Acclaimed author Kaz Cooke has turned her sharp feminist gaze from women’s health to the shadowy annals of stage illusion, resurrecting the overlooked female figures who helped define modern magic.
For decades, Cooke has occupied an indispensable place on Australian bookshelves. Her frank, compassionate handbooks — spanning pregnancy, adolescence, and mature womanhood — established her as one of the nation's most trusted cultural commentators. Now, in a striking departure from anatomical advice and lifestyle counsel, her latest release delves into the centuries-old spectacle of trickery, mediums, and stagecraft.
Sawed in Half and Written Out
In theatrical illusion, women have historically been cast in passive, perilous roles: trussed up, suspended in mid-air, or sawed cleanly in half for the entertainment of gasping audiences. Behind the smoke and mirrors, however, female practitioners were frequently the architects of the craft, operating complex mechanisms or spearheading their own independent acts.
ABC News Arts & Lifestyle reported that Cooke’s new book reframes this legacy, bringing a rigorous historical sensibility to the "spooky" and scandalous women sidelined by patriarchal showmanship. Rather than treating these performers as mere glamorous decoys or morbid curiosities, the work excavates their agency as working illusionists, mind readers, and entertainers who navigated an intensely male-dominated industry.
Power, Parlours and the Victorian Séance
The narrative stretches beyond traditional theatre prosceniums into the clandestine world of nineteenth-century spiritualism. During the Victorian era, the parlour séance emerged as an unexpected arena of female authority. In a society that demanded quiet domesticity, mediums commanded darkened drawing rooms, channelling otherworldly spirits while challenging social orthodoxies.
Yet that perceived authority brought fierce condemnation. Sceptics, religious authorities, and male stage magicians — eager to expose fraudulent table-rappings — often demonised these women as either mentally unstable or morally bankrupt. Cooke examines how the label of the "spooky woman" became a convenient tool to dismiss women who wielded influence outside sanctioned patriarchal boundaries.
A Bestselling Voice Pivots to the Supernatural
While the subject matter represents an aesthetic shift for Cooke, the underlying thematic concerns mirror her broader body of work. Throughout her career as a journalist, cartoonist, and author, Cooke has championed demystification. Where her early books stripped the shame and secrecy from women’s bodies, this latest volume strips away the accumulated myths obscuring women’s labour in the performing arts.
Cooke’s approach challenges the established canon of magic history, which has long lionised figures like Harry Houdini while ignoring the female contemporaries who matched their daring. Industry historians have increasingly noted that early magic posters frequently erased women's names entirely, reducing them to anonymous stage props.
By restoring these forgotten performers to centre stage, the book offers a timely reappraisal of popular culture's most enduring sleights of hand. It serves as a reminder that behind every grand illusion performed by a man in a tuxedo, there was often an extraordinary woman pulling the strings.
