John Bulleid

An elephant stands on an empty stage. No cover, no curtain, nowhere to hide. Then a flash of light and it’s gone. That’s where we start with John Bulled, internationally acclaimed illusion designer and magic consultant whose work has shaped major West End productions, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. We get into the real mechanics of theatrical illusion design: why a vanish can fail by a quarter second, how you hide method inside the language of a set and why the best magic often depends on the departments most audiences never think about.

From there, we lean into John’s “Potter is the benchmark” mindset and what it takes to keep standards high across shows, budgets and venues. We talk collaboration with lighting and sound, hiding methods in plain sight, performer subtleties you only notice once you start teaching them and the surprising ways old-school methods get stronger with modern tech. If you’re curious about stage magic, misdirection, and how theatre makes the impossible feel real, you’ll come away with a brand new lens.

We also run John through his Desert Island List: Queens To Aces, Dynamic Coins, the WOW gimmick with a personal story, the Blackstone floating light bulb, Pressure with a borrowed phone, sponge balls, Penn and Teller’s live-only misdirection piece and the unforgettable elephant vanish. We finish with something bigger than tricks: the public’s perception of magicians and how we can earn wonder back. Subscribe, share this with a theatre or magic friend and leave a review if you want more conversations like this.

Welcome Pack: Queens to Aces

1. Dynamic Coins 
2. WOW 
3. Floating Lightbulb 
4. Pressure
5. Sponge Balls 
6. Misdirection Trick 
7. Elephant Vanish 
8. Little Man 

Banishment: Publics Perception of Magicians 

Book: Tarbell

Item: Elastic Bands 

John's Website: https://www.johnbulleid.com
National Theatre at Home: https://www.ntathome.com

Find out more about the creators of this Podcast at www.alakazam.co.uk

Transcript

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Building A No Cover Elephant Vanish

SPEAKER_00 0:00

An elephant vanish is one of the most iconic illusions ever created. Barry and I, my you know, my director wanted an empty stage, so no cover. She wanted it to feel like you were looking at the elephant and then you blinked your eyes and it gone, was her brief. Uh, it was a life-sized elephant that's been used throughout the show. So there's all these different things we had to consider to make it work. So we finished the workshop and we'd got the vanish down. But the vanish took from the moment the elephant disappeared to when the lights changed, it was about nine seconds. And it worked, and we were happy, and everyone really liked it. And I remember about a week later, my director called me and said, Look, is that is that it? Is there anything else we can do? And I remember driving up to Stratford in summer 2021 to meet my production manager. And on the drive up, I had this idea of a way we could do it. And so we got the model box out and we built a miniature version of what I thought the vanish could be. And we tested the model box and it worked. And his view was if it works in the model box, it will work in real life. So he then went straight to the workshop and had them build the thing I needed to make the vanish work. So the vanish went from being a nine-second vanish, which was which was too long in hindsight, to so basically you see the elephant on stage, we flash a light, and the light flash was 2.5 seconds, and in that 2.5 seconds, the elephant's gone.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Because

Meet The Illusion Designer Behind Hits

SPEAKER_03 1:45

we get some incredible guests on this podcast, and I'm very lucky to interview lots of these guests. But today's I'm particularly interested in because I actually came across his name in a theatre brochure. Ooh, I know I'm wetting your appetite there. Now, what's really interesting is you may not necessarily know today's guest's name. I think that's fair to say, but I'm nearly definitely betting that you would have seen some of his work because he has done some incredible things and continues to do some incredible things. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about his past, and as his introduction goes on, hopefully you're gonna go, Oh, oh, yes, maybe I have seen his work. Um, so he is an internationally acclaimed magician, an illusion designer, whose work has helped bring some of the West End's most celebrated and Olivier Award-winning productions to life. He's an associate of the Inner Magic Circle with Silverstar. And in 2020 alone, he was credited on three Olivia Award-winning productions: The Worst Witch, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Death of a Sousman. Uh, he is the Magic and Illusions associate for the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child production at the London's Palace Theatre, which is the most awarded play in Olivia Awards history at the time of recording. He's created illusions for some of Britain's most prestigious cultural institutions, including the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe, National uh English National Ballet, Young Vic, Regents Open Air Theatre. It goes on and on. Uh, just some of his credits are Inside Number Nine, Stage Fright, The Prince of Egypt, Death of a Salesman, The Worst Witch, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, When Darkness Falls, and Further Than the Furthest Thing. Uh, he was nominated for the Sir Alec Guinness Award for Acting whilst training at the Weber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. That's where he got his start as well. He started as an actor and drama student, and he's worked across theatre, immersive entertainment, ballet, and international productions. Alongside his acclaimed theatre career, John's screen work span, short films, national advertising campaigns, and illusion consultancy for the National Theatre Live. So the likelihood of just a few of you seeing some of this man's work is absolutely definite. I think this is going to be such a brilliant conversation. Uh, you guys wouldn't have known this, but we've already had a half an hour conversation just about some of his work, um, and I'm absolutely enamoured by it, and I know you guys will be too. Today's guest, of course, is the wonderful John Bulleed. Hello, John.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Hello, mate. Thank you. That's really kind. It's really weird when you list stuff like that. I I get so caught up in what I'm doing, I sort of forget that I'm doing them. So as you're reading off that stuff, I was like, yeah, no, that is that is stuff I've done, and that is genuinely absolutely incredible that I've worked those places. That's um, it's mad. I just do I just get on with the things and I sort of forget where they are and that people see them. So it's really nice. So thank you very much. You're very humble. That was very, very uh such a lovely thing to start with.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

Well, uh the the absolute truth is, John, that is a shortened version of what I could have put because your list goes much, much more than that. That the quite literally, the list of things that I researched for you just went on and on and on. You've done so much.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, I'm really lucky. Um, the uh illusion in illusion design in in the theatre is having a real definite moment, and we are ever we are everywhere. Um, and I'm very lucky to count myself amongst the few of us that do it at the highest level. So it's um it's incredible. I mean, it's hard work and we absolutely love it, but it is um it's bonkers. I mean, I'm I think I'm on 10 shows at the moment that haven't come out yet, some for like 2028. Um, there's really big conversation about lots of stuff coming back, which is lovely, things transferring other places, people calling me up saying, actually, can you come and help me make this Coin Vanish or whatever whatever it is. So it just keeps seem to keep keep going, which is just incredible. And my my view on it, and and similar to my friends Chris and Jamie, the three of us have this real view that we have to keep the work at such a high standard to make sure, firstly, and most importantly, the audience enjoy it and they and they are incre amazed by what they see on stage. Um, but secondly, that the theatre makers that we work with understands what we can achieve because we just want to keep pushing the boundaries and show people what's possible if you get us in the room and what we can help them with. Um so no, it's um it's a really exciting time to be working in this industry. Uh, and I'm very, very lucky that it is my it is my job. I get to do it. It's just uh it just blows my mind.

Harry Potter Sets The Benchmark

SPEAKER_03 6:27

Well, I think what's really interesting is the the big surge of magic, I think it's fair to say, came after Harry Potter and the Cursed Child launched in the West End. Um, and uh my friends and family know I'm a a potter nerd. I have yet to see the show, which I think is mental, uh absolutely crazy. But everyone that I've spoken to who's seen it credits the magic and illusions in that show, and it almost feels like they kind of shot themselves in the foot by doing such an incredible job so early on. And when you mentioned about keeping the quality high, that must be difficult after a show like Potter.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah, it's 100%. So in my head, Harry Potter is the benchmark, so everything I do, whether it be like an edit of the show or an off-west end show or West End show or whatever it is, it has to be the same as or better than Potter in terms of the standard of work. And so I joined, so I joined Potter in 2019. I'm the UK associate now on Potter. So my friend Chris Fisher and Jamie Harrison. So Jamie was the original lead creative for the illusions, and Chris was the international associate on the illusions. Um, and I've learned so much from working with them and on Potter, just in terms of the complexity of thinking that goes through to every moment and how it's not just about the method for the effect, but it's actually about the before and after, or the get in, the get out, if you like to speak magic code. Um, so it's how you set things up, how you deliver it, and then how you get out of them to make sure it works within whatever the parameters are that are being set by the production. But having that as my kind of baseline means that even when I'm working on any show, I take that knowledge with me into whatever that show is and go, well, this is what we do on Harry Potter. So shall we do it in this ATC to studio theatre? And all of a sudden, all the work gets elevated because that's the standard we expect, um, and that's what we drive for. And you're right, yeah, there's nothing like Potter. Um, what is amazing about it as a process is the work that goes in behind the scenes to completely embed everything into the every moment of the design of the show from the very beginning right to the very end. Um, and that's really what it taught me a lot about how you how you work with every department to get things across the line. Um, and so I spend a lot more time, you know, on other shows that I work on, I work on a show in Copenhagen at the moment, and I've been spending a lot more time with them working remotely with each individual department to get the things ready for when we start rehearsals. Um, so we've got a really cool like quick change moment where someone is in uh hoodie and jeans, and then it instantly turns into being in a full red dress. And so it's been really fun to work with the costume team about what that is, and having done a similar effect in a different show to take the learning from that and go, Well, this is what we did at the national, we could do that here and show them how we did it to make them understand the things that might trip them up because I've been there before. And when you list all those wonderful credits, that that to me is one of the strengths is that because I've been on so many things, it's really fun to go, Oh, I did a thing where we had to do this. And as you know, with magic, you can change the things to still get the effect right. Um, I always remember talking to uh John Van Put when he was um he did a show's piff at the Criterion years ago, and I filmed it for him, and we were talking about um a needle swallow and putting out the needles on a thread, and he said he didn't like the idea of needles and thread because that doesn't fit with his character, and he always said he thought about changing it for polos and strawberry laces, and I love that the same method would apply, but you're changing the things, and that's sort of what we do is we go, well, we know we did that over there, but what if it's instead of a bird that's flying, it's a broomstick or whatever it might be, and so you can still use the same rules, but you're changing the things, and then you know that from a production point of view the method works, but the thing that it's doing can change, um, so yeah, it's uh but there is there, yeah. And Potter did change the but it made Potter made people realize what's possible if you get us in early enough. So we spend our lives saying to people, get us in soon. So sometimes I'm in for projects before the designers, so I can advise the designers on what they need to put in to make the things I want to happen happen, and that's really fun to really lose the effects within the world that you're making. I think that's

