Derren Brown Interview Part 1 | Magic Masterclass | www.fergusflanagan.com

if you enjoy part one of this interview please download my app Magic master class available on the App Store and you'll be able to get access to part two you'll also have the opportunity to learn something incredible magic tricks a final thank you to my friend neb who has edited and put the following together hello [Music] that's me oh I guess particularly when you look at stage you're constantly innovating it's constantly changing it's forever getting better when I saw your current show Showman arguably that is my favorite show you've ever done so it's a bit of a broad question to start but where does that search for Innovation and creativity come from or how do you get to those creative ideas um I think as there's a uh yeah maybe a couple a couple of thoughts with that first of all it's all very nice of you to say that thank you that's nice so um accepting that all that's remotely true um then two things the main thing is probably I don't work on my own so there's three of us that do it so there's me and there's a guy called Andy nyman who is an actor who's done a bunch of stuff but we've known each other for years and he uh also loves the stuff that I do and does it does the same kind of thing although not professionally so much anymore and um Andrew O'Connor who has a long career in television and the two of them write the shows with me and they then direct the show um so that that's a big part of it because when there's three of you that have worked together for a long time you both have you do have a clear sense of what you know works and what what you've all kind of want and and there's a great sort of shorthand because you work together forever you don't need to kind of be having to explain any of that to each other you know and we're also really different so we all bring very different things to it and if you know if we all like something then that's that's normally a good sign so it's a very helpful thing to learn I think to work creatively with other people um so that that's very helpful and then a sort of a personal level I think I've always tried to pursue things that I find interesting and valuable because you know as shows going on for months and months and months or a TV show might take like eight months to make so I kind of want to feel it's something I really kind of you know believe in and and um that the point of doing it is interesting that the heart of the thing is interesting there's nothing to do with like the magic or anything like that just it's kind of you know whatever the heart of the story is or the point of doing it so and I've that that's very different from just trying to churn out the same sort of thing again and again because it's proof popular in the past I've never really done that and that's helped me a lot as well because then things have grown up with me and changed with me and like showman is a show that I'm doing now and I'm 51 hence the cardigan um but I wouldn't have done it when I was 30 you know it doesn't wouldn't make me sense um so I think being tuned into that and and allowing something to grow up with you that's very helpful as well and luckily because we all know each other and trust each other we're all on board with that not normally the projects will start with me saying I'd like it to be about this kind of thing and then we all we all work on that and find our own responses to it and then bring that bring that to the mix when you're being creative when you're in a sort of creative rut what does a day look like for you do you have a process do you have a routine is there a particular way you operate oh it depends what I'm doing when I if I'm writing which is like maybe a favorite thing to do writing and painting are very solitary things for me and um I love that so if I'm painting up in my studio if I'm writing I'll be probably sat in a cafe somewhere um but I really enjoy that a crazy day on the uh TV show or or a stage show is always with other people it's always a it's always a discussion so we'll be sitting around so like for the stage shows like there's a month at that a month of a sitting room with ideas that are being born out of well this is what the heart of the show is so what would you what things could you do that would demonstrate and show that in time of that and then just a few great tricks that we think oh wouldn't it be amazing to do this because we've never done that um and we drop we draw up long lists and we put in on titles for each trick on Post-it notes and then you kind of you put them on a big ball and then you're like okay that doesn't work because we've got a short trick followed by a short tricks let's put that one there and that's too many long troops and that's a great beginning that's an end so you're moving things around until you've got the shape of a show so what would be doing that for like a month and a bit and then we have a month and a bit of rehearsing it in a room right so then we're getting it up on its feet and finding the actual words I'm going to say and and letting it come into proper shapes those are like two really different things in fact one that the thing I really do like about my job is that it really it will vary like how I'm spending my days will change massively it might be sitting in my front room talking with these people that also like my dearest friends or I'm on my own getting on the stuff that I find really rewarding or I'm up you know doing a show on stage and like everything lasts a few months or a month to a few months this is a long tour there's like a year and a bit this is this has been a long one but generally speaking fluctuates and changes and that's that's nice that's I think that's one of the best parts of it so yeah it really it really varies but certainly for the magic side of things it's always a group so just to go back to when you're in a room writing uh specifically for say the theater show will you start with a story or a