the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
136 - The Games We Play - with Chris Canfield
When Chris Canfield first messaged me about his upcoming show "The Games We Play," I was struck by how our creative paths had converged despite beginning worlds apart. Chris grew up in Chicago with a magician father who filled their home with card tricks and coin sleights—magic wasn't special, it was simply what they did. Meanwhile, I was discovering similar wonders in the remote landscapes of Norway.
What makes Chris's story extraordinary isn't just that he grew up surrounded by magic, but that his parents opened a game store where play became the center of their family life. Board games, puzzles, chess sets—these weren't just products but portals to connection. Chris learned early that games create spaces where adults and children meet as equals, where the boundaries between work and play dissolve.
When tragedy struck at sixteen with his father's unexpected death, Chris stepped away from magic, finding the association too painful. His creative energy channeled into music instead, where he developed a custom guitar pick for his right hand (Chris was born with a limb difference) and discovered the transcendent joy of improvisation. As we discussed the parallels between musical flow states and magical performance, it became clear that different forms of play share profound connections.
The heart of our conversation explores how Chris's theatrical show "The Games We Play" integrates his personal narrative with interactive magic and games. Rather than performing conventional tricks, he creates experiences where audiences become participants in a shared journey. "I'm trying to blur the lines between games and magic," he explains, crafting moments that feel both impossible and emotionally resonant.
For those fascinated by the psychology of performance, Chris offers valuable insights about breaking down the traditional barrier between performer and spectator, creating what I call "a third space" where co-creation happens. His show traces the evolution of games from their earliest forms to modern iterations, examining how play shapes our emotional lives and helps us process our most profound experiences.
Whether you're a performer seeking fresh approaches to audience engagement, a game enthusiast curious about magic, or someone interested in how childhood experiences shape creative paths, this conversation illuminates the transformative power of play. Let Chris Canfield's journey inspire you to rediscover your own playful spirit and perhaps see magic in unexpected places.
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Greetings, fellow travelers and welcome to the way of the showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way, and today I have an exciting conversation with Chris Canfield. Chris Canfield is a magician, an American magician, and I encountered him first in a message on Instagram. It was the first time I met him and he was sharing a trailer, a teaser trailer, of his upcoming show called the Games we Play, and it was so great to see it. And in the message he shared with me that he had been listening to the podcast and he had already been working on this idea of doing a show about play, and you will hear in this episode just how intricate and integral play is to his whole life really, and he was very excited to have found the podcast. And just a quick shout out before we go in, that was your friend and mine, the incredible Nick DeFat, who put him onto the podcast, so he has gotten both Chris Canfield and Mac King on the podcast, which you can hear in previous episodes. And well, you can hear Mac in the previous episodes and you can hear Chris Canfield right now. So, as always.
Speaker 1:It'd be awesome if you went onto the social media and click, follow and please subscribe to this here podcast. It's free and it makes you a better person, so let's jump into it. What a whirlwind thing uh to to get to meet you and then get to uh invite you here. I mean it's get to invite you here. I mean it's maybe a little self-centered of me, of course, because I'm writing all this stuff, and if there's any wish that I would have when I'm writing about showmanship and play and how I believe they are actually part of the same thing, there is nothing that I could wish for more than that somebody actually takes inspiration of it when they're creating work, so, um so.
Speaker 2:I'm the same. It's the same way from my point of view. Honestly, I'm like I can't believe someone has taken this much time and thought more than probably I have, I'm sure, actually and put it into thinking about play. I can't, it's, it's really, it's amazing. I can't it's, it's really, it's amazing. I can't believe it. That's right. Yeah, I can't believe it, honestly that's very good.
Speaker 1:I tend to go be Thinking thoroughly when I'm, when I'm start to think about something, and In my second season of the podcast I kind of tried to explain what showmanship is of Just starting from the simple point of view of a person facing an audience, or that. I think that structure it goes back one who faces the other way, and then a group, or even one if we're doing close-up, you're good, that's an edge case, but still you can do it. You could do it for one, but to have something to show.
Speaker 2:So yeah, when you did that, you did. I think you what was the last season was, was showmanship, right, just it was. It was it was more focused on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I remember, yeah. So I sort of did the opening season with essays and then the second season was I specifically sort of talked about showmanship and what it means to be that. And then the third season was just basically conversations with people while I was biding time because it was taking so long to write this 30 episode thing. I think I was just playing catch up.
Speaker 2:I think I was playing catch up and then, by the time I got there, all of a sudden you were and I was already beginning that working on this thing, and then that came out and I was like, oh, you've got to be kidding, this is, I can't believe this. This is amazing. Yeah, it just worked out.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome timing.
Speaker 1:But anyway, uh, let's not talk about me. Uh, chris canfield, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. Um, when you sent me and uh sent me a message the other day and first I read it and you were interested in the podcast and everything, and then I, um, and then I saw your video, that you have a show coming up called the Games we Play, and I would like to sort of end up there where our sort of interests and that fall apart. But from having actually watched your, I went to your YouTube channel to look at more of you and I watched the videos that were there and seeing that you were with Penn Teller and watching you, hearing you talk a little bit about your YouTube channel to look at more of you, and I watched the videos that were there and seeing that you were with Penn Teller and watching you, hearing you talk a little bit about your childhood, it has a striking resemblance to my own. So, just to start it off, how did you get interested in performing, but particularly then magic?
Speaker 2:Sure, the magic story is a long story. There's two phases of it, there's two parts of it, and maybe you saw some of that in that Penn and Teller story. But the beginning of it is is really simple Like I don't, I don't know a world without magic, and it's it's because it's because my dad was a magician. He was. He started doing magic as a kid in the fifties in Chicago and I've I've uncovered I've actually uncovered some of that history in the last few years that I dug into deeply. But but that's the sense. That's the instance of where it came from.
Speaker 2:For me is he was a magician, so around home he was always just fiddling around with little things, like. He had lots of different hobbies and one of them was magic. So it was like, oh, that's just one of the things that you do. You play with coins, you play with cards, you work on you know, do little slides, do little tricks and stuff. He wasn't performing, but it was just there and it was part of what he. We did it eventually. Then he dug out some of his um, he had some props from like from when he was a kid, some like magic, more like kind of parlor size props. So he would dig those out and like, oh, play with these.
Speaker 2:So I just, it was just part of growing up in who we were. So I was like, oh, that's just another thing to do. And then he took me to see David Copperfield when I was a kid because we watched the specials on TV. And then I got to see Doug Henning too. He took me to see Doug Henning both in Chicago, in the Chicago. I grew up in the Chicago area, so about in the Chicago area. So I just again, I just grew up surrounded by this stuff.
Speaker 1:It's just there so exciting. So, and because of course I have a similar story but I grew up on the periphery of the known world, like Norway in the 80s as I was becoming a teenager, and of course Chicago is such a big city that I would guess that it has as many people living in it as Norway has. Like Norway has about 5 million the entire city probably.
Speaker 2:I don't know what it is today. It's probably like 6 or 8 million or something.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the suburbs. To be clear, I grew up in the suburbs of the city, but I spent plenty of time in the city itself too, the Western suburbs, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you guys saw. So it's amazing that cause the guys that I only could see on TV, david Copperfield and Doug Henning. You got to see them live, but going a little bit further.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't I'll say this, though I didn't appreciate it at the time, like I do now, right, like and I, I didn't know you, just, it's just again, it's just the words although you are seeing the guy on TV and then you know your parents take you to see him, you know, not too far away, which which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, really amazing. I was just wanting to go a little bit further back, like if you know your magic history, because I don't necessarily. Who was the magicians in Chicago in the 50s, do you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I've gone back and done the research, Sure, sure. So Jay Marshall, he was back then. He opened a magic store which was Ireland Magic and then became Magic Inc and I do have memories of my dad taking me to this store in the city when I was a kid. That's probably the earliest memory of him taking me to a magic store a proper magic store was Magic Inc and I probably met Jay. Again, I didn't know who these people were, so I probably met him back then. I just don't know, but back when he was in the fifties. So Jay Marshall and Don Allen, he was around too and he had. He had a uh, he had a show called I believe it's called the magic ranch, uh, which was a short-lived show on on on TV back then.