Hiding Methods Inside Sets And Light

SPEAKER_00 10:27

really cool.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

I think from talking to you beforehand as well, what I found really interesting is that you are afforded a different set of tools than the rest of us, in much the same way that when we spoke to Ben Hanlin and other people who have worked on TV, they also have a different set of tools that we don't have. And you you have the set, you have costume, you have lighting, you even have visual effects like smoke and and stuff like that in in the theatre environment to your disposal that the rest of magicians don't have. And that's what I think is so interesting with what you do is your brain must now be attuned in a way that you can see something on a stage and go, that tile, that tile there, if we just put a little groove in the side of that, we can put this there, and that just must be the way that you think from this point on.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, 100%. And and it's about hiding it in plain sight, which is what we do as magicians all the time. We just don't recognize I think also something about the fact that as I've gone on, and as a creative, you sort of you sort of learn your own process and you sort of learn the things that you you do subconsciously and learn how the the actually the subconscious things that you do are exactly what you need to to solve this thing. So when you think as a magician, you subconsciously might shift your body weight to a ditch, for example. We do that subconscious magicians because we've done it so many times it's in our muscle memory. So when we're teaching performers how to do things, the uh it's teaching them these subtleties that we forget that we do as magicians, so then they become able to deliver these things. Um I can there's a really good example. You mentioned Death of a Salesman. So Death of a Salesman, there's a moment where the lead character is in a memory with his brother and he's talking about a pocket watch, and he has the pocket watch in his hand, and his brother takes the pocket watch and sells it. But you don't see the brother in the memory, and what all we did was a retention of vision vanish. Am I alright to say retention of vision? Is that all right? Yeah, so so we did a retention of vision vanish where we showed the pocket watch in the performer's right hand, did it vanish over to his left hand, so when he turned back to his wife in real time, to out the memory and opened his hand, the memory, the pocket watch, had disappeared. That was the effect. Um, but what was nice was for the audience watching the show, that was the only moment they saw the world the character sees, where he was so convinced he had the pocket watch in his hand, and then it disappeared, um, was the first thing. But secondly, it was Wendell Pierce that played the lead. And the ditch he did on the pocket watch was like any it was unlike anything I've ever seen before, and it was incredible. He had the when he did the vanish, he had the pocket watch in his right hand, and as he swung it past his pocket or past his right pocket, he dropped the pocket watch into his right pocket as his hand swung forward. So it meant you had well, the audience would if they if he exposed it, the audience would have seen pocket watch, pocket watch, but so that was his hand. They would have seen pocket watch, pocket watch, pocket watch, no pocket watch, if he would have gone into his pocket, but obviously you had that cover, so you didn't see it at all. But that was something he did instinctively, and I was like, Well, that's that's the solve. I don't do any more work, let's just make that work every single time. And it did. And so sometimes it's about recognizing the yeah, so I think it is about recognizing what we do as performers and going, that thing there that you're doing, that's how we'll do it, and then forgetting what I thought as a magician, going, well, it's got to be this way because actually it's not that, it could be that. Um, and yes, your point about in terms of design, yeah, I do. I spend a long time looking at renders and pictures and going, these are things I want to hide. Where's the best place to hide it? Where how do we hide the trapdoor? How do we hide whatever it is, the catflap, whatever it is, the fishman, whatever it is we're doing, how what's the best way to disguise it so the audience just cannot see it? Um, and often it is about finding things that exist in the set already and going, well, if that actually, if that crack in the wall was actually the seam for the trapdoor, then the audience are going to see it as a crack in the wall. And if we replicate that somewhere else, it's a classic mirroring thing that we do as magicians, then we forget it because we recognise that just being part of the language of the set, but actually that one there is where the secret door is. It's those sort of things.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Um, I can imagine you are like the mad professors of magic, right? So I'm not sure if if people at home have never seen a Foley artist. So a Foley artist is someone who has to design the noises for TV and film. So you may see something on on the screen, it needs a sound, and what we think the sound is is normally very not that. It's normally something quite inappropriate from some of the the videos from Foli Arts I've seen. But when you see them working, they're just surrounded by stuff, and they're just grabbing stuff and and seeing what sounds interesting. And I can imagine, like, we we uh at the beginning I spoke about knowing John's name from a show. It was a show called When Darkness Falls, which was a brilliant, brilliant ghost story. I said to John, I still think it's sorry, 222, a ghost story, the best ghost story um that I've ever seen in a theatre. If you get the chance to see it, go and see it. And there was a lovely moment in that, um, and it's plagued me for years. Um me and John spoke about it before, and all I could think is in order to come up with that moment, you must have just just tried everything, the most balmy ideas, the most crazy things. You must just look around your room and you know, there's a canoe. How can that work for a trick? Uh, it must just be balmy.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yeah, it is it is exactly that. So when you go so when so when somebody says they want this to happen, you you look at what the things, so for example, they want uh a book to fall off a shelf or whatever it might be. You then have to look at what is the shelf and what are the books and why that book, and is that book falling the right way, and does it need to open on a certain page? And then you can build layers to the effect to make it work better. And you do, you absolutely look at what exists and go, well, that's the that's the place to hide it, because that crack in the wall already exists, or that gap in the scenery is already there, or or whatever it is. So you yeah, so you spend a lot of time just looking at stuff and going, Well, I know I need to hide this, I need I need that line to run through something. So, what what could it run through that doesn't look like it's a hole where fishing line runs? Is there a reason why that's you know is it great? You know, what what is the thing that it that you use to hide the method in? Um and yeah, you do, you end up using um like mad ideas. I did um a show called Into the Woods years ago with Terry Gideon from Monty Python, which was insane. And being a being a Monty Python fan, it's just incredible to work with him. And we had a moment where the witch sings the The Last Midnight and she's on top of a tree, and in Terry's version, giant pocket watch uh swung across the the stage, and as it swung in front of her, she vanished from behind it, which is really fun to do. Um, and I spent a lot of my time talking to my kids. I have three kids, uh, they're 11, 8, and 5, and I spent a lot of time talking to them about my work because their imaginations are untapped, they have no limits to what they can think of, right? So when I was speaking to them about how we can make the witch vanish, my daughter's my 11-year-old suggested she suggested what if it they had like a velcro suit and they could just jump onto the back of the pocket watch and go with the back of the watch. And I was like, that's there is actually something in that. Not a velcro suit, but there is that there could actually be a way of them having something they hold on to the back of the pocket watch and then go off. And the re the only reason I discounted it was because the pocket watch had to swing back, and so I was worried about having to be on this watch going back and forth across the stage. So we changed the method. Um, but it is it is about just going, what is what is possible? And I also understand that in a theatre, you are surrounded by the most wonderful bunch of collaborative people that want to make every moment the best it can be. So rather than going, here's the trick, this is how I'm gonna do it, I go to my lighting designer, how do we light this in the best possible way? To my sound designer, you can hear the footsteps, how do we cover the footsteps, or whatever it is, and then it becomes a really nice conversation to hide the magic, hide the effect and the method. So the audience don't realize they're seeing an effect, they just see the story of the show, and then the thing happens and it blows their mind, and then it carries on to the next bit. And that that to me is the real joy of working in theatre, is it's just and it, you know, and same with TV and other stuff I've done, it's it's all about saying to people, this is the thing, how do we hide it? I remember years ago seeing a lecture at the circle. Um, I've got a feeling of it, must have been it was about Ali Bonga and Paul Daniels and those guys, and uh, I think it might even have been Antie Iron talking about it, but it's the idea was that when you're doing camera work, you show your cameraman what you're trying to hide. And he so they know where to shoot from, so you don't expose the methods. And it's the same in the theatre. I will often say to the teams, look, this is what I don't want to see. I can't, we can't see that line, for example. How do we light it so we don't see that line? Or the noise of that lift is really noisy. How do we cover the noise of that lift? And they then help you solve that rather than me being like, I don't know what to do there. It's the opposite, you've got this team that help you. So yeah, it's really fun.

The Island Rules And Welcome Pack

SPEAKER_00 18:57

It's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Okay, well, we need to get into your list, otherwise, I'm gonna literally talk to you about this for hours. Uh, so if this is your first time listening, the idea is we're about to maroon John on his very Potter Island. Uh, when he's there, he's allowed to take eight tricks, banish one item, take one book, uh, one non-magic item that he uses for magic, and of course it's season three, so he gets a welcome package, and in his welcome package is a magic wand, of course, because he works on Potter, so we have to give him a wand. Uh, but he also gets a deck of cards, and with that deck of cards, he's allowed to do one trick. John, if you had one deck of cards and one trick with that deck, what would it be?

One Deck Card Trick Choice

SPEAKER_00 19:34

It's a really good question. Um, I love card tricks. There's something so organic about having, as we all do, a normal deck of cards that we can do the ridiculous things. Is that lovely Richie J thing about the 52 friends, right? Um, so the my one trick that I would always like to do, it's my go-to for any uh do any trick is a uh Queen's to Aces. Um, so I first saw Blaine do a Queen's To Aces in one of his first TV specials. And at the time I was 17, and it was when I first was starting to work as a magician, really. I'd sort of clock the fact that I could do this for a job. Because actually, my dad had said, if you want to be an actor, that's great, but you'll need another job. What about your magic? There's guys that go and do magic events I've been to, you could do that, and that was a bit of like a light bulb moment for me. So when I was in sick form, I started doing stuff more and more to my friends, and then Blaine arrived, and I could see ways of achieving what Blaine was achieving, not necessarily the same methods, but I could see the same effects and the way to make the effect happen. So I was so I got I became slightly um obsessed with Blaine and started telling myself as a bit of a David Blaine at the time. I was playing probably five times a week, so I was quite tanked. And I, you know, so I'd do the black t-shirt, that sort of thing. Um, and the one I always remember my first proper residency gig was in a cocktail bar in Watford, where I'm from. And the reason I got the gig was because the manager was a big fan of Blaine, and he said, I've seen David Blaine do this thing where he switches two Queens to two Aces. If you can do that, I'll give you a gig. And so I did my version of the Queens to Aces, and that was it. He was, I was in. And that's really where my sort of residencies and gigs as magicians really started. But I also love that trick because it's my dad's favourite card trick that I do. So my dad knows he's not a magician, but he knows he's over the years seen practice and knows everything I do to make that effect happen, but he can't see, he can't see it anymore. He just sees the he just sees the moment of magic, which I really love. So that to me would be my that's that'd be my one card trick that I would do.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

I think it's a great choice. I uh again, I remember seeing Blaine do this for the first time and being absolutely fooled because you know, we always talk about in in magic putting something in a spectator's hands, one of the strongest things that you can do, you know, sponge balls, having those two balls in there, uh coins, having coins appear or disappear from their hands and stuff. And in terms of a card trick in the hands of a magician, uh in in the hands of a spectator, sorry, having two cards change impossibly. And what I really love about it is you're challenging them throughout the the process. So instead of saying, you know, be very careful about those two cards, I'm really, really scared, you're actively saying, right, which one do you have now?

unknown 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Which one's on?