message that you want to get across or will you start with um a particular trick you want to do that's interesting there's lots of starting points actually sometimes it's sometimes it's a bit of method that's just like we've come across someone it's just delicious and then it builds up those are always the ones that work least well and the ones we end up taking out if you don't take them out on the show they're always the ones that come out when we film the show and we have to take stuff out of that to fit into the time slot for TV so it's the worst place to start is with a method but occasionally it's there but I I think the best tricks or routines or pieces or whatever start normally with a a sort of an image that we like right so it's not really it's not a trick it's not a method it's just a sort of a it's like a theatrical moment like in one show we thought the idea of um a member of the audience sort of hypnotized dressed in a smock what walking through the audience like a zombie pointing and finding her way to somebody or pointing somebody out we just thought that's a really compelling thing so then it's like how do we make that into a trick like what what could that be um so sometimes it's that sometimes it's just like a sort of a just a little bit of theater just to think you thought that would be that would be really that'd be really cool she's probably like in that case that was definitely more interesting than the trick that came with it but it was really about that moment yeah so sometimes it's that sometimes it's just like a sort of a just like an a half a an image for something or maybe you know sometimes you think oh so that's like maybe two people on either side of a screen and they're both doing something and they can't see each other but maybe they're they're doing making the same actions or they're just like things that we think would be kind of cool to watch um and then there are those sort of great ideas within within magic that have been used a lot over like in this show Sherman there's a there are uh there's a classic sort of magic trick where people put objects in bags and then you you they mix up and you can work out which object belongs to which person and we just use that as a starting point I mean it doesn't sound very exciting but I don't think it is on its own but it's it's just an idea that stuck around for a long time or reading people's reading people's thoughts answering people's questions that they've written um that's a very classic Mentalist image so you know you're holding up an envelope with a question that someone has written and you're able to answer the question out in the audience so we'll just take some of those great ideas that have stuck around and then build our versions of those tricks which normally are quite different from from what the originals are or Originals were or maybe they'll keep a keep a sense of them um but yeah so it's it's certainly it's not starting with the method as much as possible because that never really really works um starting with a compelling sort of image or idea it's often hard to kind of go well here's the heart of the show like the showman is about how the things in life that make us feel isolated normally like when life's going badly actually the very things that tend to join us up the things we share like that is such a such a big part the experience of being human that it's actually the things that connect us to other people even though when we're in those places it can normally feel quite isolating so I had you turn that into a magic trick when you sort of can't really but you can take little you can take little bits of it and you can let each trick have a little little sort of dig into one area of that and then the words that you find in between and the bits of script and the way you introduce it and sometimes just me talking like there's a lot that I'm just talking about stuff in the show and it gradual comes together and then you kind of realize at the end that each part of it meant something along this uh along this long journey um and I think if you can get that right that's uh that's a good thing um and if you can get the balance of it just right so people feel they've made those connections for themselves rather than just being told it as well that's important otherwise you feel a bit um a bit bashed over the head but then um so it's I'm sorry one thing that you do do time and time again is get across a message or a theme through your show but not in a way that feels contrived and that is like a really difficult thing to do with magic I think specifically um so I guess just to revert back to what you were saying and you achieve that by sprinkles through the show as opposed to anything well I think again if you if you're comedians they often do a thing where they um comedy stand-up comedy can be quite good at showing you um a way of seeing the world and dealing with frustrations in it in a healthier way right because the comedian might be talking about problems with their partner or you know either toaster doesn't work or just you know everyday struggles that we all kind of share in um and sometimes they can be philosophically quite rich I mean sometimes can be really helpful thoughts in there but a thing that Comics also do is they deflect everything back against themselves they like make themselves look a bit stupid you know although all their opinions they're giving a sort of wildly over the top or they make themselves look like idiots so you don't mind actually being told ideas about how we might think about things better like that's quite a common thing amongst good comedians but again the trouble with magic is like this here's this guy that can click his fingers and make anything happen and if he's also if he he's also got that power and inverted commas and he's going to start telling us how to live like it's just all way too much so it's you have to really find ways of making yourself vulnerable and deflecting stuff against yourself um finding