Speaker 2:I got the DVDs recently and look through them, so so, so, funny enough. Like, how do I? I mean, obviously I've done my research, but I found a deck recently that my dad it's like I keep uncovering stuff. As I learn more, I uncover more stuff. I found a deck of cards in my dad's stuff and I pulled it out and there was an autograph of Jay Marshall and Don Allen in there. I'm like, oh my gosh, he met them. He had them autographed some of his cards, so I know he met them.
Speaker 1:It's so fun.
Speaker 2:And what was the? You, you got memories of going into the magic store for the first time. Yeah, well, the first time I ever that. I'm trying to remember the, the, the, the chronology of it, but the. I know we went to Disney world when I was really little and he took me to. We went into the magic shop at Disney world. That was. I do have kind of vivid memories of that, actually at both. So I have vivid memories of that and him buying me a couple of tricks. And then I remember, I do remember the magic ink shop. Yeah, I do remember like that they were. I feel like there were these high walls with like tricks, you know different things up on the walls. And again, I was too young to know what I was looking at. It was just over, it was just overwhelming, I'm sure. But you know, I do, I do remember it no, but I have.
Speaker 1:I have a similar thing. I went to the. There was only one magic store in norway and at one point I went there with my dad and it's the same kind of feeling that I have. I know from changing my memories later on that it's a very, very small store, but I think it was filled to the brim with stuff and I had a little glass um monter where they were doing demonstrations and stuff, and uh. So I have a memory of going in there and and I probably at that point I was probably more interested in novelties and packet tricks than uh, than anything, or like just buying whatever it was that they showed me or so, but it's, it's a special feeling and uh and uh, it's most kids these days, if you, if you get into, I mean, they're further and further, farther and farther away. They're different brick and mortar stores.
Speaker 2:It is. There's fortunately still one here in Los Angeles that I go to, but they're hard to find. Hard to find, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to LA for the first time when I was working with Mad Apple for Cirque du Soleil back earlier this year but it's actually last year now because it's early next year and we went to the Magic Castle for the first time. I went with Nick DeFat, which I think is a mutual acquaintance of us. That was just for me, like these people that I would only hear about, because my father subscribed, subscribed. So I didn't say this, of course, to you, but my father was also a magician. Ah, so yeah, I started doing shows with him when I was about 10 years old. So he was doing shows and he was doing parlor kind of shows and he had um, he'd also had a break. He did magic on.
Speaker 1:When he was like 14, 15, he started doing magic and for five or eight years or so he did actually do gigs around town and everything, and then at some point, when he got a wife and whatever, then he, he stopped and then it went a long time and then, when I came of age that I could be interested, he got me interested and it was something that we did together that's amazing, that's such a that's such a great memory yeah, yeah, but it's like that's what I meant with when I was watching you, uh, on the Penn and Teller and you were talking about it and I'm going, oh it's, it's a totally mirrors my own, uh, it's very similar.
Speaker 2:That's probably why, yeah, that's, yeah, there's some similar thinking going on here. I've definitely noticed.
Speaker 1:I've noticed that yeah, yeah, all your stuff it's true, when you, when you, if you epochal things that happen like early on in your life, they have influence that goes forward. Of course it can. It's not always that way, but uh, it's, it's certainly one. Uh, it's certainly one way, and I see it in your work too, but all right, so, uh, from little what I know, then your father was not just doing magic, he, they all, you guys also. They also had a store.
Speaker 2:Oh so, yeah, he had lots of hobbies. He had lots of hobbies but he was, he, an accountant. So he, the deal is he was, he was an accountant. Um, you know, as a kid, that's that's what his job was. In fact, he, him, and my mother were living over in the Netherlands. He was over there, uh, and then my mom mother got pregnant and then they moved back back to Chicago area and then I was born, um, he ended up leaving that job and they were trying to figure out what my him and my mother were trying to figure out what to do next.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, when I was being raised also before this next thing we're talking about my mom went back to school to get a business degree, right, so they're trying to figure out what, what's the next stage of our life? And then they decided, they settled on, let's open. Let's open a game store, let's do that. So cool, yeah. And when I say game store, I'm talking about this was, in the late 80s, a traditional game. So board games and chess, sets and puzzles and that kind of stuff they're not electronic games. Yeah, yeah, very, very few electronic games, I should say.
Speaker 1:Amazing, and so those kinds of games. I mean, I find that so fascinating that they were running that store and that you were growing up with a dad, so that magic had been a part of it, and then all of a sudden you're in the game store.
Speaker 2:So it changes your perception of what it means to be an adult, I think.
Speaker 1:That's a good point From my parents' point of view you're talking about, or from my point of view now? Ah well, from your point of view back then. Well, maybe it didn't change it. No, it didn't change it. But when you grow up in that environment, what it means to be an adult is sort of a little bit different, because play when you're playing games as a living, or at least you're selling them then did they play games at home as well? Oh, so yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's probably part of the story. So it wasn't a huge stretch. Right, it wasn't a huge stretch. They were definitely like okay, so the first one of the first games. Well, I mean I played all the kids' games, candyland and that kind of stuff and then let's see, yeah, all those games that kids play. But then as I got older, like you know, we played more strategy games. My dad was into those kind of like more strategy games or chess or some of the more like Avalon Hill type games which are a little more complex.
Speaker 2:So we kind of started playing those. So it made sense that my mother liked games. But then they also had a game group, which was interesting. That started before the store where they were. They would, they were, and they were bridge players too. So they had two different groups. They were, they were bridge players, so they met every, you know, like once a month or something, at someone's house and played bridge and they would rotate.
Speaker 2:And then they also had a separate group which was more like kind of board games, and then they would go and play more like the fan, like the party type games, um, that they would play, you know, so they would do that. And then it was obviously like a social thing where they want to hang out, but it was all based around gameplay. So then the idea of a game store, from my point of view it just kind of made sense like, oh okay, that kind of makes sense, they're already, they already kind of do games. It's already kind of built into to what they do and what we do. So that kind of makes sense, sure, sure. And of course, from my point of view it's like this is really cool, my parents are opening a game store. That's pretty interesting, you know that's going to be fun, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a little bit like you. You then want to take, you need to. I like the fact that you could then say that the parents can say, okay, well, now we have to do some work, we have to take this game home and then we have to play it so that we know what we're selling or whatever. That thing of playing for a living has been part of my vocabulary. So since I did the show back in 2006 where I said that line like now I'm a fully grown child and I play for a living yeah and uh and uh.
Speaker 1:That thing where you guys are. They are blurring the line of playing and the games that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like, um, I know, I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah, so we, we play tested, right, you play test everything. You got to play test every, all the games. And not only that, they got to go, they went and traveled to the different. At the time they're called toy fairs. I think they still have the biggest one. I think it's still in New York the New York toy fair. I was so sad Cause they never, they never invited me, no-transcript go find the latest and the greatest games and they would then, you know, come home and ask my opinion.
Speaker 2:So, they're like here's like we can catalogs and I remember just having catalogs from all the different vendors spread out on the dining room table and looking through them it's almost like a Sears back in the day, like the Sears catalog at Christmastime. It was like that All year round. As things would come out, they'd be like oh here, look through these, look through these and you could see what was the cool thing coming out. And then when we'd get them in the store you know that we play that. We, you know, open them up and play them and learn. In this part of the running the store the employees, you know we would encourage everybody to have the games out and play them and learn how to play them, because you can't really explain them to people.