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Um and I think that's where the strength is.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Yeah, and I also love the fact that they finish in so in the the handling I do, they obviously they finish with the aces. And I love the fact to say it's them, but don't worry, aces beats queens. So actually you'd still win. So they're left feeling like not only if they've been confused, but also they've actually won the little bet thing that we were talking about. So I'm not trying to be like, I fooled you, and I'm better than you because I've beaten you. You're going, look, I fooled you, isn't that really cool? But by the way, don't worry, you still won. So do you know what I mean? There's like a double, it feels like like a double positive to them, rather than being the arrogant magician that's beaten, that's fooled them, and then also, by the way, beaten you at this game that I've set up. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Absolutely. Yeah, the the approach that I took with that was uh at the moment where they turn those two cards over, all of the attention is on those cards, even if you've got a group. Um, so I just take the other cards off the top of the deck and put them in my top pocket so they're poking at us. Yes. Um and there's a lovely, there's lovely mystery, and then you literally just say, uh, and where are the other two cards? Well, I always keep them in my top pocket. They look up and then they freak out for a second time, so you get the second second hit.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

That's great. So yeah. That's such a good idea. Because I keep the deck in view. So once I've done the switch, I've got the deck in my hands. So when that's so I say, um, I get them to guess what's all the top clubs or spades, I'm like, how about this? I show you, look, here's the clubs and the spades and turn them both over. And then they get to do the reveal of the aces. But that's a lovely idea of putting them away so you get another sneak in another trick. I love that. That's really that's really clever.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

We love a multiple reaction. Yeah, great. Well, I think that's a great one in your welcome package. Let's go to your main list then. So if you were going to take a list of your favourite eight tricks, what would you take in position number one?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Well, I had one question before we start. Am I allowed to take my family to the island? Is it just me or am I allowed to have my family with me? The only reason I mention is because they are my reason. They're my wife and my kids, they're the reason why I do everything. And everything I do is be is inspired by them. So that's why I was kind of quite keen. At least give them an honourable mention, maybe, that they could be on the island with me. Because they uh my wife in particular always has a really driving idea that strive for elegance and beauty in all the effects that I do. And that's that's something that holds so true to what I do. I want everything to be as elegant and beautiful as possible at everything I do on stage. Um, and then my kids, they're just this, they're just incredible. And the way that they see magic is so delightful, and it reminds me constantly about the wonder we can create and and the honour that we have, that that's our job, and how exciting it is that we can share this with other people and make them feel this sense of incredible, yeah, like worlds elsewhere, the wonder that we have as magicians that you can share with people, I think, is really important. So

Dynamic Coins And Prop Justification

SPEAKER_00 24:31

that's fine. So my first trick um is dynamic coins, is my first my first effect. Um, the reason I love the dynamic coins is I think the method is beautiful, I think it's really well hidden. Um, I love the fact it just looks like these two brass lays in this brass ring. I really enjoy that. It's also one of the first tricks, as most of it is one of the first tricks I ever got when I was a kid when I was seven, and and I still have it now. It still works, and I absolutely adore it. Um, I love doing the little thing of putting the real coin with it so that when you do the thing and the coins appear, you can show there's like a loose coin on top you can show. Um, I think it's such a fun pocket-sized version, like a cups and balls. It's just I just love it. Um, I also remember when I was uh when I was 14, I was on a trip to France with one of my best mates at the time, and we were in a restaurant, as you do on the on the in, I think it must have been in Paris, somewhat like that. And a street performer came across to our table and bought out a set of dynamic coins. And I was like, Yeah, this is incredible. Um and by that point I was pretty proficient with it. Um so they went on to do their routine with the dynamic coins, and it was a brilliant, very strong routine, and obviously we tipped them because that's what they're there for. But as they were finishing, I just said, Would you could I show you my routine? Because I I have this at home. And so I showed them my routine, and it was actually different to the routine they did. And so it's really fun to share with another magician in a completely random position our love of these tiny little items and show them something that they didn't know you could do with with those little dynamic coins. Um, yeah, so that that to me is one of the that's definitely got to be in my in my back pocket somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Well, I think it's a great choice. We've spoken so much about the dynamic coins because it's just such a prolific, wonderful trick. But we've also spoken a lot on the podcast about having strange props in magic. And it it does feel very marmite, I'm not gonna lie. It's either you're okay with it or you're not, or you know, you feel like you have to justify stuff. Now, with your background, obviously, in your theatre work, a roundabout question for you Do you have to justify things in theatre the same way that we have to justify things close up? So, with that prop, we may have to find a justification. We say they're loose off an old radio, I don't know what the justification for dynamic coins is. Do you still have to justify things in theatre to make them work?

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah, so we normally go the other way around. So um, if we had to make like something vanish, we'd normally be given the item by the props team and then work with them to make the item. So rather than going, uh, I have to justify what this item is, we would hide the method within the item that exists. Uh in the edimage work at the moment, I've got we've got a Alexa that becomes possessed by a spirit, and Alexa has to start floating. So one side of it, you know, if if if magically thinking I've got to make it float, you'd think all the methods you need to make it float, and therefore it has to be this item to make it float. Whereas actually I get the item and go, this is a method I want to use. How do I use that method on this item? And then readdress the um and and change, you know, change them change the method to fit the item rather than change the item to fit the method.

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Oh, that's a really interesting way around, yeah. So you you're you're kind of flipping the process.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yes. So we start from the end and work backwards. And so and then so in the answer to the question with dynamic coins, yeah, it is a it they are weird. Like who has two little brass sides and a blast ring in their pocket? Why would you do that? Um, but I also think as as magicians, you're sort of allowed to have weird stuff. And I think that if you start going like, oh, I've got to give a reason behind where, you know, these this this belongs to so and so, or whatever it is, I feel you run the risk of driving up the level of suspicion on it. And especially on the dynamic coins, the method's so well hidden. I don't think you need to worry too much about what it why that's there. They just look like two brass lids and a brass ring. That is what they look like, and so then when they do that, and then also if you set up as being like watch these wondrous things happen, the expectation can be quite high. Where actually you're just making a tiny little stack of coins appear. Whereas whereas if it's more, if less, you know, less is more. And so if it's more about like, I just want to show this really cool thing, and then the things start happening, that becomes the moment rather than these organic, these wonderful objects I bought from wherever, you know. Do you know what I mean? I so I tend not to worry too much about, especially when I do close up, I tend not to worry too much about justifying stuff because it's not people don't. I don't think we as magicians worry so much about what people think about it. But actually, if the magic's good enough, they're not gonna care that the object's a bit weird, and if the performance is strong enough, I don't think they'll be bothered that you've got a weird like why have you got a sponge ball? Who cares? I'm a magician. Like, watch this really cool thing happen with this sponge ball. And by the way, it doesn't have to be a sponge ball, you could roll out a tissue, and I could do it with tissue if you want. The same things could happen because it's me that's doing it, not the thing. Do you know what I mean? So the attention should be on you, not the object.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

Yeah, we some sometimes we sell coin sets, and when the coin sets are made, the dates aren't always the same on every coin. And we get complaints from people who say, you know, well, the the dates aren't the same, so they're gonna see the dates changing. Yeah, yeah. And exactly what you just said there, if if the audience is amazed enough, hopefully they're not looking at the dates. They their attention should never be on the date, it should be about one.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

I totally agree, and especially with stage stuff, we spend a lot of our time going, if they're if they're thinking that, we've got bigger problems. Do you know what I mean? Like we really that shouldn't even be a thought in the back of their heads because they should be looking at the you know, the thing should have moved on and we're into the next scene or whatever it is. And I agree, I think, and I think that's potentially where because of my theatre work with the close-up stuff I do, I have this kind of this confidence in the fact that you can hide stuff in plain sight because you're you're meant to be doing magic. Uh like you've walked over saying, I'm a magician, can I show you some magic? So that uh so people know that you're gonna do weird stuff, but they should but the suspicion should be on you, the heat should all be on you and not the objects, because then it means you can use these strange objects and and then put them on and forget about them. Whereas if the attention is all on the objects, they're gonna want to check them. And the more you can be it's actually like anyone, you know, I often I often say to people like anyone can do this. I was I'm the geek, I spent years learning how to do this, so it's you know, really it's me you've got to worry about, not the thing I'm doing it with. So it takes all the heat off the gimmicks that you're using.

SPEAKER_03 30:37

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm glad that you put that in there at number one.

WoW Gimmick With A Real Story

SPEAKER_03 30:41

Let's move on to number two, then, John. What would you put in your second position?

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Uh well, I guess I can I'll juggle around a bit because we're talking about justification. There is something I use which I do have justification for, but which might follow nicely from that conversation. So I love a WoW gimmick. I love the WoW gimmick. I think it's a beautiful thing. I think it's such a clever moment um to create and to do something which looks like special effect. Um so the challenge I have at the moment as a close-up is there is so much tech magic available in terms of apps and all that sort of stuff, which I love. And I think they have a really special place in the industry and all the rest of it. Um, the challenge I have is I'm quite an analog boy. I'm you know born 82, I'm a boy of like real things. And so I struggle with when I'm working as a close-up, getting my phone out and be let me show you this thing, or get your phone, let me show it. Like it doesn't really sit with what I like to do. What I have found is with the WoW gimmick, um, I do a thing where someone chooses a card, we get it wrong, we put the six of hearts, whatever it is, into the wow gimmick and show it in the gimmick. And then so the story I give for why I've got this piece of wow, going back to what we're talking about before about um justifying objects, that one I do justify, but there's a reason because that's time to scenario that I give for the trick. So justification I give, and this is a true story. My grandfather, my mum's dad, he's sort of the reason why I got into all the theatre stuff, but he was obsessed with photography. So when I was a kid, he used to have loads of cameras everywhere, he used to take pieces, he used to have like before we had smartphones. I mean, he died in 2006, but he had like a camera on his watch, which would take these really grainy images. So, one of the things, the story I tell with the Wild Gimmick is when he died, I got all of his camera gear, and this random bit of plastic came with it. And I think what it was for was the film went inside this thing, and it was like a filter to protect it from light. I think that's what it does. But I've also found by chance that a playing card fits inside of it. It's it's the same width as a playing card. And the one I've got is NACA so it's got gaffer tape down the sides, it looks like it's a battle piece of plastic. So the judge so by doing that, that means then I can say to them, look, but I can show you something really cool because you know that with camera film, it's changed by light. So if you open up your phone camera and I get them to open up their camera phone and I hold the wow gimmick underneath their camera phone, it's not revolutionary this, but I get them to hold it under. So they're looking at the screen, and I suggest to them that because of the light changing, when I angle it through the screen, it looks like that six of hearts is transforming into the card you picked, the two of spades, whatever it is. So they get someone looking through the screen and seeing it, and then I say, but look, not only is it has it happened on your screen like a filter, it's like a filter in real life, and then bring it out and it's transformed into that, into their playing card. So it feels like it's kind of tied into the narrative, the trick, and then and then we move on and we put it away. Um, yeah, so I think so that would be one of my ones, and and I also really love the other version, which is the blank version where it's it's a blank card that goes in and transforms. We did I did a show called um Doctor Who Time Fracture was an immersive show a few years ago, and there was this idea that you could send objects through the time fracture and they'd come back from the time fracture, and something would have changed about them. And so we got one of these um we got blank wow gimmick, and we said it was actually part of a Dalek that'd been destroyed, and it came back through. And what we've discovered is for some reason is able to show you the future, and we must it must be some sort of alien technology we don't know about. And what we were doing was we were showing four blank cards, putting the blank card in, and then getting it to show someone the future, and the image that appeared was the final destination they were going to go to at the end of the immersive journey. So we were sort of like foreshadowing at the start of the show where they're gonna go through using a narrative magic trick to kind of do it. And and the dot two guys loved it. They were like trying to work out what this technology could have been. Where does it exist in the law for what these Daleks and why could Daleks see the future? All this it was really fun, and it was just a wow gimmick, that's all it was. So, yeah, so I think that would definitely be on my list as one because I think there's there's so much you could do with it, and it's such a beautiful moment. It's a real transformation in front of their face, which I really like.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

Well, I think that's really interesting. The the the concept with the Dalek is that you've you've created justification for a weird prop, but with an even weirder justification.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Yeah, yeah, definitely. But I guess obviously I work you know for theatre shows it's very different doing close-up shows, but there's no reason if you're doing a theatrical magic show, you couldn't just you can add those justifications in based on the narrative of the show that you're telling. And often I find the act the for me in theatre work, the answer is always in the narrative, so I always go back to what's the story we're trying to tell, because there'll always be an answer in that story that will give you the hook you need to justify the thing that you're doing. Um, whatever, whatever it might be with the ghost story or whatever it is. So um, yeah, so that's definitely that's definitely on my list.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