ways of introducing struggle rather than just I can do anything um so that's one part of it and then that then by it's like it buys you a certain amount of room to then talk and talk about stuff that a is important to you but might also be helpful for an audience that's not everyone's style like that's my style because I it's all stuff I think about it's not everybody's but yeah if you just were doing a trick and then said so this can teach us all to be more present in the moment or whatever it could it could be really annoying um so you the key is to let people um find those connections for themselves I mean that's important anywhere in life isn't it if you're trying to get an idea across to somebody and you want to you know and we all know what it's like to have somebody just talking at us and you just kind of you just switch off whereas then you know when people do say something in just the right way and then you go away and you think about it and it just sort of you feel like something clicks those are the best times that's why that's when films um the most moving when we make those connections for ourselves we go oh God that thing that happened right at the beginning that was that was all part of this and oh the whole thing is a is a dream or whatever like that you you don't want to be told it necessarily if you work it out for yourself it can be very impactful so yeah that's a real balance also what helps having a director because they can watch it and feel with the audience like what everyone's feeling and know when those things are landing uh properly sometimes it's hard to judge that if you're just writing and performing it on your own one thing just to change tax slightly that you're known for people from people rather that have sort of worked with you is you have a great ability to let go of great ideas because they're not right they're just not right and that's a really hard skill that I think we can all learn to be better about is that something you learn through your experience of doing or have you just always been able to to Kill Your Darlings um I think it comes from if you if you're doing a show that has a clear through line or you want you want the audience to take something away that isn't just how did you do that if it's just how did you do that and you know just do a million great things why not but if there's a sense of a message or a heart to the show that isn't just the mystery of the trick then it's actually really important that everything serves that otherwise it could just become really um confusing if you just watched a film that was just a bunch of scenes that didn't really go anywhere you just sort of wouldn't really uh doesn't matter how nice the scenes were I just wouldn't really you know just wouldn't add up to anything so once that is in your mind then it's really important that things everything points in the right direction um the question of why why am I doing this thing is at every level like every level of method why am I picking this thing up why am I looking this way why am I doing that why is this thing in the show what is it what does it serve um why am I even doing a show like what's the point of the show what why what is the message you know why why am I standing here risking looking like an idiot why what is it that I do want to risk as a you know as a person or a performer what's what's the thing that might make me look stupid if people didn't like it or those are really important questions to ask and bring it bring into I think a a show it's a bit different if you're doing close-up of course but in a show that people have paid good money they're going to sit and you know sit for a couple of hours and watch so once you've got that in your head then it's it's not hard to let things go that don't really fit it you can try you can try and make them you know try and bend them and or change the scripting or the framing and make them sit well if you really like them but it's not as it's not really as hard as it sounds and I think it's from doing a bunch of shows that do have a clear message or at least some sort of overarching theme uh it you sort of get used to it you'll put that on the back burner and then might do the next show or um it might be something to sort of fall back on if you have to take something else out later so it's it's kind of it's all it's all good it's all fine and um and as I've said the just just by adding more magic you're not improving a magic show at all so um I I time I very often you got you could make decisions that are either going to be that are going to serve the show magically or serve it emotionally and they might be very different things um and for me I'll always go with the emotional reason and that doesn't mean like saccharine or schmeltz it doesn't mean that but just whatever that emotional reason is whether it's impact or or is something that's poignant or sweet or is funny or whatever you just it's really important to remember again why why are you doing this thing is to create certain emotions right because that's you've got a theater audience um they may think they're there to watch Magic but no really it's not I mean that's not ultimately what it is that wouldn't be very interesting um so you have to say these other things are ultimately more important and that makes it a lot easier to select Urban idea if it doesn't serve those things um and again it said all the things that were born out of great methods that we fell in love with are always the things they've just kept just get dropped eventually when you look back now at say your very first um stage show do you look back with fondness or do you look back and go oh I wish I'd done that differently um I don't very often look back at them uh and if I do it's probably both like I I find myself a little bit um I find that my voice a bit irritating and odd probably on TV and and Stage I think I just spoke in a different way and if when I watch the old stage stage shows possibly because Andy Diamond