Speaker 2:So the idea of the store is like somebody comes in, they have a need, they want a game. They're obviously visiting because they want. They want to figure out what's the game for the event, what's the perfect thing for this occasion and if and when. The employees have to know that. So we have to know all the games so we can point them in the right direction. We didn't just want them to just find it on the shelf and, you know, just randomly guess the game. We wanted to actually help them. That was a big thing.
Speaker 1:Part of my parents and how they managed the store was that everybody was involved in the, in the playing, and it's to me it seems like when you grow up, because one of the things that I encountered just a lot when, when you, when you talk about play like even if it's in a school setting or wherever when I talk about play, people tend to confuse, just because it's fun like playing a game is fun that it then is not a serious or worthwhile activity. But if you grow up with parents who have a store where they sell games and real human beings come into the store with needs and they're looking for whether it's for a specific event or whether it is just that they have played another game before but they've played it 10 times now and they want to do something similar or whatever Like that from that I can see that you're sort of primed to take play seriously, so that you can see play as a thing that is not just something that kids do and at some point you grow out of it.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a good point. I don't think I was conscious of it, but there was no defined barrier, there was no line. There was no definition barrier between the two. Right, I grew up playing a lot of sports too, so games were big. Where I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, I grew up around a bunch of kids and we were all playing sports all all year, all weather conditions, all the time, right and then. And then right and then you bring in a game store and my parents are in, but there are there's adults who are running the game store. But I also saw behind the scenes too. My dad was an accountant, so, like, they let me into the books too. So I would like they wanted me to learn.
Speaker 2:And here's the game world. I mean, obviously there's differences, but there's things. You got to do. You got to payroll, you got real things to work, you got to run a business. But the play side of it, sure, there was no like, oh, you get to this age and you were done playing. Play was a continue. In fact that was the whole point of the game. So right there in that time period, games, physical games, were still really big. Right, the idea of uh, getting together with a group of people, a group of adults. Like I said, my parents were in that. In one of those groups that was really big back then, the social communal thing was was was still pretty much was was still a really big part of it, yeah, and uh did they, uh did they do role playing as well, Like like a role, they sold role-playing as well, Like they sold role-playing games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had those early murder mystery games I think. I'm trying to remember what they were called. I don't remember, but I forget what they're called. Shoot, it'll come to me, but yeah, those murder mystery games where you, yeah, you do role-playing.
Speaker 1:I remember them doing that at our house.
Speaker 2:What's that how?
Speaker 1:to Host a Murder. I think how to Host a Murder was called. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:How to Host a Murder, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, okay, got it.
Speaker 2:Okay, still in there. Yeah, how to Host a Murder. We had all these games and they would do that. They would bring those home too and do that with the friends that would like that. We didn't do dungeons and dragons or any of those like warhammer type games for whatever reason. There were other stores that kind of focused on that and it was more of like kind of like it is now where you have tables and people come in and play that. It wasn't that, it was a retail store in a mall, so it really wasn't conducive to that kind of a that kind of a clientele. I guess it was more focused on what you're talking about, the role-playing games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those I remember doing, or remember having those around, for sure that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I mean it's uh. Yeah, it's just fascinating to to see how that, how your knowledge of games and everything but um uh, you said that there was a sort of two-parter of um, how you got interested in, uh, in magic or your journey in magic. Did you also have like a sabbatical or went out as a journeyman to do other?
Speaker 2:things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, okay, so my journey of magic is long, it's never going to end, apparently, at this point. But, um, so I had, I had, you know, I had it as a kid. You know, like I said the origin story, that general origin story, and then I didn't mention that. Like I used to do magic in school, a little bit like for projects, I'd get like if there was a project to do for. I remember doing one for chemistry class. I did like a like a sugar production or something. Um, and then I did like another class was like you had to do a report on something. I think I did a report on Houdini, so I I still like was I was into it as a kid. And then, uh, excuse me, let me take a sip of water. Yeah, go edit.
Speaker 2:Um, so that so, yeah, so in the midst of this, running the game store, when I was 16, my father passed away kind of unexpectedly was a pretty big shock. Yeah, it was, it was. It's horrible. I mean, it's just devastating to our family. It left me and my mom there with this game store and there's a whole story around that too. But the magic side of it was like, at that point I really kind of just kind of stepped away from it. I just it was. It was such a bonding thing between me and my father that I just couldn't. It was really hard to look at it and then I tried a little bit.
Speaker 2:But you know, being, as you know from watching my, my, my fullest video, I'm a single handed magician right I'm. I was born with a limb difference, missing the fingers on my right hand, so there weren't a lot of books to look at either, and I looked a little bit and I couldn't find anything. And I was just, you know, I played around with cards like a little bit. There's like one trick I created that I pieced together from a couple, which is actually pretty strong. I still, now that I know a lot more, I'm like that's pretty clever. But at the time I just had like this one trick that I would do every once in a while, like pretty rarely, but I never performed it like publicly or anything. I just would do it like for friends or really close friends I might do something, um, but then so how, how did I get back to, how did I get back into this world of magic so fast forward, about 15 years after he passed away and at this point I'm married and I don't have any kids at this point.
Speaker 2:So me and my wife are going back to visit my grandma, my dad's mother, who lived in Michigan at the time in Grand Rapids, michigan and we just went to go visit her and we did it in February, which is crazy because it was really snowing. My wife loved it because she grew up in the West Coast and she loved seeing snow, but probably for the first time that and that much snow actually. But that was really fun. So we went to visit my grandma, spent with her, spent some time with her at her house and, uh, just got into some really long conversations with her. I wanted to like kind of document some conversations with her. She was getting older and just in somewhere in the middle of that she's like you know what? I think I have something of your dad's downstairs that that I want you to have. So I'm like I don't. I, you know, I did. I didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 2:So she, me and my wife, we went downstairs and goes down this. You know they have basements in Grand Rapids. So I went downstairs in the basement and opened this closet up and she reaches up to the top shelf and pulls out this old red wooden box with like a star on it, like a. I don't have it here actually, I'll tell you that story in a second. But it's a little box, like I don't know, a 24 by 18 inch box, pretty narrow, about like four inches thick, just this metal box or, sorry, wooden box that you know was very old. He could tell it was very old, had been painted over a couple of times with a silver star, red box with a silver star on the front. And she says this was your dad's magic box that he had when he was a kid and you should have this.
Speaker 2:And I wasn't. You have to understand I wasn't doing magic at the time. I think I was probably asking a little bit about, maybe, what he had done, but it really wasn't like, it really wasn't in my mind necessarily to like be doing magic at all, like. And then she gave me this box and I'm like that just kind of changed everything. At that point it was like it was like I was being given permission to like enter back into that space again in my heart and my, my soul and my life, and like that's kind of what started the ball rolling again. It was like it was it. It was a magical moment. I'll just say that it was like a. It was an unexpected thing. I would never have thought I didn't know it existed. Yeah, it just it was out. It was like out of nowhere.
Speaker 1:It was amazing, wow it's interesting there are times in our life, um, when we are more open than other times. And if your father has died and time has passed and you go and one chapter of your life because I can totally connect to that how you do one thing with somebody especially when you're a kid still, and you're doing something with your dad, and then they leave, you have not necessarily picked up the torch yet, maybe there was no time when he sort of went oh, you got to do your thing or whatever, and then you're left a little bit high and dry.
Speaker 2:So no, I dug my respite Is that the word. I dug heavy into music. I spent years just playing music, just hammering on music that was. That was kind of my artistic, emotional, creative kind of area I focused on mostly yeah.