Well, I think it's a great one. It's one of the ones that you know, I don't know if the the new generation know how impactful the WoW gimmick was when it came out, but I remember seeing the trailers and the performances, and I remember one day when I was, I don't know, maybe 17, 18, going into Davenports, and they they had the glass desk, and in the very top there was just one WoW gimmick. And then when I found out how it worked, and you see it's just absolutely genius.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

It's so clever, it's so clever, but also what's interesting is the the method could be adapted to be people on stage if you wanted to. You know, we uh in a couple of shows I've explored the idea of basically doing a human-sized WoW gimmick, so you could then have someone behind a Venetian blind or something similar that could allow the method to work and you could transform the image of somebody into something else. So it's it's a really I think it's such a clever, such a clever method, it's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

Yeah, that's amazing. And I love the idea of a human-sized wow. I said that would be brilliant. Um let's go to number

Floating Light Bulb And New Tech

SPEAKER_03 36:15

three then. What would you put in your third spot?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Um, so like I am a theatre boy, that's that's what I do. So it I had to put in a couple of things which are theatrical. Um, and and the one that I always go to when I get asked about my favorite effect ever is always the um Harry Blackston Jr., the floating light bulb. Um I just it everything it's everything that I love about magic and theatre all in one in one place. I think it's so clever the the way the light bulb lights up. I think it's beautiful. I think the way that he makes it float is so clever. I love the fact he then takes it down to an audience member and does that in front of the audience member's face so there's no chance of it being anything weird, and they can they're holding it when it lights up and and all the rest of it. And that final moment when he sends it back over the stalls, just the noise you can hear in the auditorium when that that thing flies out over the back and then comes back to him, I think is such a well-constructed beat that the audience just don't see it coming. And and then thinking technically, the rig that he must have had to make that work, like I would love to see what that rig is. Because that's a that's a really hard thing to do to have things fly out over the audience and back. Getting it to get one way is easy, coming making it come back. That's that's really hard. I've done lots of shows where we've had things fly over the audience into stage or above the audience, that sort of stuff. But yeah, going there and back, I think is quite a challenge. So um, yeah, that to me is kind of one of my one of my favorite favorite effects ever.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

I've never really thought about it in that respect before. The idea that obviously in close-up, we've got people who have created tricks in the past and we've adapted their methods, and that's allowed us to be where we are today. Yeah, but there must be people in theatrical magic like the the Blackstone Floating Bulb, which their their rigs, their setups, their methods have now paved ways for future generations, and people can look at their work and go, Oh, that's brilliant, but now we've got the capability to do this. So if we add what we have now to what he has, my god, we can do so much more.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Yeah, 100%. So also Jim Steinmeier is like the master. And the methods Steinmeier creates are unbelievable, the thinking that goes into it. Um and what's really exciting about it, he is using relatively old methods, but using new technology. And we do the same, you know, we we regularly collaborate with all departments, projection, you know, everything we can think of to make the effect work using the technology we have now. Um, and that's really exciting. So, for example, the precision we can get with lighting, especially in theatre, means there's so much more possible with old Victorian methods that weren't possible even 30 years ago, even 20 years ago. You know, so so it means we've got more precision available to us. So we know, and also one of the things I was looking at with the Old Shakespeare Company a few years ago was performer tracking. So if we can digitally track where the performer is on space on in a space, and the lighting desk can also access that information, the lighting can digitally track to where it needs to be to make sure the darkness is where it needs to be for the effect to work. So, whereas so at the moment we have marks that the actors go to, if you like, to make an effect work. But if we knew the lighting could move to wherever the performer was, that gives you more freedom as a designer, as a director, and as a performer to be wherever you want, and we can still make the effect work because the lights would move to give us whatever we need. So I definitely think you're exactly right, the evolution of technology, and it's that always that thing we have with magic, whether we are on the cusp of new technology, how we use it. It's the same in theatre. We are rate we are often having conversations with companies years before it comes to market to try and work out what it's going to be so we could work out how we could deploy it if we wanted to, for the moment. Um, like indoor drones, that's a really good example. Like I'm slightly obsessed by indoor drones, but they're but you can't, it's really hard to convince production managers that it's alright to fly them over audiences' heads. They worry about them dropping on people's heads, which is totally fair. Um, and and so we but we are getting to a place where they're where that is less and less likely. So they might be in a world where you have things flying over the head of an audience, which is just a drone, which would be which would be really fun to do.

SPEAKER_03 40:20

Well, I I believe there's a uh uh Michael Jackson um theatre show that currently use drones over the heads of the audience.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

I did not know that. Yeah, that's literally I will go and find out about that. Thank you. That's good information.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

So I watched like a little how how they do it, and they they literally have um markers on the chairs of the theatre, and the drones basically log each time they're going past one of those markers, yeah, and they fly back to a box that's on the stage where they they nest, and then the actors bring on and take off the boxes of drones.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

That's yeah. I should look that up because that'd be I yeah, we when I did I did a mid summer night stream again for the RFC, and um we had an idea that the fairies were going to be beads of lights that could fly around. And so we spent a long time exploring whether we could get drones to fly around the auditorium, but it was just too expensive, unfortunately, for us to do at that point. So we ended up doing a mixture of D-lights, which worked really, really well, and um lights on fiber optic sticks that you couldn't see the sticks, but you could just see the lights, and it and and it it looked incredible, it looked really, really strong, and then loads of projection as well, which also then so when they went up into the canopy, you could then the canopy could be changed colour to be the fairies up above. Wow, yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_03 41:39

See, that's the thing. The question is some of the old Victorian methods, just black art and you know, um special paints that that uh uh uh affect lights, etc. Um, are the those methods still seem to work for a modern audience? So, do we really need these modern methods if all of these mon uh analogue methods work?

SPEAKER_00 42:03

I agree, I I totally agree. And it's the joy is using those analogue methods with the technology. So it's a mixture between the two, and how you how do you make them even better? How do you add even more elements of surprise to them without the audience realizing? So just when they think they know what it is, it's uh it's not that. And and and again, that's what I was talking about with the precision of the um of the lights and stuff. You can really you can really push what's possible in a really exciting way for the audience, which I think is is great fun to do. And that but that takes you know that takes a lot of time, but it is but it is really fun, it's totally worth it. So I think Teller says about we we just have too much time on our hands, and that is it's totally true. We spend forever thinking about these things, so then that so when we get it right, it works every single time.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

Well, I think that the Blackstone Floating Bolve is a great one in at number three. Let's go to number four. What's

Phone In Balloon And Overthinking

SPEAKER_03 42:54

in your fourth spot, John?

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Uh so I've got money in time. So I'm gonna so I'm gonna uh go for pressure, which is the mobile phone and balloon effects. Um, it was my closer for years as a close-up magician when I used to work at restaurants and stuff. Uh so that so it's very close to my heart. I love it. I think it's an impossible moment of magic. Uh, taking a spectator's phone with an inflated balloon and it goes inside the balloon, and then doing the thing where you bite the balloon and hand it back to them inside the balloon is just uh just an absolute joy to perform. Um the other reason I wanted to mention was just because of um, so I as you mentioned, I'm an associate with the inner circle. I love the magic circle. I think it's an absolutely I I can't still can't believe I'm a member, it's it's an incredible place to be part of. And I used to go every single Monday, I used to go every single Monday to the lectures, um, but then as work it got busy and busy, I you know I haven't been there for a couple years and I really, really genuinely miss it because it's such a cool place to be part of. But I remember uh one night particular, I was there as well as relatively new to join and realized that there are a lot of older generations of magicians in the building, and there weren't actually that many young guys of my age that were gigging magicians, and so for something. Feeling like, where are those guys? Like, who do I talk to about what I'm doing and to make it stronger? And I was lucky enough that one evening that I met um my revenue, very close with a guy called Jake Bamfield, who you might have seen this year on PGT. Um, and Jake, we were chatting, and Jake was I've got this cool thing, and he and he put my phone in a balloon, and it uh and it blew my mind. And I was like, that that is just like what are you doing? And I was very fortunate he shared with me the how it works, and that's where our friendship started. And we're and I mean he ended up doing magic at my wedding, he uh talked to my cousin, is now married to my cousin, uh, so he's now you know very much part of the family. And we gigged together for years on and off, and I helped him design his stuff for BGT this year, and we should got so close, so close. Um, but anyway, yeah, so I think that's why I want it in there because I think it's it's a really I love it as a moment of magic. I think it's really fun to do. I also love the fact that I learned it from a someone that's a very close friend of mine now. Um, but also I remember one night we we were in Nando's as you do after the circle, and we were talking about it, and we were talking about how do you flash to show the balloon um and what you can do to to change the method to get to the point. And it was a really interesting conversation to go around and listen to all the different views. And by that point, I was doing it weekly in my residency, so I knew there's never a question about that that comes from an audience. There is for magicians, but not from an audience member. And in my head, I could feel myself shifting that that there's a real concern about whether we overthink things as a magician. Sometimes it's totally totally valid, but often we need to listen to our audiences and and think. Actually, I've done that trick at 40 tables tonight, and not a single person has asked, Can I see that thing? So we oh we end up overcomplicating things and making it harder rather than setting the moment of wonder, as we know, to be really powerful and then moving forward. And it was a really yeah, so that so I think that's why that and also I think balloons might be useful on the islands, because you know, if you have to bite a if you have to bite a balloon every time, then you know you've got you need balloons, so they could be useful for carrying water or SS.

SPEAKER_03 46:03

Well, I think that's uh another great one, and I think uh there's been tricks throughout magic where it's a normal prop which isn't doctored in any well it is doctored but not necessarily gimmicked in a way. So, for example, healed and sealed, where the the the can restores itself, or I always remember Andrew Main had a great trick called hyperbills where two bills look like they visually melt through each other, and these are just normal objects that you can just take wherever you are and do this incredible piece of magic, and having knowledge like that with the balloon, it means that you could be at any function anywhere, see a balloon, take that balloon and put someone's phone inside it. It's spontaneous, it's organic, it feels that's how magic would be. If we were really magicians, we could look at something, take it, and do this most incredible thing with it.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

100%. I totally agree. And I uh and and the reason and so part of the reason why I ended up stopping doing it, or uh definitely had a few weeks off from doing it, was I was at my residency in Watford one Sunday, and um I'd been working there as always, and I remember two weeks in the trots of one week I did it, and then when I bit the blue and went to give it back, the phone screen had cracked, and it was a spectator's phone. And the guy was like, I'm actually going into town now anyway to buy a new phone, so don't stress about it. And I was like, I mean, I will pay you for your phone because that's that's really bad. And he was like, No, no, it's fine, don't worry about it. So I can't, I don't know whether the screen already had a crack in it, and I did I just made it worse, or whether I genuinely cracked this cracked the screen. So that happened one week. Fine, whatever. Carried on working, it was still fine the rest of the week. And then the following week, same restaurant, I did the thing and I put the phone in the balloon, and somehow, and I still don't quite get the physics of it, somehow, as the balloon finished, as the phone, sorry, finished going in the balloon, the phone literally shot out of my hand and flew across the restaurant, hit the back of a chair, and scooted back and landed at my feet, um, which was terrifying. So then I picked it, bent down and picked it up and checked, and the phone was completely undamaged. I've got no idea how he must have an incredible case in it, and then gave that back to the spectator. And I think they think that was the trick that I was gonna launch their phone across a restaurant and it would come back and be undamaged. I think they think that's what it was, and so then I was like, there you go, and then like what's just happened? I was like, Yeah, I'm not sure either, but it's fun, wasn't it? And then we sort of left it at that and walked away. So, and then that uh, but at that moment I was like, maybe I should just pause this for a bit, and and so I sort of stopped doing it, but it's still one of my favourite things. Uh as you said, an event where someone's got a balloon, you'd just be like, Oh, just let me and it's done because it's such a great moment, it's so much fun to do.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

I just love how there was a trick for both you and your spectator. Oh, yeah. Well, I think that's a great one in at number

Sponge Balls And Theatre That Hits Hard

SPEAKER_03 48:53

four. Let's go to number five. What's in your fifth spot?