was working a lot with me when Andy performs he's like a little fighter on stage like little prize Fighters that feel and I probably had absorbed a lot of that from him and from his Direction um so I find myself a bit too um talk a bit too quickly and there's something a bit a bit tinny and piercing in my voice that I don't like and I'm compared to now on stage I'm far more relaxed and I'm happy to let the audience come to me a bit rather than me feeling I'm always sort of pushing to to get to them um but I don't I don't I don't like mine there because that that's totally appropriate to who I was at that age and so there's a fondness a fondness for it too but I sort of uh I'm pleased that it's got me on that I I used to find myself a bit annoying when I'd watch the shows back on TV uh because I just I'll just slow down just relax just you know relax a bit um uh and a big a big thing that's changed there I had I had a show in um the show in New York that I did and there was a trick that involved um like if I messed something up at the beginning the whole trick wouldn't work it was quite a long quite a long trick and I um did this uh so one night I went out and I made this mistake at the beginning I was just a bit sloppy with it and then I knew I've got like four Revelations like four like little climaxes and none of them are going to work um so I was desperately thinking how can I stop and start this again but it feels like nothing has happened if I did it like it would draw attention to all the wrong things and as I'm thinking this the routine is just you know carrying on down the line and I'm sweating and then you start to think that everyone that's everyone that's watching you has gone from like oh we like this guy to just well I dig and like they can just see through you and like you feel like such a fraud it's just horrible um so four of these things just you know failed end of the trick failed and then um the next gag that came got exactly the same laugh it normally did which meant oh they they're fine they're all back on track and they're not sitting there hating me oh that's good then the second I made exactly the same mistake and had exactly the same problem but now I knew how at the end they um they I know they weren't mine so much now because this is what happened yesterday about how stupid I made the same mistake again so I wasn't as bothered by it um and then I did the same thing so it happened three nights in a row exactly the same mistake and uh by the end but by the third night I was sort of kind of enjoying it and I was like narrating it a bit like oh I've definitely messed this up and this isn't going to work you're all going to hate me but I was fine with it and I kind of knew that it wasn't like the end of the show or anything and people going oh the night we did it this thing didn't work is actually fine like it might be really exciting as long as long as you deal with it graciously don't start blaming the you know blaming your volunteers whatever um and what that really left me with the only reason why I've mentioned all that is um uh it it took like the last little bit of tension for me out of my relationship with the audience like there's always a bit of you if you if you're trying to fool them at some level that there's like a little bit of um slight antagonism in the relationships particularly and if things start to go bad and then you start to panic a bit and you suddenly feel like you're in this relationship with the audience which you're not at all but that's what it feels like and through that experience I was left with it's like a little bit of steam in a good way had gone out of it and I thought oh it's all it's all fine so now what if I just what if I decided I was just going to love the audience before I go out like what if that was my state of mind like I'm just gonna love them rather than I've got a fuller more but I've got to get through the show or whatever if I just I'm going to love you and um I've since found out that Howard Thurston was a very famous American magician from 100 years ago had a like a mantra in his head if I love you I love you I love you I love you before going out on stage and it made it made a difference because the um I know it all sounds a bit sappy but it can make a difference because it can then affect if there are ideas that you're trying to communicate to people um there's a big difference between that feeling just like your bit of script you've got to get through and stuff you really want them to take away and you really want to mean to them because you actually care about them um so I totally forgotten like what you asked or why we're talking about this now but um it it was a very helpful thing in terms of um in terms of what in terms of that relationship in terms of what I learned and then what I felt I could bring with me every night um uh and that also the whole I guess the whole thing of vulnerability comes comes with that but it's a very nice it's a it's a nice place to be but that's like you know after 20 years of doing it as well in a way it sounds really obvious like well couldn't you think of that right at the beginning but it's really it's hard to but you I I look for those things that are just going on quietly on underneath I think they're often the most interesting parts of Performing and although I don't know whether anybody's seeing the show the night before or that night would have noticed the difference in me they'd have noticed the difference in them not working but um somehow when there's lots of those sort of things going on together they do just add up to something that I think does just change something in the in the air so how do you get a message in your magic without it appearing contrived it's really important but you know what sometimes you don't find it until late so when I did the Broadway show uh secret and in the UK it taught us and it was called underground it was the same same show and it was all best bits from previous shows right