Speaker 1:What did you do within music then? I mean, you're being one hand then.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I created a guitar. Really fortunate, I created a guitar pick that works on my right like a strap on my right hand. So, yeah, and I, I got, I got really. I'm not like I got really good and I got really good because my first teacher was a jazz teacher and he was like he was my babysitter and now he's like the jazz guy in Chicago, like he's, he's got a PhD in music, teaches at the music school in Chicago. He, he helps run the jazz festival and he's like on the board for the.
Speaker 2:I mean I just got really fortunate that the right people were right around me at the right time. So I got, you know, and well, I got good. I didn't know if I would be able to play and like what can I do with this thing? And they were, like you know, several, several iterations of this guitar pick that I went through over the years, but I eventually settled on one that I've been using now for like 20 years. I've been playing for 30 years now, for like 20 years, at least 20, 25 years now that just you know all styles of music. We could talk for hours about music. I mean that's not what necessarily this is about, but that I mean it's part of play, for sure, um, but that's what I really focused on. Like that was where I went into, and deep into that stuff after my father passed it's one big aspect.
Speaker 1:It's like what I am passionate about is to be a full uh, multi-dimensional human being, and I think there are many different ways of playing. And music is a whole sphere in itself and because it has performance and all of that. But it's a different kind of language and I just was listening to this book called the Secret Chord by a guy called Leventin who is a music scientist or whatever, and he was talking about there that there is when you listen to music. There is a specific parts of the brain that and the parts that switch on when you listen to music that allows you to connect to it, which and when you describe it Alpha waves, I think, or something I can't remember.
Speaker 2:If it's the alpha waves, they start to resonate in a different way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure he wasn't talking about the waves, but, as in like, where those waves, what that specific parts of the brain and the part of the brain that lights up most when you listen to music also triggers autobiographical memories and stuff. So it's connected to your episodic memory of things that have happened to you. So when you and he also pointed out, which was interesting when you listen to music that you like, then this part of the brain in particular turns on and you sort of identify with the music, whilst if there's music going on that you don't like, you feel and register it as if it's not really part of you and you don't want anything. So that sort of also made this sort of how sometimes when music that you don't like come on, you can feel really confronted or whatever. So that was interesting.
Speaker 1:But the fact that when I listen to music, if you're at a concert or if you listen to classical music, when there's music, when there's no words or whatever, then then you have of course, even more. So you're just left alone and it's like when you really get taken by the music, I can't help but start to remember things and I don't like. It's almost like dreams in a way that you yeah, so um.
Speaker 2:I know exactly what you're talking about. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So anyway, uh, that was just sorry to unload that, that just.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good, it's all connected Ultimately, like that's what this is all connected, it's all connected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that level of play that is probably most distinguished for the music. I think that's also being hijacked when we're doing dance or when we're doing games, when we're imagining ourselves.
Speaker 2:There's so much to unpack with even music and play, If you think about it as a form and you think about a note and the tone and the vibrations and how. If you strip everything away, you have a note. Right, you have a note. It's very simple. It's about as simple as things get right Sound traveling through the air, and then that can somehow create an emotional feeling. There's a lot there.
Speaker 1:It's so much there. And what I also think is that it uncovers this thing that I think is a fundamental aspect of reality, and that is that it is about relations. The note is played, but if nobody's there to listen, even even when the musician hears it and is playing it themselves, you register it a little bit different than if you're just letting the music come to you. So there's the relationship with the one note and with you. But as soon as one plays one note in a certain timbre, with a certain tone, when they then play that next note, now you start, it starts to build and the music arguably comes in the relationship between the notes and in the relationship with when you listen or so. So it's so and it gets more and more complex and at some point it's it's not just individual notes anymore. It's not about that. If you focus on the note, you go oh, that was such a nice a. Then you've like it's the. It becomes about the unfolding or the flow of the music. So yeah.
Speaker 2:Then there's different forms. Right, there's the there's, there's the more composed music we can get into this a lot. There's the more composed music, right, which is which is then interpreted by the, the players, and then there's improvisational. I'm more of the improvisational type player. My wife is a classical pianist. She lives in a different world. Our brains are in different worlds. I can't do what she does, she can't improvise, but I've had a stream of notes in my head since I was a kid. And then you attach that to anything I happen to do it. It happened to be a guitar for me, that was the primary.
Speaker 2:And then you talk about how you're connecting from. The improvisational thing is such a such a neat thing, right? Where is that coming from? And then you're, you're ahead in your mind when you're playing notes, and you know the notes are there. You're in your mind, you're ahead of what's being played, you're thinking ahead. And then there's so much as subconscious and you're just relying on instinct. You've done all the training, you've done all the work, you put all the work in, so now you don just play, and that what I'm saying. Now you can just play, right, play. Where is that coming from? It's coming from this deep part. You almost can't communicate where it's coming from, but it can come and if you get in that flow state, where it's just coming is a very. It's one of the most uh, I don't know how, it's one of the most, I think, primary primal ways of a human, that a human can communicate what's what's inside and release out from what's in yeah, that's right, it's.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful when it happens I mean in in a, in a sense as well. When you're in a flowing conversation as well, then, and you're developing, talking about the same theme, and the conversation develops you, you can also feel like you're sort of ahead of it and all of a sudden, both people start to talk about it. So this is also a kind of improvisation, but I was thinking just about this thing of feeling like you're ahead of the of the notes, so that you're you're, and that also, of course, comes from being able to, in a sense, speak through your instrument or to, to where you're not worrying about where should I put my finger, but when, when the hand is going, and you can translate thoughts, or maybe even you're translating emotions into sound absolutely, and because there's an infinite number of possibilities ahead.
Speaker 2:Right, you think about any. You're at any moment in the middle of an improvisational moment, say with a band or by yourself. There's an infinite number of directions you can go next, right, but you all kind of know the rules. There's some. Here's another thing of play. There are rules, there are agreed upon rules in a band or in a group, or or even on an instrument. The frets themselves are an agreed upon set of rules, right, so you have this rule, the framework, and then operate, and then you have this.
Speaker 2:But even within that framework, you almost have infinite freedom of so many different things, right, the note, the note, that's itself the exact note. How are you going to bend the note? How are you going to hit the note? How are you going to attack the note? Are you going to add vibrato? Which note? Which note before, which note after atonal? Or are you going to develop a melody, or you know, all these, all these things are so much in there, right, and you're doing that, uh, you know in real time and you're ahead of it somehow, and there's when you get into that flow state, it's you almost, it's almost indescribable. You are really just playing with emotion.
Speaker 2:And jazz players will tell you this. They'll say what do you want? Let me hear what you have to say. That's, that's all the state of it. Let me hear what you have to say. And that just means let me hear you, let me hear your heart, let me hear your soul. Yeah, you've done all the work, you put in all the work to do all that, but I want to hear you. I want to hear you come through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh man, so awesome, so awesome. And to me I mean it's not just me, I have read enough to back it up as well Like there is a very strong correlation between a child's play state, or being in a flow state for playing, and an adult being in what we call flow state playing and an adult being in what we call flow state, and it almost feels to me like we've in the psychology or whatever they're calling the calling it a flow state, and then it it's because it's not, it almost is tinged or with bad uh, bad, uh, it's childish if it's just going oh yeah, now you're really playing, or whatever this is like, because it really has all of those things. As I have sketched that out in my episodes Play, I sort of try to, because play is infinite in a way, so it's very hard to describe. So you somehow have to sort of constrict it a little bit, just like you can play anything that you want when you are jamming with somebody, but it is restricted. Maybe you're going to stick within the for most of it, you're going to stick within the right scale or you're going to stick within. So there's many, many ways that you're responding to something before.