SPEAKER_00 48:55

So we mentioned earlier with Jang, um, Spongebobs are in my fifth spot. Um, the SpongeBobs uh were one of the first effects I learned when I was, you know, as every magician, I had a pool daniel set when I was seven. Um, and I uh I still sponge balls are in my close-up routine, they have been forever, and I absolutely love them. I think they are so much fun to do, and no matter who you perform them on, it takes them back to being a kid and being amazed by magic. You know, and so my routine is uh um red ball splits into two, sorry, green ball splits into two, multiplies into three, and then one by one they colour change in the in the spectator's hand from being green to red, and then I finish with uh the load is a big sponge bunny in the spectator's hand. So it goes from being like a colour change, gets the numbers, and then every point is changing, another one changing colour, another one changing colour, and then just they think they've got the hand and it's gonna be about to be in three reds as in a bunny. So you get this complete non-sequitur, which just in my mind it's just so silly and such a nice and so unexpected. It sort of gives that moment of surprise, that moment of wonder. And I love them, and and I love what you can do with them. I I and I apologise, I don't know the name, but there's a new guy, I've seen his masterclasses available, and it looks the is I think he's a Spanish musician, I don't know his name, but the but the work he is doing with those sponges looks unbelievable. So it's on my list to buy, and when I've got some time to sit down with to try and learn some of his stuff, because it's so clean, it's so beautiful. And I yeah, uh maybe I could do a name check on him, but he but he uh it's incredible. Um, so yes, those would be in my list. And also when you think of things like the Tommy Cooper with Parkinson, you know, the those sort of things, there's there's people throughout the years who've done some the most incredible things with SpongeBobs, and I just think they're so much fun and they're so joyous, and that to me is what magic is is really about. It's about the joy and the wonder, and I think Spongebob's encapsulate that really, really well for me.

SPEAKER_03 50:48

Yeah, I'm trying to find his name. So uh I remember seeing it, I think it was a penguin magic selection.

SPEAKER_04 50:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:56

Um, and yeah, I remember seeing he does a very deliberate slow-mo change in in his hand, and uh sorry, not a change, it's a uh uh transfer. But the slower it is, the more baffling it is, which is yeah, and the colour changes like rubbing the green one and then changing to yellow.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

It's so good. Yeah, it's on my list of leads to buy.

SPEAKER_03 51:18

Another weird question for you, bringing it back to theatre. So when we talk about spongeballs, it's considered like one of the most impactful things because it happens in the hands of the audience. So for them, there that there's an impossible an even more impossible situation, they are holding on to that thing and it's still got into their hand. Is there a theatre equivalent? So is there a a trick that it just affects an audience in a way that others don't for whatever reason?

SPEAKER_00 51:46

That's a really good question. I think it again it goes back to the story. So if the story is strong enough, when the effect lands, it'll hit the audience in the gut. And I can get actually one of my honourable mentions that I've got that's not gonna make it into my list. I've got I've I'm Pardon the arrogance, but there is I've got one of my own tricks on my list, and then there's another one of my own effects that I'd had to mention just because it was it was a really important effect for me. But I did a show at the National called Top R of Ashes a few years ago about dementia and Alzheimer's. So Mira Syal played the lead, and in the second half of the show, the disease has taken hold of her, and her character is in a care home chair, in an old people's chair, for the majority of the second act. And at the end of the show, spoiler, and her character passes away and goes to join her the ghost of her husband in the afterlife. And in the script, it wasn't written as an effect, but I saw this as a moment that we could put something in. She takes her final breath and then carries on having a scene with her husband. But what I wanted was the performer for Mira to be able to be in the scene with her husband, but for her body to still be in the care home chair. So what we did was we built uh essentially a version of a decolter chair built into the care home chair that's out on stage the whole of the second act. Um, but it was also sort of like an Azra as well. Um so as she took her, so she was on stage, there's a uh Cara was next to her, and uh uh he took the blanket away as she took her final breath, so she took her final breath, he took the blanket, he took the blanket, and then he checked her pulse and saw that she passed away. He took the blanket away from her, and as he took the blanket away from her, she stepped up as if she was joining the afterlife. So for the characters in the play, her body was still on the chair. For the audience, they saw her take the step forward, and she was then in the scene with her um husband. The carer then took the blanket, and as he went to cover where the body should have been, the form got activated in the movement of covering the blanket, and so her body arrived under the blanket as the form was put as the blanket was put on the on the on the body, if that makes sense. And so all of a sudden you had her in on stage with her husband, looking at her body, respectfully covered by blankets, in this chair. And the noise that we got in the audience when that moment happened was so affecting because they totally understood that in that moment she'd gone. And yet here she was saying to her husband, I don't want to go yet, I want to stay with my children, I haven't finished. And so the scene finished with a chair being taken off stage really slowly, and her walking, watching her own body being taken off stage. Was the sort of the end of the scene. And so, and to me, that's when our stuff in the theatre works the best. So it's not about like it needs to be in their hands, it's actually about how we make them feel. And because they've been through this journey with this character the whole way through, to watch her die and then see her ghost following her body off was just an unbelievable moment. So, that to me is that that elegance and beauty thing I mentioned that my wife talks about, that's the same thing. It's about how we create those moments so the audience really feel in the gut of their body, like what it is that we're trying to communicate. Um, and then and that to me is where magic is at its best. You know, as magicians, we try and create wonder and surprise and all these wonderful things. But in the theatre, we have to we need people to feel sad or happy or whatever it is. So we have to find ways to use illusions to do that as well. Um, so that that to me is like one of my honourable mentions, but that was um that I think answers that question in terms of how to get to the audience.

SPEAKER_03 55:08

Well, I'm glad that I asked these weird questions because that was a that was a brilliant, a brilliant reply. Wow, what an incredible moment. Are there videos of that?

SPEAKER_00 55:17

Yeah, so it's on NT Live, which is the National Theatre streaming platform. Um the show is called Top Ware of Ashes, and it is on NT Live, so you can watch the whole show. We had some amazing effects there. Let's talk about Spongebobs. Um, lovely uh Mila, who makes this the SpongeBob, she's work at Pop Dog and does her own SpongeBob. Everyone knows if Black Bulls is incredible. Um, we commissioned her to make some sponge mangoes. So there's a scene in the show where her Mira's character is remembering being in the jungle with her husband catching mangoes from a tree. And so we had these two beautifully made sponges, sponge mangoes, that Mira had in her fists and rested with her hands on her knees as if she's just sitting resting. But the mangoes had one, I think, which had preloaded. And as she went to catch the mango, she opened her hand and this sponge mango appeared inside her, inside her hand. And I remember I had Mark Lawson, the Guardian critic, sitting in front of me on press nights, and at the end he turned and said, That was where where do the mangoes come from? He couldn't comprehend where they could be. And in my head, I'm like, this is that's a sponge ball, mate. That's what you're looking at there. But isn't that incredible that it's a sponge item that you using you don't see it, you don't see it as a sponge item, you see, you believe there's a mango falling from a tree and it's there, which is using all that misdirection skill, all that stuff and timing and everything. Um, yeah, so definitely so yeah, I think that's that's that as well is one of the reasons why they'd be on my list.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

Well, I'd be definitely going to watch that on uh National. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

It's a really, really what's interesting was everyone thought because it's Mira that it was a comedy. So everyone came in and be like, ooh, Mira Sayel, let's see some fun. And it starts off being quite funny, but very quickly goes downhill very quickly, and you realise that you're in for quite a hell of a ride. And it and it was a very, very, very sad, very moving piece, and beautifully written, beautifully written. Um and the performances were just uh incredible. She got nominated for the Olivier for that show. She didn't win it, unfortunately, but she was nominated that year for Best Actress, and it was just phenomenal. It was such a great show, and it was my first lead creative role at the national. Um, so obviously, in my mind, it sits me very hard. But I said that was an honorable mention on my list.

SPEAKER_02 57:19

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SPEAKER_03 58:15

Well, that is one of the biggest diversions from Spongebobs we've ever had, and I'm so glad we did uh because that was

Penn And Teller Teach Misdirection

SPEAKER_03 58:22

brilliant. Let's move to number six then. What's in your sixth spot?

SPEAKER_00 58:24

I think I should talk so Penantella, the Misdirection trick, which is only ever done live. It's not you can't see it filmed anywhere. And it's and have you seen you must have said, have you seen Penantella Live? You see them? Did you see them at Hammersmith?

SPEAKER_03 58:36

I saw them at Hammersmith, but not the last time, the time before. I think it was 2016, I think it was.

SPEAKER_00 58:42

So the Misdirection, I won't ruin the end of it because I want people to see this live. But in the Misdirection trick, there is a cameraman and they are showing stuff on screen, and you're taught as the audience, if you look at what's happening on the screen, you're missing what's happening in front of you. And it's teach them where we can control their vision and make you look at this and miss that or whatever it might be. And there's an incredible thing at the end, which I won't ruin, which you just don't see coming, which is a which is just such a great version of misdirection. And misdirection on stage is so important. And I and it to me it's such a great example of what's actually possible if you're brave enough to use misdirection at that scale to control where the audience are looking. And you know, as magicians on close-up in particular, we think about misdirection being what if I need to sneak that thing under the box, I've got to do something over here to make them look at so they're not looking at it. And we learn how to control the heat and all the rest of it. But obviously, on stage, you don't have that control, you've got to do bigger things to make people look in the right position or to make them look at the thing and not realize they're looking at the thing that's being done. Um, and I what I love about that trick, firstly, that's the only done ever done live, and obviously being a theatre boy, like live theatre for me is the best sort of entertainment. So it's so that idea that it's something that can you can only experience in the room, I think is really important. Um, but also what it teaches us about what's possible with misdirection, if you're brave enough to go for it, I think is also really important. And a lot of stuff we do on stage, we are pushing what's possible and backing ourselves a lot to be like, it's fine, like this is gonna work because we all know magic is wrong until it's right. And I have those conversations a lot in rehearsals where I'll say to them, like, this is the worst it's gonna look because we haven't got lights, we've got sounds, the thing that we're using is isn't is a prototype version. But trust me, when we get to the end, it's gonna look brilliant. But in the moment it doesn't, I know that, and that to me is a really good version of that trick say of saying to people like this is what we we know that as humans you do this, so we've learned how to control that and to do the things we need to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:31

I love any form of misdirection trick, yeah, and I love especially in theatre, the amount of times, and this this is a testament to good uh misdirection in theatre, is when you watch something happen, it catches you, and then you watch it back again if you go and see the show a second time, and you go, Oh my god, how did I not see that?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:54

It's the fact that it got you the first time because it was so you know, uh a great example of this was Darren Brown's gorilla appearance.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