and um because that would all be brand new for a Broadway audience but when it taught here we said it was the best of so we took all these bits from previous shows which meant the show wasn't born with a message behind it it was just born out material and then we somehow had to make it about something and um that was really difficult uh because we had to kind of crowbar almost like some sort of message into it and uh sometimes it it sometimes it happens surprisingly late the thing that the whole show seems to be about and breathe from its inside sometimes it's something you find at the end um so in that show it was I remember thinking this is sort of about once I got over just done the trick done the show for a bit and you know had lots of different bits and different meanings and and then it suddenly go this is actually about how the stories that we tell ourselves about the world are not are just not what's real they're just stories that we're living out um and like when a magician shows you a trick that's and you're full bite you realize that the story you've been telling yourself doesn't add up to the whole picture like there was more going on that you missed right some of the stuff you missed but that's actually a really important lesson for life right because we just we have this infinite number of stuff coming at us all the time and in order to navigate through life America any sense of it we have to edit and delete and make up a story and then work with that story and we always mistake the story for reality we all we always think it's the truth it's not it's just a story and things that upset us and problems that we have they're not caused by the things in the world themselves it's the story that we're telling ourselves it's not the way we're responding to them and you know someone else might respond very differently so there's your proof it's not the thing itself it's just how you respond someone else might not be upset at all by that thing so anyway that came quite late and then you can go ah all right that's what the show's about and then you can just sort of find bits of script here and there or lift that bit out a bit more and just point something a little bit more here use certain language there that then you pick up later on and suddenly there's a sense of it having a through line um which it didn't have at all so that was definitely with that show we did that so that's one way of doing it sometimes it can happen really late and you just look back at the whole thing and you go this is what this is what this show's about um and then you just massage it to just sort of Polish it make sure the audience are going to get there um but another way you can build into it so I think I'll do a lot with um my shows is uh is sort of give a kind of emotional weight to like how do you give an emotional weight to something which is another sort of meaning isn't it um without it being just heavy-handed you know sentimental and and um so if I've if I've spoken about um I don't know a a set of keys on a little um a little brown key fob which um had been um when my grandfather died and we were allowed to sort of you know go through his house and keep things for ourselves I I kept this because it was something I used to play with when I was a kid and and um and I didn't really know what to take and I saw that and I thought oh I'll I'll keep that and um and I've just ended up that's sort of become my way of remembering my my granddad and I might tell that story in a really sort of light way just talking about something else or having a conversation about so it's not really about a trick at that point but then like later if I produce this and do a trick with it you've got all that story which isn't isn't true in the case about this I just actually bought this yesterday but you've got that story which without me having to go hmm now this Trick's now about my granddad because you're doing the work for yourself you're going oh it's the thing he mentioned earlier on oh that's and it can like get you a little bit right um and then I don't need to say all the stuff I want you to feel because I said it earlier when I wasn't seemingly telling you anything important so so there like the whole thing's been done really lightly you and the audience are doing the work for yourself and suddenly the trick that I then do with this can have a lot more meaning than it would have done otherwise so I do that a lot in the show and there's um in the current show there's that sort of structure is used a lot there's lots of things that I'll set up that then pay off later and they kind of ordinary things start to develop a lot of emotional weight um in a way that never feels I never have to say I'm going to show you a trick now which um you know my this is she's gone to my granddad and he sold this to me right I don't know it's the worst it's just the worst thing is that you just feel you know you feel kind of manipulated and um and there's no surprise in it you know sometimes when you see those kind of like Britain's Got Talent X Factory kind of things that are all a bit sentimental um normally there isn't I mean they work they get us but there's not normally any surprises it's normally just this is what's happened and tonight this is for you grandma or whatever there's no surprises in it but within a course of a show or an act you can have that and there's a lovely feeling you get in an audience when something just sort of opens up and you realize that there's a whole layer of something that's suddenly been exposed or something you didn't think was important is now suddenly really important or um the set opens up you've certainly been staring at for two hours opens up and it's something else it's bigger or there's a lovely moment at the end of a play that I saw which I won't say in case anybody still sees it but um you've been following this cast of X number of people and at the very end um when there's a sense of they've arrived at this place where the these