Speaker 1:So, whatever it is, it's got to be not just shouting in the dark, but it's. It's related to what came before and at some point you've got to hand over again. So when I think of what I define, so it has to do with constriction, and I do think that the constriction of music that we are, that's the rules that you were talking about and that's my fourth kind of criteria, and the fifth criteria is that play is imaginative and improvisational, um, and that is what we're specifically talking about now and also that play is self-motivated, something you do voluntarily. If somebody forces you to play, then it's sort of different, then it becomes almost like practice or whatever, and that the thing in itself is apparently purposeless because it's done for its own sake. You're playing the music like that would play anyway, like when you really, when you feel like it If you watch your it's not survival.
Speaker 2:It's not survival necessarily based. It's seemingly meaningless, but we know it's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it has all these benefits when you're doing the thing for itself. It has all these benefits for you. And then you have that with music too. If you're thinking just of popular music or something. If you really had the feeling that the person who's making these songs are only doing it because they are going to make money, then certainly I will feel like I'm, uh, I'm turned off by it, because you want somebody to be singing straight from their heart, because they can't stop themselves or whatever, or like yeah, so, so, and then, and then the first thing that you need for play, for something to be play, is that it is fun, that you don't want it to end, and this is, of course, so closely related with the with music. So, yeah, wonderful connections here between, uh, between it all, because each one seemed to kind of it's all play, it's all play.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what it comes, it's all play, right. And we can go into other things that are played too, that are not. You know music, sports, some, everything. Ultimately, I think everything is. I think that's.
Speaker 1:I do too, and I am arguing so in my ongoing lectures, whatever you want to call it, because I think it's. After I had argued what I think showmanship is, I realized that this is not fundamental enough. Where does it come from? So that's why I'm going back to the origin of mammals or so and I'm going like maybe that's far enough back. But there are people who argue there as well of going further. But I think I've made my point. So you're doing magic. And then this is also right at the wheelhouse of what I am interested in. When somebody draws on something which lies at least seemingly outside of the field, that your particular performance of magic where that is. And you're drawing that in and you are making a show which is premiering soon, I believe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, I think, about six weeks. Yeah, the end of February. Yeah, the end of February, I'm just doing, just doing a one night thing, just kind of. It was a motivational way to get me motivated to to really put something together. You know, it's the best way to get something done Schedule it, put it on the calendar, make people show up and or have people show up, thankfully. And yeah, yeah, this is hopefully the first of many. We'll see where it goes. I have some, some ideas.
Speaker 1:That's great, great. Before I ask anything more, are you getting it properly documented?
Speaker 2:When you say properly documented, what do? I don't know.
Speaker 1:At least, at least, so you have have it filmed, so that you can.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, the actual show itself, I might have the film. Yeah, yes, I mean. Yeah, I thought you meant my behind the scenes process. I'm like man I don't think we're there yet. No, no, maybe not quite no no, no, but the show itself. Yes, I'm gonna have it documented, yeah yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:So when you're doing, now I don't. It's not going to be for public consumption no, no, no, no, yeah, yeah, okay, and there's a couple reasons for that I'm not. There's a couple reasons for that.
Speaker 2:I'm not a. There's a couple reasons for that, for sure, but yeah, yeah, that's all all, just uh.
Speaker 1:I have just uh. I feel like I am. I'm 49 years old and I frequently continue to make that mistake. I'm doing a new thing or I'm doing something Maybe not the whole show, but I'm doing like a new routine or a new opening thing and then I Go and do it at an event and then come home and I only have my memory of how it went and it's like I came up with a couple of things.
Speaker 2:No, this, this. I need to document this. If, in fact, if this is the only time I ever do it, which I hope it's not I definitely want this documented for sure. Yeah, so that was a little bit of a side question there, no, but thank you because, in case I wasn't, you know, beat me over the head and make me do it Like, yeah, it's so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is important and it's also this is this is how to, how to move, move on as well. I had to how to, how to further the development of it, because this becomes, if nothing else, like a proof of concept. Proof of concept of, and direct relations and direct reactions from the audience. Because as much as we can, uh, practice and we can think and we can create, that's only the pregnancy.
Speaker 2:It's like the show comes out oh, yeah first birth and now at least it's out in the world and we yep, so I'll record it and their friends are going to come and see it. They have a good good instincts on that. Are fellow performers, magicians and stuff. Not, fortunately, not all of them. Most of the people are not going to be magicians, which I don't want to perform for. Magicians, I mean, I'm okay if they come, but that's not necessarily the audience. I'm not building it for that audience. But yeah, that's great. So hopefully get a lot of feedback and then we can go from there. I mean, that's just you got to do that stuff.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting, interesting thing performing for magicians when the magicians who are probably more schooled and more interested in methods than anyone so sometimes both them, yeah, they're they are focusing more on the method than the common public. They have more trouble giving themselves over to actually just watch the effect. So they're watching at like the wrong level, which is why certain people like David Williamson or Danny Doughty are like just unbelievable for like making magic with secrets that are specifically aimed at the magic convention audience. Right, right, I mean.
Speaker 2:So I'm fortunate that I live in Los Angeles and I get to aimed at the magic convention audience, right right. So I'm fortunate that I live in Los Angeles and I get to perform at the Magic Castle and I've had many, many shows where you're performing for a sea of magicians, so I'm very comfortable doing that. In fact, past the audition, of course, you have to perform for a bunch of magicians who have seen everything and they're analyzing all your stuff, but so that's fine's fine, I'm, I'm, I think I'm over that part which is which is good, but, um, but your point is, I, I did think about that and I, I have to admit I did think about this in in building the show and the methods. Like that is part of that, is part of how I built it yeah, I mean awesome I wanted to include a little, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's great, that's great. So tell me a little bit about your show.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, it's, it really is about, you know, my it's. It's it's sort of an autobiographical, you know autobiographical theatrical presentation that happens to involve magical elements. I'll frame it like that because, for sure, I spent a lot of time, like I said, even with music, performing for so many years in the music world. My parents took me to theater as a kid, a lot, right, so that stuff is kind of already in me, the theatrical. And I've done some directing as well. I crashed the film school at UCLA different story but I've done directing. So I've worked on the production side of things and the acting side and the directing side and the performance side.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to tell a story, right, that's that's my goal. It's a story and it does involve this particular time of my life of of this game store, this big, profound moment of, like this, about 12, 15 year period of my life where the game store was the central figure, almost like a character in my life, right, and working through all that. So it's framed around that, you know, of a game store. But it's about my time growing up in a game store, surrounded by games and game inventors, and the importance of play in our lives. And, like I said I dug into play and how that all works together and it's all tied into the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing, and so you have done. Then I take it, without you haven't actually said it, that you are. You are blurring the line between games and magic that's exactly what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:That's intent. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm blurring the lines between games and magic, whereas this is not. This is not a magic show. You're not going to come and see somebody do a bunch of tricks yeah in fact, I was really specific in the way I framed it. I I wanted to you think about um and it's, it's, you know, magic. And I would say, you know, in the mentalism world, if we're going, depending on how we want to categorize this kind of stuff, right, yeah so it's not.
Speaker 2:It's. It's, um, what are the? You know the, the types of effects, those kinds kinds of things. In fact, I've tried really hard to believe it or not remove magical moments, what would be perceived as magical moments, in other words, here's a card, shake it. Now it's a different card. Right, that's like some kind of a magical thing, right, thing, right, I'm, I'm trying to, I'm trying to create things that are more impossible and wondrous and and touch people maybe at a deeper level than just like a, like a smack across the head more. I mean, some of it may do that, but it's, that's not. It's not the, the way that the things come about and the way the things transpire. They're not that kind of, in your face, magical, like there's a person, the person's gone.