Yes, yeah, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:03

You watch it the second time, and in your head you're like, How did I miss that? How did I miss that? Because there's so much going on, it's you know, in in theatre, I think it's really interesting, like we said at the head of the podcast, you're afforded different tools, you have lighting, and if something's dark and there's one beam of light on one other thing, that is the best form of misdirection because you can physically not see what's in the dark of that show, but equally you have sound, so you can misdirect with an audible thing happening one side of the stage and not the other. Uh, and I think that's why your job in particular, and you know, I I think probably why Pennantella made that routine is just to show how creative misdirection can be and how fun and exciting it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

Yeah, I agree. So I do I like everyone, I do a card on the box routine, and it's one of my favourite effects to do uh when I'm working out, I absolutely love it. And uh weirdly I got talking to uh the RFU to England rugby and talking about the rules of misdirection and using that as an example, and so therefore, if you could apply those rules to cards, you can also apply them to people. And so taking that concept of like that's how it works with the deck cards, and then and then if we yeah, we then we can teach the audience, the audience, the opposition, the rules, and then divert them. We could then make it impossible to see a runner coming through to go and score a try. And so, and it's really fun to kind of have those sort of conversations where you expand what it is as a essentially a card trick and how but what it teaches you, and I think you're right, that's what the Penitello misdirection thing does is it teaches you so much about what they do. And I and you know, misdirection is everything on stage, we use it in so many different ways to make you look all over the place, or take just take your eye to to cover whatever it is we're trying to cover, so you miss the beats where the things happened, and when you look back, it's already done without you realising. Um, so yeah, so I think I'd have to have that with me, definitely. And does that mean also get Pen and Tella because they do it?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:01

Well, we do have a a spin-off of this podcast called SOS, where we invite guests on a few years later to see if their list has changed, and then they're allowed an act on the stage with them. So cool. We'll have to get you back, and then you can have that on that. Uh, but that's another great one in at number six. Let's go to the tail end. So we've got two more. Number seven.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

Um, so I mentioned one of my effects. I will mention

Vanishing An Elephant With Precision

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

one of my other effects on this list just because the uh the the effect um so I did a show for the magician uh called The Magician's Elephant at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Um, and as you meant, uh and I had to make an elephant vanish. That's that was the effect. So I I I've done an elephant vanish, which is insane. Um, it wasn't a real elephant, I will say. It was a puppeteered elephant. So technically I made an elephant and three puppeteers vanish or four puppeteers. Um but the reason why I want that on my list is firstly, an elephant vanish is one of the most iconic illusions ever created, which is which is amazing to think that my brain solved a version of that, which is really exciting. Um, so I love the history of the effect, and I watched every version that I could possibly find to see ways that you could make an elephant vanish. Everything from the Master Magician through Lance Burton port, like all of them. I went back to the back catalogue. Um, so yeah, so there's that. Um, and then also um so all Shakespeare Company is somewhere that I've wanted to work since I was a child. Um, it's always been on my list of places to be. Um, so that was my first lead in the main house to In Magician's Elephants. Um, and I absolutely love that experience of working in that building with those. The team they have in Stratford are just second to none. They're brought it, they're the most incredible people. And as an institution, I love what it does for Shakespeare. Um, so there was that side of it. It also we started talking about it going in at the beginning of 2020, going into the pandemic. Um, we obviously didn't know what the pandemic was going to do. So this effect for me became like a guiding light through the pandemic that when I got out of the pandemic, I was still gonna get to make this elephant vanish. And so we the magician's elephant ended up being the Christmas show 2021 when the pandemic sort of finishing with allowing back into the theatre. And for context, for those of you that aren't aware, for the as we all know, the world stopped in the pandemic. But uh the challenge we had in the theatre was that the theatre's completely closed, so the entire industry stopped. So you went from being, you know, I'm I'm a freelancer, so we don't know where the next job or the next gig is coming from, but there was always a chance because it was always an industry. When that industry closed, it was terrifying because all the stuff you'd planned for years stopped literally in a day. We were in day one of rehearsal at the Palace Theatre for the Cast Chase AEF Harry Potter on the day they closed the theatre. And I'll say our company manager came in and said, We've got to close the theatre, we've been struck by the government, we don't know when we'll be back. We'll let you know. So I left the Palace Theatre going, I I think they've just closed the industry. And that was that was absolutely terrifying. Um, and 2020 was a year where I had loads of big projects finishing with magicians' elephants uh booked in. And so that and they all went one by one, which is really scary. So I worked on that through the pandemic. I had this as my thing that I was gonna get to do, which helped me through a lot. And Also, we had because of the pandemic, we then got more time to workshop it than I would normally get on an effect like this. So we had three days in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company, uh theatre, to make this elephant vanish work, which is really fun to do to work out the possible ways we could do it. Barry and I, my you know, my director wanted an empty stage, so no cover. She wanted it to feel like you were looking at the elephant, and then you blinked your eyes and it gone, was her brief. Um it was a life-sized elephant that's been used throughout the show. So there's all these different things we had to consider to make it work. So we finished the workshop and we'd got the vanish down. But the vanish took from the moment the elephant disappeared to when the lights changed, it was about nine seconds. And it worked, and we were happy, and everyone really liked it. And I remember about a week later, my director called me and said, Look, is that is that it? Is there anything else we can do? And I remember driving up to Stratford in summer 2021 to meet my production manager. And on the drive up, I had this idea of a way we could do it, and so we got the model box out and we built a miniature version of what I thought the vanish could be. And we tested on the model box and it worked. And his view was if it works in the model box, it will work in real life. So he then went straight to the workshop and had them build the thing I needed to make the vanish work. And then the van, so the vanish went from being a nine-second vanish, which was which was too long in hindsight, to so basically you see the elephant on stage, we flash a light, and the light flash was 2.5 seconds, and in that 2.5 seconds, the elephant's gone. Now, the interesting thing was if the light flash was 2.25 seconds, you saw his trunk disappearing. So it wasn't quite long enough. So by increasing by 0.25 a second on the lighting queue, it was enough to make the elephant disappear. What was beautiful about the method that I chose was that it meant from the moment the vanish happened, the light the stage could be filled with light. And you could show instantly it was an empty stage and the elephant had gone from being nowhere. Um and we had the thing where the magician character in the show walked around the back of the elephant without saying to one of the look, there's nothing here. He'd walked around the back of the elephant show, there's nothing there. Uh, there were moments of people making lilies appear because that was the spell that he was trying to do. And so people kept having flowers appear at different points of the stage. They hit the high note of the song, the lights flashed 2.5 seconds, came back, and the light was filled with stage and he'd gone. And then the elephant disappeared. Um, so that it was a process that was really fun to do. And then I took my dad with me to Press Knights, and I remember being at Prest Knight in the auditorium with my dad next to me, and my heart thundering in my chest as I knew the vanish was about to happen. Um it worked, the place erupted, and I remember the pat that my dad gave me on the back was solid. I sort of felt like that was that was like the moment where I was like, You see, Dad, this is what I was talking about. These are things I know I can do now. Um and so, you know, really my mum and dad are instrumental in what I do, and so it's really nice to have my dad there with me. Um, mum does come to press nights as well, but she's not as interested in the in the stuff as dad is. My dad gets really fascinated by it. So it's so that to me is why it sticks in my head as being a thing. And so then when I'm in a meeting wherever, and someone says, Can we make this disappear? And I can say, you know, I did I made an elephant vanish. Like instantly, they know they're in safe hands, so I so I know how to do these things. Um yeah, so I so that that is definitely on my list as sort of the one of my effects I would have that I would want to remember forever, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:22

Just in terms of the pressure of a project like that, yeah, it's a bit like you know, people go and see chitty chitty bang bang for the car. And when the car comes on the stage, it's incredible, but really everyone's there to see the car fly.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:37

You know, everyone's gone to see the vanishing elephant. Uh, sorry, the the um Egyptian elephant, uh, for the elephant, right? They've gone to see in the same way that people have gone to see Warhorse to see the the horse, and people have gone to see Life of Pi for the the tiger, you know. Yeah, yeah. Um, but now we know that the elephant's gonna vanish. Now we're there to see the elephant vanish. Yeah, the pressure of that for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

Yeah, what's really interesting is in the story. So the so basically in the story, the magician is trying to conjure some lilies for um uh characters in the play. Um instead of conjuring lilies, he conjures an elephant and it crashes through the opera house roof and crushes the legs of this character. Um the elephant is in this town, and all of a sudden the town becomes obsessed by the elephant, and the town gets richer, but the elephant gets worse. At the same time, there's an orphan boy who's told to find his sister, he has to follow the elephant and send the elephant home. So the boy's journey in the show is to convince the magician to get let out of jail and then come and send the elephant home. But that means the town will go back down and go back to being poor because they've got rich of the back of the elephant. But because the way they're treating the elephant, the elephant's getting more and more sick, so there's a chance the elephant might die. So it's a really interesting thing. So you sort of get this narrative build where the vanish has to happen for the boy to find his sister, for the elephant not to die, and for the magician character to be um like uh what's the right word? Uh like saved, I guess. Because he's he's he's gone wrong. And so the whole play builds to this moment. So when the vanish happens, the joy that the characters have for all these different reasons is abundant on stage, as well as the fact for the audience, we've pulled off this trick where we've made an elephant disappear in front of them. And I and I for magicians out there with with no cover, I have to keep reminding them that there is there was no cover for my vanish. There was an elephant standing on stage, and then it was gone. That was it. That was a bet it's it's so yeah, so it's it's it was such a joy to do, and it worked every time. I'm happy to say, like uh the whole run. Every night I'd got my show report, and every night it'd say that the elephant vanished. Like every single night, it was great. It was really fun. And actually, on the misdirection thing, you know, one of the things we did for the misdirection about was um so the elephant puppet was built to be very lightweight, so we could move it around the stage. Obviously, you couldn't move it as too heavy. But on the press call, when they met the elephant when the press met the elephant for the first time before the show started, we sprayed our puppeteers with loads of water to make them look like it was really hard work. And we explained that the that they'd been in training to lift this massive puppet already. So that so we were selling to the audience that went out in the press that this this elephant was really hard work to move. So then it's adding that layer of impossibility to the fact that well, they can't have gone off really quickly because it's so heavy. And we even mic'd up the feet so when they're booming on stage, it sounded like it was really heavy on stage. Like we did loads of things to kind of make it feel even more impossible that this elephant was really heavy, so it couldn't just be thrown off stage, whatever it was. So to add that layer of impossibility, that other layer to the method, which isn't necessarily a trick, but it sort of is misdirection.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:40

Yeah, it's it's kind of feeding into the immersion of the show, right? I always remember going to see uh Antie Nyman's ghost stories at the Duke of the World. Yeah, exactly that. And when you went in, they had like tape across the theatre, and it looked like the theatre had been pulled down and they covered the walls, so you got a bit uh discombobulated as you went in. Uh, it was already low lighting in the auditorium. Uh it's just the immersion. I guess that's what's amazing again about what you get to do in a theatre is the journey for the audience begins way before they're there watching the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:15