memories of past generations of people have lived somebody walks up from the back of the auditorium up onto us and you think it's just someone that's wandered in and they walk up and introduce themselves by name to one of the actors and you go oh that's really sweet that's that name that was one of the the sort of the memories of the people and then someone else comes in on that or maybe that's someone else that's part of this story and then about 30 actors wow I mean and you're just sat there going it's such a huge shift an incredible ending to to a play that so I love those moments that you realize there was so much like it's like a the ground's opened up a bit and there's just so much more so you you find those things by setting up certain expectations or setting up certain parameters like we've actually got a cast of 80 people not not the 15 that you thought or um and then let those things have their moments there are ways of doing it that never feel should never feel um heavy-handed uh and again what really helps to have a director those things are very difficult to work out on your own I'm not going to get them I'm facing the wrong way I'm literally I literally don't see the show so um having uh you know having the people you work with and trust that can just make sure that those things are just are just right you know there's a lot I do the language I use in the show a lot of it should feel when I do the show like I'm making it all up I never Trump I never it should feel like I'm finding the language as I go along but all every word like the terms that I use because I know I can use that same expression later and it will just draw a little faint line back to that and um and all of that to create those sorts of feelings of like oh all of this was much more that that's the real skill you have as a storyteller did you always have that or was that something you kind of found the ability you know you're so unscript but it just doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like a script well that's I guess that that's an that's an acting thing and yeah I think I think that is you know like there's often a question that actors get you know how do you remember all those lines but you sort of don't you don't really remember all the lines you're you're just finding and you do it normally normally an actor is given a script right so it's different and easier for me because I'm kind of writing it in conjunction with the other two but we're finding it out of my own language and my own thoughts but if you were handed a script normally what you would do is you would you'd write normally literally writing an in pencil why is that character feeling like what what are they what have they done in their head to sort of say the things that they're now saying next you know because we do it all the time don't we like I'm I'm doing it a lot now I have a half a thought and then I'll maybe go off slightly on something different and we do it all the time so you find that you find those things you write them in a pencil you do those in your head as you're saying the script but that muscle memory of those little changes in thought produce sort of produce the words and then whatever words you're saying trigger the next little change in thought a couple of lines later that then triggers the next so it's actually about that it's about the stream of feelings that you're having that are sort of being prompted by the words but they're then prompting the next set of words so I never sit and learn huge chunks of script you don't no I know I I don't unless there's a a particularly difficult bit um and I'd imagine for actors and some of the actors I know it's sort of the same you you it's very important starting in the middle of a speech sometimes can you do it from there and it's really hard because you haven't you haven't had that kind of emotional sort of lead up to it you know it's very hard finding them sometimes from from scratch but once I once I step out everything flows very naturally because it's there's like a whole internal stuff that's going on if the internal stuff isn't there that's when it starts to feel like a script then you're just saying words that aren't connecting with anything and it's not just about it making it sound more natural it's also about how you then remember you know whatever two and a half hours of what is essentially script because it is the same night that shouldn't shouldn't feel like it because your show does change and shift and mold throughout its run doesn't it I know that you're known for if you see the show at the beginning of the tour and the end of the tour you're seeing very different things yeah yeah that's yeah I mean the we were lucky with this one because actually the most the material has pretty much stated stayed the same the one routine we took out um but normally we change a lot like the first couple of weeks it's just like big big chunks come out things we're writing that day and then putting in and then I'm doing them for the first time that's a lot to think about I was lucky with this show that wasn't too much of that because we'd had the whole block I want to keep working on it um but yeah again I think it's it's part of the fun and um uh you know a week or two weeks into the show it feels like great this is it now this is the show and you want everyone to come and see it but I also know that later it's going to be a very different and much much better thing unavoidably so yeah so those little um your sort of reputation for notorious note-taking and never quite being happy you know that constant striving to improve prove the show um is obviously one super impressive but two is the motivation for that because you need to make those changes to keep it alive for you because you've got such an intensive run or is it just because you care so much about the audience's experience or a bit about um yeah I think I think also the the idea of it being the audience is improving the audience's experience by