Speaker 1:It's not that kind of a thing yeah, so you are playing it, uh, more like a storyteller than a sort of ta-da.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, yeah it's. It's a storytelling and then the magic, magical things kind of unfold. Yeah, sometimes, you know, they have unfolds in the audience's hands.
Speaker 1:Maybe they're the ones doing, they're the ones making these magical things happen because it's really it's just great because, uh, I mean, I knew my main thinking about bridge, I think, came from the fact that there are two different sizes of cards and I'm like, well, I sort of knew a little bit more about but bridge I knew nothing about, but I knew that it must be big because it's got its own size of cards or whatever. Then you have dice and you have all the different games, have different random outcomes or whatever. All of this is like a fertile space for doing magic, or doing like. It means so much of card magic like you could say like a whole branch of card magic is about cheating. You know it's yeah, false deals and and so I did so.
Speaker 2:I included a card section. It's mostly not cards, fortunately, but because we got a lot of card stuff out there, right, there's a lot of card stuff out there so, and I love cards right, that's not to out there so, and I love cards right, that's not to belittle cards in any way. I love cards, but there's a card section in there and, without giving too much away, I tried really hard to think about how to construct a card set that has meaning that people can understand. That involves the different, like you mentioned, like cheating, right, that involves that sort of that element the gameplay, the gameplay that's involved with cards, yeah, the luck that's involved with cards, the and and that's where I probably touched the closest on some magical things, but it, but I tied it, I tied it in, I tried to tie it in really nicely together that's great.
Speaker 1:I mean, cards is one of those things that growing up doing magic I kind of only knew. The only people that I knew here and in the world that dealt with cards was magicians. But is there, like, how big is the card playing communities out? There is it. Is it just me that's delivered a sheltered or peculiar existence, or are people playing?
Speaker 2:lots of cards everywhere. Well, I mean obviously in you know I, when the poker thing got really big back and when was that in like 2008 or seven, whenever the hockey strike happened and they started showing poker on espn, it got it blew up really big so everybody started playing poker. I remember having we were having home games like every every couple weeks, so that got really big. I think it ebbs and flows like a lot of things. As far as like bridge games, all those niche things, bridge or euchre pinochle, I think those are going to.
Speaker 1:You're going to have those little pockets and I'm sure, like I don't belong to one in my town but I wouldn't be surprised if I could go find some kind of a bridge club in my town somewhere. Yeah, well, you live in a big town, but then again, uh, maybe those are the kind of things that in a in a ex-fishing fishing village on the coast of norway, that, uh, that people do it online now, though, too right.
Speaker 2:I mean in physical, in person, no but sure. Oh my gosh, I'm sure there's, I'm sure you can find someone to play bridge with 24 hours a day online.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, very good point, very good point, so point. So when people come to the show, are you utilizing some of the experiences that you had as a kid when you had Games Night? Are they coming in and feeling like it's a Games Night, or are they coming in and feeling like they're watching a sort of a theater performance or so?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure what they're going. Everybody's going to bring their own expectations, for sure, but I am a proponent of the show. The show begins before the show begins. Right, when I say that, you know what that means. So, like, even in some of my the marketing materials I'm using, I'm trying to explain a little bit about what's going on. If people happen to see that that's how they decide they want to come and see this, I'll say in this, you know, in this particular theater, there's, there's a, there's a lobby, a little small lobby area, so I have some things in there that's inviting people kind of already into, into the idea of, like, this is a place of freedom and playfulness. Right, the show, while it is going to be fun, it's, it's, it's like any good.
Speaker 2:What I consider to be any good piece of theater or piece of film, what I'm, what I consider to be any good piece of theater or piece of, you know, film, what I'm, what I'm aiming for anyway, uh, is is that it covers all the emotions. Right, there's some really just you're just having it, you're just there. There's some moments of just laughter and super, super fun, but then there's, like, the most serious moments you could imagine and trying to combine. That's probably the. The biggest challenge is how do you combine the ebb and flow of a show to really get those highs and those lows and those poignant moments, um, without manipulating people either. And, and you know, part of that is just trying to be me, just be just. You know. I say be me, I mean just tell my story, just just. This is re, everything is real. I'm not making anything up, right, there's nothing that's made up. That's another you know condition, boundary condition I set for myself Like this is not, I'm not telling. The stories that I tell are real stories. This is my, this is just my life, right? And and then how you weave these things into the, to the, the magical things into that story.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so the idea of the show begins before the show. And get you know, when they come in, they're going to already have been playing a little bit. So I think they're going to you know pretty quickly we're going to be playing. That's another thing. How do you structure the show to give people that sense of what is this, what am I watching? And they're not going to know? I mean, honestly, this isn't common for magic type or, you know, theatrical type show. This is not a common thing and that's OK. I'm willing to take a chance. I've seen it done well before. I know it can be done. I'm hoping I can. I can pull it off myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you can, Something also undeniable when you're telling your own story. I don't know if you've done many sort of full length evening shows or theatrical experiences where they come out just to see you in a theater setting, but my experience is that a lot of performers who have been within magic or within juggling or whatever, like your first one or your first few shows no-transcript portray somebody else's story, or you're going into territory where you know it's not real and and people are clued in to find these subtleties. So it's a.
Speaker 2:I think it's a good place to start and yeah, yeah, I don't don't know if you know, I'm not sure if I will ever be able to do anything else just because of who I am. And it's not like a self self. I hope it's not a self-indulgence thing. That's not the point. The point isn't like, well, this story is the important thing, right, this story happens to involve, like this particular one about games is like, you know, I'm just, I was, that was just my life, so it kind of made sense.
Speaker 2:But there's more than it's more than just. It's not just a story about me. That's like the frame, that's like the big framework, but it's really the in any story. You know, if I ever do something else like this in the future, it's the underlying why, why are we even here? Like, why am I even doing that? I, that's okay, you write it. You can write an autobiography if you think your life is, has interest and maybe benefit somebody else. You know, hopefully, that they can learn something from you, that's great. But there's it.
Speaker 2:For this, there's like there's a bigger underlying thing, which is this whole idea of games, the importance of play and what I'm really trying to get across, maybe without I want to be, you know, too, on the nose about it. But but you know this idea that there is this play within us and and a lot of us, like we were talking about earlier, the blurring the boundaries. We know a lot of people do this Right and there's something locked up inside of them and they don't have, they haven't given themselves permission to let that out. And that's really that's my heart, for this is I won't go too far in the story, but the heart of it is I want people to be able to unlock that, that thing that's inside. If it is locked up, you know, help them to have a space to unlock that and if it's already unlocked, then just even enter into it more, feel even more freedom to just kind of go into that, go in that direction of playfulness powerful, powerful aspirations.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's so great and it's I mean, I can't help. But uh, like I'm just inferring in here, but when I know that your show is mirroring yourself as well and you have the magic as a thing, and then you have your father, and then you have the games, and then you have the game store, and then you have your father being torn away at a difficult time for a young man if you're 16 years old yeah I can imagine that it's.
Speaker 1:It takes the foundation out of it. It's like it's you need that's.
Speaker 2:It's a lot yeah 17 or so.
Speaker 1:Like you, you're yeah.
Speaker 2:So a lot of that, a lot of processing of that right, that's a lot of processing of that has gone, has gone into why. Why this story? Why now? My mother passed away last uh, well, it was like two years ago, year and a half or almost two years ago now actually, and I thought I was going to do something different. I'll go, I'm getting back to something, but I thought I was going to do a different show to start, and then, when she passed away, I kind of reevaluated everything. It was like for the first time I thought about the fact that they were both gone and I think I wasn't even allowing myself, kind of like I wasn't with magic. I've still played games, I've got kids, we play games like it's a big part of our family.
