Magic for Animals

“Liz Toonkel isn’t your average magician. She isn’t going to pull a live rabbit out of a hat. She’s not going to make a real dove vanish up her sleeve, nor is she going to saw herself in half or make herself disappear. Instead, the queer Jewish performance artist and production designer is making herself and her beliefs as visible as possible – that’s the point.”

-Evelyn Frick, Hey Alma

“Liz Toonkel achieves the impossible, fusing heartfelt sleepover confessions with insane animal magic.”

-Rupert Dannreuther, To Do List

“With carefully crafted movement, and delicate fingers, Toonkel had the audience entranced in a world she invited us to create for ourselves. She reminded us that we are the makers, the thinkers, the lovers, and we only need to see ourselves in all our flaws, to believe in ourselves once more. You cannot magically erase the mistakes you’ve made, but you can trick the mind into thinking your regret is a pearl in the making.”

-Grace Courvoisier, LA Dance Chronicle

about

Magic for Animals is an unapologetically witty and insightful one-woman show employing sparkling, incisive humor and magic to conjure laughs and hard hitting truths. Magic engages pressing issues of animal welfare, climate change, and sexism through a continuous personal narrative woven throughout each illusion, ultimately paving a way forward with empathy and self-awareness. Supremely stylish, Liz is praised as "daring" while showing "vulnerability, empathy, and above all humor," by L.A. Dance Chronicle. Cincy Fringe reviewers call her a "fantastic storyteller...fearless" (The Sappy Critic) and "delightful...polished" (The League of Cincinnati Theatres). Edinburgh critics comment how “she commands the stage” (To Do List) and note how “the audience waits on her every word” (FringeReview).