” During the pandemic, Jania made a virtue of necessity by developing magic videos suitable for virtual events.
Jania has won a number of awards for her magic and is particularly proud of a cover story by SAM Dean George Schindler for the December 2006 issue of MUM. In his profile, Schindler quotes her friend and fellow magician Jeff Bibik, “What I admire most about Jania Taylor is that she is a go-getter. When she decides what she wants, she goes out and does it.” It’s fitting that Jania cites Dell O’Dell as one of her role-models, as she was the epitome of the “go-getter.” Suzy Wandas is another of her heroes, and Jania wishes she could have seen her beautiful manipulations in person. To honor these and others pioneering women in magic, Jania has developed a lecture titled “Those Magical Dames,” which she delivers to libraries, art centers, colleges, and gatherings of magicians. During the lecture, she performs the Miser’s Dream to honor Mercedes Talma and some billiard ball and card manipulations in tribute to Suzy Wandas. Her interest in history has also led Jania to serve on the Board of Directors for the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan.
Having also written a motivational talk titled “There are No Glass Ceilings,” Jania Taylor has this advice for other women in magic: “Don’t get caught up in the fact that you are a woman in magic, and just because you are a woman and represent a small minority, don’t think the magic community owes you anything because of that. I feel that I have to earn my place in magic alongside of the men; I have to be just as good or better than them. With that attitude I have earned my own way, and have been blessed with a lot of my male compeers cheering me on!” One of those compeers is her mentor Al the Only, who sums up in the MUM article by saying that “Jania Taylor is truly one of the most devoted and focused magicians I know.”
Jania’s personal life is just as magical. She married Jeff Garant in 2016 at the historic Hemingway cottage at Walloon Lake in northern Michigan, in a service officiated by Hemingway’s great-nephew. The couple lives in the resort community of Harbor Springs, Michigan, where she works as the “Magic Lady Ski Instructor” during the winter at the Nubs Nob Ski School. Ever the performer, Jania keeps several pocket tricks handy to help nervous young skiers to settle down. She may be the first female magician to perform regularly on the snow—at least since Dell O’Dell’s “ice act” in the 1930s!
A version of this article originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of The Linking Ring and appears here by permission. My thanks to Jania Taylor for updates.
Stargazing
The “T List” for Women in Magic (in alphabetical order) would certainly need to include Mercedes Talma (1868-1944), wife and assistant to Servais LeRoy. T. Nelson Downs was one of her teaches, and in 1916 Houdini called her “without a doubt the greatest female sleight-of-hand performer that ever lived.” Princess Tarpeia (Mary Heistand, 1888-?) was a handcuff queen during the vaudeville era. Madame Tenkatsu (1886-1944) of Japan started as an assistant to the legendary Ten-ichi but also toured with her own troupe, and Princess Tenko gained so much fame as one of the leading Japanese magicians that she inspired her own cartoons and line of dolls.
Anne Claire Thomas (b. 1940) learned from her noted father Phil and performed magic as a teenager in the 1950s. Pam Thompson (1936-2021) was the “and Company” of Tomsoni and Company and played her well-honed role as the ultimate annoying assistant to the hilt for over 40 years. Jane Thurston (1909-1994) performed magic in her famous father’s show and sang the song, “My Daddy is a Hocus Pocus Man.” Florence Tocher (1905-1996) of Toronto performed alongside her husband Jack in the 1950s. Mary Tofts (1701-1763) was not a magician per se, but she did perpetrate a legendary hoax in 18th-century England, convincing a doctor that she had given birth to a colony of rabbits. Kristi Toguchi is a third-generation magician and renowned choreographer, while bizarrist Mary Tomich edited The Altar Flame, published by her Thaumysta Magic Company from 1993 until 2002.
Carolyn Trask (1903-1972) was active in Magigals on the West Coast for over 40 years. Myra Tree (1897-1974) assisted her mind-reading husband Leo, while Mrs. Ormonde Penstone performed as a Chinese magician Tsaou-Ngo (ca. 1879-?) in 1906 in the show of her British husband. Liz Tucker (1922-2014) dazzled audiences with husband Tommy in a famous mentalism act. Maggie Tucker of Cheshire, England, invented the noted effect “Limelight.” Simone Turkington is an Australian pro based in Los Angeles who entertains audiences with a ‘60s-themed act. Finally, Houdini trained the German escapist Wanda Timm circa 1912 and billed her as Miss Trixy in order to compete with other women who were stealing his escape routines.