Conjuring Up a Career with One of NYC’s Only Female Magicians

In a world where women are often the "lovely assistant," Tanya Solomon takes charge by making her own magic.

Photos by John Huntington

Tanya Solomon sits at her MacBook, adorned with a “Shtick Happens” sticker, rubbing her forehead from stress. All afternoon, she has been struggling to sell tickets to “Force Majeure,” the monthly variety show she produces, hosts and stars in as a magician at the Cobra Club. Her choppy black bangs splay outward like they’ve been massaged with super glue and she furiously jiggles her right foot while checking the Facebook invite to see if anyone else has clicked “attending.” By seven p.m., she’s only sold fifteen tickets, half of what she needs to break even.

At forty-five, Solomon is one of the few professional female magicians in New York City, having broken into a “male-populated” field, as Belinda Sinclair, another female magician in Chelsea, puts it, at age thirty without any prior knowledge or interest in show business. Though the lack of women in the industry is well known, research remains difficult to come by. A 2010 Pacific Standard article says women …