taking these notes and making these uh tweaks and improving my own it's all it's all kind of the same thing um because even the very sort of subtle acting-y sort of shifts and things I'll find for myself they're only there because ultimately they're going to make something in the show a tiny little bit you know better um so I it's I I think the the key thing though is to keep the feeling of doing the show alive and present and fresh and actually making some changes although obviously you're only going to make changes because they improve it but they also do help with the experience of doing it um so you are recreating the show every night sorry yeah recreating it as opposed to repeating it which is a distinction uh Peter Clifford and act a friend of mine that some of you will know um first said to me you want to recreate something not just repeat it as in find it fresh every time so changes help and keeping on top of um yeah just just not letting things sink into anything that feels repeated or it can just start to feel a bit even just a bit slick you don't even necessarily want that I guess it depends on your style but I say that I want it to feel like I'm making up my words to the audience and I'm making up my words every night and and that this this is stuff that I'm having to be right on the edge of my whatever all my front feet for and right you know it could go anywhere at any moment something is like that and some of it isn't but that's a much more interesting feeling I think in the audience do you think the fact that you're always evolving and growing even though you're not a person I would ever describe as sort of uh I'm happy with just who I am and I'll stick with that you're always kind of um you're so self-aware and always improving and do you think that bleeds into the performance or do you think the fact that you're searching for new ideas for the show maybe bleeds into your personal life or a bit both I think the personal life bleeds into it so I wrote a book called happy years ago which was about really about ancient Greek philosophy and how it can serve us particularly one area of it called stoicism and I spent like three years writing that book and the thoughts in it really affected me and then they started to affect the work that I was doing and and I think it's it's really important especially with something like magic that can be very childish I mean so it it's just like the quickest most fraudulent route to impressing people right and I did years of doing magic around tables in restaurants and a friend of mine once said it's you're like kind of like a Step Up From A Rose seller aren't you and it's it's really true and like given how how seriously we all take it in the business it's like really worth remembering that it's also it's quite a childish um thing so it was always been It's always important for me to make it about something else um so but that's kind of difficult it's difficult and interesting doing that because uh if you paint it or if you danced or you had some other form of artistic expression there's normally those things are normally rooted in honesty right but Magic's rooted in dishonesty so how do you take something that's essentially dishonest and then try and make it say something that's worthwhile and honest you know so those answers are never easy to find but the fact they are at least so there's questions never easy to answer but that that makes it always interesting for me so I think having an interest in other things in life like how we might live well and what it might mean to flourish and you know be the best person and what all that's really to me endlessly complicated and interesting and surprising so that that's just become stuff that I bring to the magic so I can take something that is essentially a bit dishonest and a bit childish and try and do something honest and grown up with it and then that's probably why I'm still doing it otherwise I'd have I'd have probably stopped some time ago but then also if you stop you get successful in something like it's hard just to walk away from it so it made more sense to um rethink it that's also why with the TV shows the early ones are about me going hey look I can do this and then I start to take more of a back seat and then you're watching someone else go through some kind of you know Adventure or drama or something it just that seemed a lot more much more interesting it's much more interesting magic there's a real thing in Magic that it's um it's a bit of a problem with it because if you can if you can make anything happen and this is a lovely thought from teller you know Pat and Teller so tell a little quiet one it's such a brilliant thinker and writer about magic and he made the point that um if you can just click your fingers and make anything happen that makes you like a god figure right and that's sort of like a bit like what magicians are but there's that's dramatically really not very interesting for audiences what what we like as audiences are heroes right and heroes struggle like they're trying to get somewhere but they probably end up somewhere different but they've learned something along the way and they face various challenges and like that's all the stuff that's interesting if you can just make anything happen that's not it's not really that interesting or at least it's not interesting for very long so these are all I think um problems slash opportunities and challenges and things to discover if you want to make magic more interesting there's all the meat of the stuff you need to think about do you think and using the term very Loosely failure um do you think sort of learning how to take failure on a stage and use it to your advantage is a core skill oh it's massive it's real it's it's really interesting and it comes back to this thing of I think magic is the least interesting part of what we do when we're doing a magic show um so like for example it's not answered your question but um there was one show a few shows ago when