Speaker 2:But I really wasn't able to fully go back emotionally to this time period until I worked through some other stuff and then, you know, through doing that like because, like, this is the part. So when I found I was in the game store, I happened to be working in the game store on a Friday night when my mom called me and said you know, we got to go to the hospital and something's gone on, something's. Something happened, right, and I knew what that meant. Like I knew what that meant. So not all. So like I just I just I mean that's just again part of I said nothing in this story is not going to, is going to, is going to not be real, right, like in the game store when I found this out, right, so it's, it's, it's it's pretty deeply tied together, right. You can understand why it might be difficult to have worked through some of these things and the timing just it just kind of well, obviously it's unfortunate, that's the way this kind of worked out it like, honestly, I was at the point in my, you know, I always wanted to do this, this, the idea of of theatrical, this kind of a theatrical thing, that was kind of always something I wanted.
Speaker 2:That was always the goal. I know I've been fortunate to do many other things, but this was the kind of thing that I wanted to do from the earliest, even from when we didn't get into the magic stuff, when I started coming back into it, but from the earliest days of me getting back into magic, this was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But I also knew that I wasn't ready to do it. I knew I didn't have the time, the years, the experience, the knowledge, the skill set to do it, to pull it off, because I'd done other things. I know what it takes to pull something like that off. So it just happened that everything kind of aligned up like you know what. I think I can do this. I think I'm ready to be able. I have the tools and knowledge of relationships, the experience to do this kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:And I know this is the story I have to tell Amazing, how do you I mean when you say you're working through things, were you like working through it professionally or were you working through it through the creative process of this?
Speaker 2:we don't have to know the emotion of it. The emotion of it, the emotion of, like, of reconnecting my parents. It's really deep, like. So when my father passed away, it left me and my mom with this game store, right, and it was this thing and it was this thing and she had to keep going, right, she had to keep going because, cause, you know, she had a kid, 16 year old kid, and like you gotta launch me into the world, this kind of thing, and this, this was the business, this was their, this was their last dream, right, this was the thing. So she had to. You know, she worked through it and eventually it, you know, of 2002, I think it was December 31st 2001 was the last, no, sorry, december 31st 2000. That was the last day, the last day that the store was open, um, so we had to work through all that and then, and then, like, but there was sort of a disconnect. There was always a bit of a disconnect, um, between that time in our life and we talked about it occasionally.
Speaker 2:But I think my mom had a, she had her own emotional barriers of like, you know, just to protect herself. Honestly, that's probably what it was. It was a, it was a deep. It was a deep pain, right? So she had to. She created these emotional boundaries. So I think when she passed away, I was able to enter into it in a way that I had never been able to explore it before and really just dig deep within myself and thinking about that time period and what it meant and how it played into my life and how it played into their lives. I just just growing, I don't know, just just I. I just I don't know how to explain other than I was able to see it in a different way, that I never had been able to look at it before.
Speaker 1:So both digging deeper into yourself, but also in telling the story, I think there's something powerful about, in a sense, you can always see everything from any kind of angle. So to actually create a work of art, create a show, to create a story that you tell from the beginning to end, you only have an hour, an hour and a half, where you're going to have the audience there, so you invariably have to leave out most things. So in that telling of the story and you're going to be doing routines and games and stuff, then you are taking charge and creating a. So you, so you're in in one way, you're deeply inside it, but you're also stepping out of yourself and seeing what the story can be. So did you write this stuff actually down? I know you have. You you've written a script, um, and and and. What is the relationship then between the script and the routines or the games? Like, how interwoven is the story in that? So we don't just tell a story and then here's a poker deal.
Speaker 2:Exactly. No, no, that's the challenge of writing it, right, how do you mesh those two things together? Yeah, well, the game store, my life in the game store has a beginning, a middle and an end. Right, there's, um, well, this, the game store, my life and the. And the game store has a beginning, a middle and an end. Right, there's an end to the game store, right, I was born. Then at some point the game store was opened, we had this game store and then it closed, right, so there's that there. There's a framing right there, um, inside in this story that I get to tell, within that, then the framing of the play in the games is its own set of story. But if you think of it, if you, if you build, if you can, if you layer that on top of the framework of that, you think about games, and games have a beginning, a middle, not an end, but maybe a now, right, where games are now in the world. So you think.
Speaker 2:So one of the first things I do in the show I try to think about what's the earliest form of game, right, what's the earliest game? Yeah, how do games evolve? So you get into nonverbal symbolic. Then you can get into symbolic, which involves numbers and letters, right, you can get into. Well, cards are more physical. Right, cards are physical in an evolution of gameplay. It's 1,000 years old, at least 1,000 years old. The actual using pieces of paper or using some sort of a card type object in gameplay and then some other things, and then it goes from there. I'm not going to say too much after that, but then it goes into, I'll say even to really kind of ends in modern times, if that can be. I don't want to give it away, but yeah, I've really tried to trace almost the games themselves evolving from the simplest forms to kind of the more complex forms. But then how does that weave into the story and mesh, and that's, that was the challenge and that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So you mentioned sort of that you had tested out lots of games in this and maybe just to. Of course, you don't want to give everything away. That's the magic way. Even if this is a very niche podcast, I'd be very surprised if anyone comes in there haven't heard this. Then you got to come back on the podcast and tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Sure, haven't heard this then.
Speaker 1:Then you got to come back on the podcast and tell me about that, sure somebody. But anyway, but, um, um, have you got any of the of the games? Just, we can kind of see how, um, even just as an example of what was explored, and then, and and why was this not fit for the, for the game, for instance?
Speaker 2:sure, well this started? I'll tell you this, it started for sure. You know, I've been working on this for like a couple years and I, I, I play tested. Right, you think about, in the world of games, what am I doing in play testing? You'd almost think of that, and for a lot of things, but I'm play testing these things. So I started play testing this stuff pretty heavily in 2000, I guess at 20, 2023. At this point started play testing some of the games in different situations. So, so, like when I went I got to perform at the Chicago magic lounge in late 23. And that was the first time I really had done it more in a public place started play testing some of these games. So, for example, there I played, I did a game which I think that did not make it into this because I just didn't feel like I could fit it in which is, um, kind of the game memory.
Speaker 2:You know the game memory, right, you have to match match cards. Well, I've been working on something where I wanted to involve again. This is like one of the things that I like to do. I like, I want. How do I, how do you involve every single person? How can you involve every person, and I like to do this for every any kind of show. How, at some point, do you involve every single person in the audience to feel like they have a voice and they have a place in this show? In other words, you're not just picking on a couple people and they come up. Everybody else is just as just watching a spectator. No, I want everybody at some point to be a participant. So I've created this, this um, put a couple things together this memory piece with, with, with cards and passing them out to everybody and then kind of having them show me the cards and then kind of trying to play the game of memory in the audience with the cards. Right, interesting.
Speaker 2:It kind of worked and kind of didn't, it was fun. It was, it was a fun, it was a funny, it was fun to play, test it Right, and it kind of worked. Like I said, it kind of worked, it kind of didn't. But that's the kind of that's the game of memory. You know that's not. You know how that works. Right, you have, you have a bunch of cards that turn them face down, you turn them face up and you've got to find a match.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm gonna try to do that with every single person here, the last one, yeah, I'm gonna try to do that with every single person here yeah you have the eight of hearts, you have the eight of diamonds, that kind of thing, right, that that's what I was going for and, like you know, that didn't make it into the show because it just couldn't find a place for it, at least not in this iteration of it, right, um, and I placed that another thing that at that time, which is going to make it into this show. Um, I'm not going to mention that one, but it did it. You know it did. It's cause I've created a, I think, a unique take on this particular piece. Um, but what that? But that was like the early stages. And then I've continued to present these things in different environments, mostly private settings.