100%, 100%. And I and funny when you mentioned Andy there, I met I met Andy when he when the ghost stories were used in the lyric in The Hamsmith. I asked Andy for a cup of tea, and he'd very kindly said yes. And I had a cup of tea with Andy before the show, and we talked about his process because I could see my career was heading in that sort of direction. Um, and I was really interested to know how he made ghost stories, and it was really fascinating to understand what how he created that show, how he and the effects that they used and the psychological warfare they used on the audience to get them into that state before they'd even walked into the building. I mean, I remember getting my tickets and there being like a warning stamp on the envelope. So before you even open it, you're like, oh god, what have I signed up for? Um, yeah, but that and that has always stuck with me as a lesson in like how far back to go. So you mentioned inside number line stage frights, one of the things we looked at doing on stage fright was do we there's the the plot the show is about ghosts, and so we looked about do we update the Wikipedia of the Wyndhams Theatre to have our ghost in the Wikipedia? So if you wanted to go down that rabbit hole, you could see it was actually it was a real thing, it wasn't just us making up a story. But when we toured it, we realized we'd have to do that for every single, every single theatre, of course, and that that became a bit too tricky, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:22

Well, I think that's a great one in the number

Tenyo Weirdness And Scaling Tricks Up

SPEAKER_03 1:14:24

seven. We've vanished an elephant. Let's go to your final one then. So, what's in number eight?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:28

So the final one, and I don't know the name of this trick, I think it's a tenure trick. I'm a big fan of tenure stuff, always have been. I think the what they do for magic is like incredible. I absolutely love it. Um, I don't have the obsessions having the books and all that, but I but whenever I see them, I go, that is just so cool. So I often buy stuff just to see how they're doing it to get to get my mind going. But I remember very distinctly being at the Magic Circle one night in the bar, chatting to my friends, and looking across and seeing a little play-doh man walk along a line of cards with a chain hanging down and stop. And the little card that the chain was touching was the card that someone had chosen, and it absolutely blew my mind. Um, it was Angelo Carboni who had it in as it would be. Of course it's gonna be Angelo, and I I absolutely adore Angelo. We got um when I first joined the circle, he was one of the first people I got to know very well. We don't speak as much as we used to, but he was he still is just a master. And um, I remember him showing it to me, and I was just and what I loved about it was everyone knows what play-doh is, it smells like play, it looks like play-doh, everyone knows what play-doh is. So I felt really fun that you could make whatever this little man needed to be out of the play-doh. I love that. The method is ingenious, the way it's hidden, I think, is so clever. And just I loved that thing of going, sort of what we talked about at the start, about going, we know we're weird, we're magicians, we know that. So if I'm gonna lean into the weirdness, how weird is this that you could make a little plastic C man for me, a little play-doh man, and I am then gonna make that little man walk and find the thing that you've chosen. So it sets up that thing about organic, feeling organic, the moment of wonder and surprise within it, the cleverness of the method being right in front of you but not realizing it's there, and just being in the magic circle and seeing the weirdest stuff and going, yeah, of course, why not? We're in the magic circle, we should be seeing the weirdest stuff. We should be seeing the best magic in the world sitting in the bar. Because we're, you know, we as a society view ourselves as being the leading the cutting edge of magic, so we we should be doing that stuff, and I think we do. Um, so yeah, so that to me would be that to me is one I'd love to have there just to play with because I think it's such a cool little thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:34

So I think this maybe Little Man by Paul Harris Presents that's the one that immediately came to mind because I remember it coming out and it it causing an absolute buzz because I think even uh what I think was really clever about it was it kind of played into magicians a little bit because we all presume there may be something in the clay, but the the trick ends with you pulling it apart and scrunching it into a ball. So you as a magician, every method that you can think of goes, it's not and and your your brain's gone. Now, in terms of that kind of trick, I think again, we've spoken about it uh with other stage performers. I love the idea that some of the ten yeo tricks could actually be adapted for stage, a bit like you mentioned having a human-sized wow, given so do you ever look at mechanical tricks that are small and and find ways to do them for the stage?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

100%. So often I'll see, as we all do, trailers with really nice eye candy of like whatever it might be, and I'll think a bit like we talked about earlier about the things can change. Um, so the levitas, you know the levitas thing with the card that stops mid-air and you can move your hand around with a card, beautiful effect, really, really clever. And I bought that purely because I wanted to know the hookup, and I think it's really clever, but I could see so for example, if you're on stage and it and you need to the world needs to freeze for a moment, that sort of moment where someone could be holding something and let go of it as they and it freezes midair, could be a cup, could be something different. That method would lend itself those sort of things. So I often will buy stuff. I often say to my wife, I've got a a cupboard, which is behind me actually, but my cupboard is full of answers to questions that haven't been asked yet. But they're just things that I know will be useful. So I'll buy them and be like, I think that's a that'll be a useful thing for me to have my head for something. I don't know what, but at some point I feel like that might be a useful thing. So I regularly I have never been to Blackpool mainly because I will spend all my money. So that so I don't have the self-control to not spend all my money. That's the only reason I haven't been. Um, but I do feel like I need to go because I know there is stuff there which will be useful for stuff for anything I'm thinking of, just to just to arm myself with more knowledge. Um, yeah, so I regularly will buy stuff to learn the mechanism or the method, to see if there's a way to adapt it and and repurpose it or to use it as a starting point for an idea to then take forward into something different.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:04

And just looking over your list, um just because we've got your full list in view now, uh everyone on the podcast knows I like to pick these uh lists apart. Um just thinking about your job and how whimsical and weird and interesting your job is. This is the list of someone who I can imagine does your job, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:27

Yeah, I've got honorable mentions, which I should also talk about. Just briefly, I know we've done a lot, but I just just the honorable mentions I had is I mentioned about top ashes. Um, Phantom Deck was on my list because I love the Phantom Deck. I love the when the Omni Deck was out, I was the same as everyone. Omni deck was my cloak was one of my clothes, I loved it. What I love about the fact that why I take Phantom Deck over um Omni Deck is just that moment where you can spread the cards. And the number of times I've been with people that said, Oh, and then the magician did it, and the and it was a block of plastic in my hand. They know it's a block of plastic is the thing I hear. And it always made me anxious about the fact that, like, if you know it's a block of plastic, then you know I've changed the cards have changed into a block of plastic, and so you know that block of plastic exists somehow already. Whereas I always feel with the Phantom Deck, there is something in the audience head that says every single card has changed quality apart from their sign card that's left in the middle, whatever it is, which I really enjoy. And people have said to me, you know, are they heat sensitive? If I hold them my hands long enough, does the does the heat make the cards disappear? If you like, yeah, why not? That's a great idea. Like, of course it could be. So I wanted to mention that. I also want to mention the callminder car because I think that's in terms of hiding method and playing silent, is anything better? I think you know, Juan Tamaria's doing his version of that is just I still watched that as a kid, and also things like stuff like Rabbit, like John Anahan, all those guys. That era of magic was my defining year of magic, Paul Daniel's show, all that stuff. So I can't I couldn't not mention them as honourable things that went along my sort of journey. Uh same with Marman's Magic, same as everyone started with Marvin's Magic set and a Paul Daniel set. My granddad was a Geordie and he bought me a bucket O Trix, which is this big red bucket with a yellow lid, and all the tricks were really badly made. So the plastic used to cut my fingers. Um, but it taught me how to use bad props, and so I wanted to mention them as well. Um, but yeah, that was all my honourable mentions I had so far.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:11

Well, we love an honourable mention, yeah. So uh I'm glad that you put them in there. And your your theory there with the the cards, I've never thought of it that way. The the idea that the magic is not that the cards have turned into uh a block of plastic because they know that the block of plastic existed. So in their head, it didn't the deck of cards didn't turn into a block of plastic. Somehow you've got the block of plastic in their hands, yes. Whereas the cards, it feels more magical because it feels well, how did each card?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:40

Yeah, so what I set up as being we're gonna put the deck in your hands and we're gonna make you gonna feel them vanish. So I set it up as a vanishing deck. So I try it three, try three methods to make it vanish, and none of them work. And I go, well, look, if it doesn't work, if it hasn't worked, don't worry about it. But if it has, you've created this miracle, not me, because it's happening in your hands. And then when they open their hands, you get that first bit of them seeing something weird's happened, and then you turn it and fan it out to show the whole audience every single card has gone, apart from one that's left in the middle. And then that's when they get the realization, well, maybe that's their and I do so with that effect, I do an impromptu version of an anniversary waltz. So I don't use a gimmick card for the anniversary waltz, I do basically a signed back and front uh that becomes one card, and that one card ends up in their hand, and then we use that one card to go into the phantom deck, and then that's the one card that's left inside their phantom deck. I talk about the fact that when I got married, if I do this at weddings, I talk about the fact that when I got when I got married to my wife, I often feel like we're the only two people in the room and the rest of the room disappears. And so I want that card to represent you two in a room, and we're gonna feel the deck, the rest of the room, disappear, and that's that's the setup. So then when they then I show that everything else has disappeared apart from these two people in the room, that's kind of the finisher for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:46

Amazing. But we've given you eight tricks, but we're only gonna give you one each of these, John.

Banish The Magician Stereotype

SPEAKER_03 1:22:51

Okay, so I want you to imagine that you're about to dig a big sandy hole, you're gonna throw something inside there, never to be seen again. What would you like to banish?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:03

I would think about this a lot. I would like to banish the public's perception of being a magician, because I feel that a lot of us are shortchanged by what people think a magician is gonna do, rather than actually letting us do what we love doing and show it to them first. I don't mind being judged afterwards, that's absolutely fine. But often you can, you know, you must have been there engaged with me, say I'm a magician. No, I don't I don't like magicians. Well, but what don't you like? Because actually, I don't think I don't think of myself as a magician, I just learned some cool stuff. Let me show it to you. And then you find your way through and and and convince them otherwise. So I so that to me would be the thing that I would like to get rid of. And in doing so, I think that would open up the conversation for all of us as a magician, talk about what what how do we want to be perceived? How do we want our community to work and all you know, all that stuff that we see about the competitive nature and the arrogance and all those things coming from the theater world where everything's about collaboration? I think I feel like if we could shift the perception of being a magician away from what people think a magician is and go closer into a society that really collaborates and really listens to each other and pushes the art form forward, it would be a much nicer and happier place to exist as a as a performer, I guess. Um, yeah, so that would be the thing I'd like to try and get rid of because I just think it's it's not fair that a lot of us don't get a chance to show the magic because people don't think they like magic because they've either seen a bad performer or they have a memory of a being, you know, uh a kid's party and the guy being awful and hit them on the head, or whatever it is. Like that to me is a thing that's something I'd like to get rid of.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:34

Well, I think there's two two things that come straight to mind here, which are two things that I think w we should think about is magicians self-deprecating in a reflection of all other magicians. So we have a historic database of it now, which is easily accessed. So they're always the butt of jokes on old sitcoms, and you know, I'm I'm a huge fan of Modern Family. Uh, and in that show in particular, you know, he he the dad really likes magic, but throughout the entire series, it's seen as a lesser thing, you know, his magic shop's gonna uh bankrupt the family, all of that sort of stuff. So we should be mitigating the fact that we have that historic database of people putting down magicians, and try not to self-deprecate because you've got to remember that when you're putting down yourself or what you're doing, you're actually putting down an entire industry of people, yeah, exactly. And you're hurting all of us by making those jokes, you know. We should be changing the way people.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:33