um I'm doing a routine that has lots of like multiple climaxes not only this but I knew this and not only this but this matches with this and then he knew this and there's so many of them that you feel the audience going with it for a bit and then this is a bit like okay is it finished yet yeah great well done trying to get to the end right so adding more magic doesn't make the thing more magical like and so we started experimenting with we're taking bits out until we found out what the kind of sweet spot was that was enough um but not too much so that was like a little lesson in right so it's not it's not about you don't put more magic in and then that makes you think more magical it just get it's too much and what I really noticed about failure not just failure but also like disasters in a show people getting hurt um emergencies and crises and things are what what matters is how you deal with all that stuff it isn't the magic so like a classic thing I was at a convention not that long ago I don't very often go to them I went I went to this one and um there was like a sort of magic competition in it like you often had at these things and they're not normally very experienced performers they're probably people that are um either hobbyists or maybe they're out dropping magicians and they've just sort of you know joined him in the competition to try and win the prize and this guy I think was like that he was definitely good enough that he worked quite a bit I'm sure anyway it's a tiny stage that someone fell off it right at the start the person who's got up doing a trick just fell and hit the deck and it was quite nasty I was like quite a big drop um but now you've got the guy on stage um you've only got like 15 minutes to do your act anyway so he's got a bit of a time pressure on him and it's suddenly like it comes back to this thing of like we all just want to see a human being so after we've all got over the shock of someone's falling off he is now nervously wondering about does he continue with the ACT does he get back into that does he get someone else up um and it's a really interesting human situation and what you realize very quickly in the audience is that you don't you don't care about that if he's too eager to get back on with the trick does anybody else want to come up which is what he asked he's lost everybody you know can I get someone else up just like the worst thing you should say and what you actually want is someone to know that their performance at that point isn't that important and the primary reason the primary thing is taking care of somebody making sure they're all right even if you can't help much yourself from the stage to give that thing it's time and I had the other night in the in my own show someone had an epileptic fit in the audience and we had to stop the show for 22 minutes it was a long like a really long time when you don't know how long it's going to stop um and I know it's like the worst thing we can do is start to make sort of little jokes about it because because you know time is dragging on and that kind of out of a sort of nervousness so you know you just have to let the thing sit um and likewise with failure and things go wrong it's like when you see a comic fail I mean that's fine if gangs don't work but when they start blaming the audience for it that's when it becomes excruciating and um and again it's just that huge it's the human thing that's most interesting it's just seeing somebody deal badly with something that um where it really all starts to go wrong so it is really important it's always horrible when things fail at least the first time um and but you know if you do a show if you do a show every night every bit will go wrong at some point every bit will fall flat in its face you'll just be amazed that something that felt watertight will just happen um I mean I'm doing the show 350 something times so that's like more than enough for every moment to go wrong at some point and um a it doesn't matter too much if something goes wrong or the trick doesn't work and B particularly on stage it's amazing how much you can get away with just acting like it doesn't matter just picking the thing up that you've dropped and putting it where it needs to be and just not paying any attention to it um because no people don't know like you're thinking oh my God everyone's just seen the thing but no one knows what the thing is they don't know that's important um and I'm amazed at how many there was a card trick I do in the show that I just completely forgot to do the method one night I'd um I've been a bit ill and I sort of taken too much cough medicine or something and I was just a bit my head was a bit out of the show and I had this um this card trigger I'm just sort of I'm it's like I'm watching the card trick and I'm not doing it and I get to the end of it and I realize oh I haven't done any of the methods so it's like it's just not going to work I just haven't done it so I had to do some really bad um stuff to try and just fumble it towards some sort of ending I mean it was terrible if you're watching if you're sat at the table watching it it would have been like it just embarrassing like a child trying to do a magic trick but somehow on stage I don't know it just sort of it sort of seemed to just kind of fly by so a lot of it just doesn't it just doesn't it a it doesn't matter it's amazing what you can get away with every time something fails you not only got to think about okay well how do I make that not happen of course or you don't want it to happen again but also how did I deal with that is there a better way I could deal with that next time and then um you know that's that's that's really uh that is important and then for all of that if nothing fails introduce a bit of failure to make yourself human

Channel: Fergus Flanagan

Views: 9,706

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Id: 7ywl5lpNBRY

Length: 47min 26sec (2846 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023