And also, we should like magic is incredible, and so we shouldn't be scared to talk about how incredible magic is. You know, we talk about the early recorded magic trick being from the time of the pharaohs. That's mad. Like, think of that fact that you are doing a trick that was described in ancient Egyptians. Like, that's that just blows my mind, and yet we worry about you know, we get caught up in talking to each other and putting each other down to make ourselves feel better. We we are part of an art form which is older than nearly any other art form, and we should be really proud of that and really want to share that with people. And I think anything we do to get past that to then let people see it, I think is real. That's why I think the magic in theatre is so important because we're sneaking magic in front of the public without them realizing, they don't realize they're gonna come and see it. You know, I'm doing a show um doing the cherry orchard later this year at the Harold Pinzer, and that's a chekhov, a really detailed, like dark Russian epic, and it has a character in it who performs some magic tricks. So there is an expectation there'll be some magic, but the fin but it's a new script version of it, and we've got to do something at the end which people won't see coming. And I love the fact that they won't see that effect coming, and yet it will hit them right between the eyes when they're sitting watching a checkhov, which is like meant to be a serious, serious play, and yet here we are doing some magic. So I think we should. Yeah, I definitely think that would be really fun to get rid of.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:48

Okay, well, on your island, magicians are awesome again, and so is magic. Uh, because

Tarbell Versus The Hobbit

SPEAKER_03 1:26:53

all of those negative things are gone. Now, you're allowed to take a book with you. I know earlier on you mentioned Jim Steinmeier, and I know he has some brilliant books, so I'm not sure if you can go in that direction, but what book are you gonna take with you?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:06

So I was really torn between taking a like one of my favourite books to read as in like an like a story or whatever, um, or a magic book, and I I decided to go for magic book because of this being a magic podcast. Um, so and I again I was torn. Um, two of my favourite go-to books are obviously Tarbell and the Dunn and Drew Encyclopedia of Magic. Um, so but I think I'm gonna take Tarbell just because there is so much stuff in there that it you can just keep looking and keep going. And it um there there's always something new to read about or new to discover. Um and so I think I'd look to take I'd probably take that one with me because I really enjoy looking through that. You know, when I when I get a script or a new show, I'll often go back to all my old books and just see, just see what's there, see what they what these people thought about these sort of things, and see if there's anything in there that makes my head go, I That could be a thing, but if it wasn't, that could be this, and and work out you know methods and ideas based on that. Um, so yeah, so I think I would take Tarbell as my book of choice.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:10

Uh before we talk about your choice of Tarbell, what would the story book have been?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:15

Uh The Hobbit. So my dad read me The Hobbit when I was a kid and The Lord of the Rings. Um, and it's I just love it. I think it's such a good book. But again, there's so much you can read into it. There's so many different variants that like I just think it's so, so good. First Lord of the Rings, um, but only because I think uh the Lord of the Rings you get a bit lost sometimes. But the Hobbit is such a clean story, and was so and I just I used to loved it when I was a kid, and seeing and I remember also remember that one of my first times in the theatre was seeing The Hobbit, and um I must have been at five or six, and on the stage there, a big tree, and to go into bag end the tree turned to be the in inside of Bag End, and I stood up to tell them off because Bag End isn't in a tree, it's in a hill, as everyone knows. And as I stood up to tell them off, my dad very quickly pulled me down and said, No, no, you can't you can't do that in theatre. And so I think that's partly why it's always stuck with me because it was that was the first time I saw the the world I'd imagined on stage. So, yes, that would have been my book of choice, if not a magic book.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:14

Well, let's hope that they bring it back and you're the the consultant on it. That'd be incredible, and there would there wouldn't be a rotating tree on your your version. Um back to Tarbell then. Yeah, so earlier on we mentioned about you taking old methods and using technology to update them. This is the the kind of thing, uh and even like old magazines, magic magazines. Yeah, yeah, that's full of them where they hide all of these old methods, uh, and then you can just update them and bring them in. And regular listeners to this podcast know what I normally do. I'm not gonna do it. Look, let's look at what John's already done on this podcast, right? He has taken an elephant, he's taken his family, he's taken a phone, he's taken pen and teller. I I think we can just give him the whole Tarbell series instead of restricting him down to one.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:02

Well, the one I've got is the big version, which has got all of them in one book.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:05

Oh, cheeky. I like it. That's good. There you go. You can have it then all day long. Um, are there any methods in Tarbell then that you've actually worked into shows that you've put on?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:16

What tends to happen is I'll see a mad drawing or a mad idea from one of those books, not mad, just like you know, one of those like really old school things, and then and then just go, but what's the modern version of that? What how do I adapt that to fit what we have now? Um good example. I think it's in the port, is it um Mark Wilson's Complete Guide to Magic? There's a really good quick change where the costume flips over and it turns they turn from one person to another, and I've and I've yeah, we have adapted that to be like a good way of doing a quick change. Um there's also something in that book about um packing cases. We can show a flat pack packing case and people can appear from inside, which again I've sort of looked at using and adapting what that could be to make it work for a theatre well because it can't be a packing case, because it's not a packing case, but it could be a suitcase. Do you know what I mean? It's those sort of things. Um so yeah, so it's I can't think of one in particular, but I do know that just by reading through it and seeing the thinking that goes into these things, it sparks off mad ideas in my head where I then swap stuff out to make it fit what it could be.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:18

Amazing. Well, Tarbell's going with you, and that leaves us with one final thing: your item. So

Elastic Bands As The Island Tool

SPEAKER_03 1:31:24

you're allowed to take an item with you that is not inherently magical that you use for magic. What would you take? Elastic bands.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:32

Straight away. Um I they were originally on my list, but I then I saw the object thing, I was like, oh, I'll put them in my object. I love elastic bands. I love the fact that you can do, you know, my the routine I do with elastic bands is a mixture of various effects put together into one routine. Um and I really enjoy the response they get. I also love the fact that people want to instantly check the bands and again explain to them that they're size 19 from Staples and you can buy them. And it what it's actually me, not the band, that does the trick, but thank you for believing me that that that trick that band snapped and was put back together by some invisible glue or whatever, whatever it is we're doing. Um, so I love the flexibility of what they can do. I love the fact they are just elastic bands that you can just pick up and do stuff with. And I think, yeah, I mean, often in gigs, that that's one of the things that I'll get requested to do a lot. People come back and say, Can you share in the elastic bands? Because it's it feels like whilst they are well known within the magic fraternity, that you know, as as giggers, I I they're part of my set, I always do them. Um, often that more than card tricks. Um, and so I I don't know how many other giga magicians do routines that are based on elastic bands, and whether that's why people keep asking me, or whether my other stuff is not strong enough, and the elastic band is just the strongest stuff I do. Um, so yeah, so there'd be I think and also problem solver with me, they'd be quite useful to have on an island because you can do stuff with elastic bands, build build like um houses and stuff, like put wood together.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:00

That's how you got the rid of the elephant, really, wasn't it? It's just a giant rubber band. Giant elastic band.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:04

Weirdly, we did we genuinely we did look at a bungee as a as a as a as a method. Genuinely looked at could we attach a bungee to it and fire it off? We did actually look at that as a method. We didn't do it that way.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:16

Well, I think that's a great way to close out your list. So we started with your welcome pack, which was Queens to Aces, we had dynamic coins, wow, the floating light bulb, pressure, sponge balls, misdirection trick. We had the vanishing elephant, we had little man, we had your banishment, which was public's perception of magicians, your book is Tarbell, and your item is elastic bands. I think that's a pretty brilliant list.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:40

Thank you. It's been really fun. It's been really fun to think because I don't as as much as I do think about magic for my job, I don't actually sit and think about what I like about magic because often I'm trying to solve a thing for somebody. So it's really nice to kind of sit down and go actually what are the things that I actually really enjoy about this art form, and it is an art form, and what and why I really respect as much as I do. Um, so it's been really fun to chat and talk about the stuff that's in my head for a little while. So thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:04

Well, I I could carry on this podcast for another hour. So I'm I'm trying it. Uh the amount of questions that I've had in my head, which I've stopped myself from saying, uh otherwise we'll be here for hours. And it's

Upcoming Shows And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_03 1:34:15

normally interesting because at this point in the podcast, I would say if people want to find out more about you and your your work and stuff, but your work is vast. It's across different shows that you're working on at the moment. So if people do want to find out about you, about the shows that you're working on, are there any things up and coming that people can go and check out?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:32

Yeah, so there's um uh so in Edinburgh this year there's a show called Corpse, which is by Kirsty Mann, which is a go, they're both ghost stories. So Corpse by Kirsty Mann, um, and the Crybaby is doing a show called The Scaring, um, both in Edinburgh for the run. They're brilliant, they've got some really fun effects in which will be really silly but really good fun. Um, Kirsty is a much more is more of a storytelling piece, which again is really dark and twisted up, but really good. Um, so there's those two happening. Um obviously Potter is going on. Um I've got the Cherry Orchard, which open it out into later this year. Um working on Pinocchio down at the watermill for Christmas time. Um I've got uh show in Copenhagen called Olivia, which is about witches, um, and that opens in Copenhagen in September time. Yeah, so those ones at the moment, but bestengers go if you go to just go to johnbully.com, go to my website, I list everything I'm doing on there, and or follow me on socials, and I'll try and keep people up to date the best I can on socials, or message me. Like I'm always open to chatting. The thing about what I do is it and I've realized is the more I talk to people, the easier it is, and the more the we the you know the I work with people and understand where magic is at, the better my work gets in the theatre. Um, because it's it's a good gauge to know what we're thinking as magicians and to kind of and that kind of helps me understand what people are what people's expectations when they come and see magic in theatre. Um so if anyone wants to reach out, please do. Like I'm always open to a coffee or a chat, it's always very welcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:54

And of course, we mentioned uh a little bit earlier on National Theatre at Home, which is basically Netflix but for the National Theatre. So I've subscribed a couple of times, it's brilliant. Um so do go there and check out uh remind us what the play was called.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:09

Um so there's uh that was called Topware of Ashes on um the National Theatre, yeah. It's called Top Ware of Ashes, and it's a beautiful, beautiful, heartbreaking piece. But we've got some real there's some really, really fun illusions in there, which I don't think anyone comes sees coming. And they film them really nicely, which is really I helped them, I helped um with the film to make sure they were filming in a respectful way so we didn't give away the methods. Um, because obviously filming is different to live, uh and they're trying to be helpful and cut away from stuff, but actually I was saying to them that you need to stay on it to see the effect, so don't cut away from it because it wasn't designed to be done on TV, it was done live. So if you cut at that point, you're missing the beat that want you to see the thing happening. Um, so yeah, so those two things would be great.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:49

Amazing. Well, that's what I'm gonna be doing later on tonight. I'm gonna be going straight to that. It's gonna be great. Thank you so much for your time, and hopefully, we can have you back in a few years um and talk about how Penn and Teller are doing on

Closing Thanks And Next Week

SPEAKER_03 1:37:01

your island. Uh, of course, we're gonna be back next week with another one. Uh, please do go check out all of those things to go check out the National Theatre at home. It really is a brilliant um platform. I've watched several things on there. There's some great, great plays and shows. If you're a theatre fan, go and see it. Even if you're not a theatre fan, actually, go and see shows, musicals, plays because there's so much that you can learn from watching them, it will give you so many ideas. In the same way that John just mentioned, you know, he puts magic into the show. You can actually get a lot of ideas for magic out of a show as well. So do go check them out. We're gonna be back next week. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week. Goodbye.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:40

Hi, Peter Nardy here, and I really hope you enjoyed that podcast. I just wanted to let you know that Alakazam have their own app. You can download it from the app store or the Google Play Store. By downloading the app, it will make your shopping experience even slicker at Alakazam. You'll also get exclusive in app offers and in app live streams. So go download it now, and we'll see you on the next podcast.