Speaker 2:Um, I did do a big amount of. So, okay, I did. I. Last year I was in the, I did the magic castle. Every once in a while has this thing called the strolling competition, which is like strolling magic. You know, like where you go to different tables, and I'm not a strolling magician, I just don't really do that. Um, nothing wrong with I, just it's just not what I really do. But this was an opportunity for me to in this, in this situation, you have like 30, 40 tables and in like an hour and a half, you have to do five minutes of magic and go around to every table, right? So I'm like this is a perfect opportunity for me to play, test some of this stuff, right? So I had miniature versions of some of the stage or parlor type things that I had created. Um Stage or parlor type things that I had created. So, for example, I had what's one that I can share. The dinner didn't make it into it, but okay, I think I mentioned this to you, like earlier that when we're talking so Matt, in the game mastermind I created.
Speaker 2:So I looked at back up a little bit. I create, I looked at, I created a list of all the most popular games, the most not known games, because I wanted to be familiar. So, just, these are. These can be like board games or puzzles and that kind of thing. Also playground games. You know, the games we play is traditionally we play as kids or we play as adults with kids, but we don't necessarily play with each other as adults. I create a list of all these things and then start just kind of brainstorming. I created a list of all these things and then started just kind of brainstorming, so Mastermind was one that came to mind.
Speaker 2:I was like, you know, there's got to be a way to do to present Mastermind in some kind of a way that has meaning and is magical, of course, but but is but has some meaning to it. And the first version I came up with was More of a marketed effect and and but I took this marketed effect and made it into, turned it into. It's not marketed as a game, it's not marketed as mastermind. But I thought, you know, you can imagine colors. There's different, there are different magical things you do with colors. And this particular one was like oh, you know, I could do something I'll try this out with, with this idea of framing it around the game of mastermind. And it worked. It worked pretty well, you know, maybe not the greatest thing, but it played well and people, people like the idea of it. But it didn't quite hit me. I didn't have time to build the emotional part into it.
Speaker 2:Now that I think, now I thought about more about it and developed the piece that I'm actually going to use in the show, I could actually bring that back to the simplistic version and put that into it and add a couple of lines and make it resonate a lot deeper.
Speaker 2:So I was telling you, like for Mastermind, I think I have like four versions of Mastermind, right. One of them is that which I would now modify and make it even stronger. And then I've got two other versions that are more kind of I won't say obvious. They're kind of more obvious. And this is where I said like I'm not building it with the magic community in mind, but I'm really doing it to challenge myself. I want to create things that haven't been done before. I want to create. You know, I don't want people to come in here and go. I've seen that before and if anything is anything is even remotely off the shelf, I have to have modified it heavily to include it. Right, and really not just my own story, but even how I'm doing or even the methods themselves.
Speaker 2:So, but with mastermind, I thought you know what, if I invite, what I really want to do is how do I add an emotional element to mastermind? Right, how can I add and this this probably explained a little bit like I thought about colors, like, again going back to how am I doing the framework and the show? And well, another simple thing is color, right. So you've got, you've got, like, you know, symbolic. You've got numbers, you've got letters. You've got numbers, you've got letters, you've got colors. How can I add emotion to colors? Well, we, emotion. Colors are already attached to. Emotions are already attached to colors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you think of like the color blue. Blue can be, can have multiple meanings for different people at different times. Blue can mean sad, right, but it's also the most widely used color in marketing and like, because it's a very comforting, comfortable color as well. So you'll see, like the icons in your phone, most of the apps, so many of the apps, use the color blue because that they know that the color theory and psychology, that blue is a very calming color. Same thing with red.
Speaker 2:Red can be can mean anger, right, but it also is is passion. So I thought, well, what if I can use that, those kinds of ideas, color theory, and connect that with emotion and story in mastermind a mastermind if you, if people are listening, don't know. It's the idea if you have like different colors and you set them up in a certain sequence and the other person has to try to figure out which the sequence of colors, the sequence of colors that you've set up. So I figured out a way to go to make it not just one sided and to add emotion into it, and that's that's what I'm going to try out in the show.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I mean, of course it's because because Mastermind is a kind of code breaking game as well, so that also, just that fact of trying to work out what's hidden and mixing that with magic, and when you're thinking of a story and and if you are trying to crack your own mind, your own mind and, in a way, when you're trying to work out both literally when you're writing the story, but also right, trying to deal and that was the other challenge in the story and is how do I make it non-adversarial, like I didn't want this to be an adversarial, I didn't want the games to be adversarial.
Speaker 2:Right, I win, you lose, kind of thing right, absolutely, I'm always a winner or there, or the audience is always winning. I'm always losing. Like how do I make? How do I make it these games where it's not even about winning or losing, it's about. It's not about that. It's not about winning or losing, it's about infinite games, it's about infinite games.
Speaker 1:It's about uncovering the infinite games, yeah yeah, I mean, that's it, it's, it's uh, um, in my daughter's class at school there is um, there is they're 12 now. So I think the boys are really the testosterone is coming online. So it's when we're doing collective gatherings with everybody, it's uh. We need to, as parents, think about non-competitive things that they can do, because it can really get out of hand. The kid, the, the boys in particular. They just get so crazily competitive that it's uh, gets in the way of it.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's the difference between the finite and the infinite games. That finite games you like soccer, in a sense, is like when it's on a or american football. It's like it's really clear who wins and who loses and somebody comes out in the winter and someone's a loser and then that's the end of that game. But the infinite game is to play any game so that you can continue on playing. So they're more open games or whatever. And and those are the all the important, really important games in life is not whether you won Mastermind or not, but whether you were such a fun player that next time any game is being played you are going to be invited.
Speaker 2:That's so great. Yeah, that is so beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really nice thing. He has written a book called Finite and Infinite Games and it begins with just saying that there are at least two games and I've got that book.
Speaker 2:It's great. I haven't read the whole thing, but I have it on my nightstand. It's like it's you can read a quote.
Speaker 1:It's like read one thing a day, yeah, and it just makes you think it's like aphorisms or whatever, and then in the sense each chapter, like or so, is about specific things, but I mean mean particularly the opening one, but as it goes on as well, but it's really one of those things that you can really like. If you're religious or you're Christian, you can open the Bible and read anyway, and the mode of reading will help you find something in the text, because you believe there is something in there and and that book certainly has that as well it's kind of numbered, so it's not just written as one, one long text, but it's a little snippets or so, and then you're into this what you talked about symbolic kind of reading or so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, there's so much. There's so much good stuff, there, so much good stuff there.
Speaker 1:But I was thinking as well, of course, uh, what you can help trigger when you're bringing up the games that people have actually played themselves as well, when you as a magician goes, um, like I got the duck, famous duck there, or whatever. When you go, when you bring that out, it's the kind of thing just like when the, when the magician says, here I have a bunch of flowers, but it's a whole bunch of feathers strapped to some wire and right, so it's like these are objects that they they look at with this puzzlement or or so, and I hated that when I was a kid, when I, when I finished off with magic, I hated that the props looked like that and I, when I returned to it again 15, 20 years later, I loved these props and I can now carry them in a way that I couldn't when I was a teenager, punk or whatever. But when you bring the games out, like, how many games do you actually treat or use in the show?
Speaker 2:I think it's like eight or ten, I think it's I can ten, I can't remember. Yeah, like twelve, maybe ten, twelve, something like that.
Speaker 1:But you've got a bound to be hitting right there to someone. Are you specifically asking someone if they have memories relating to these games or so, to activate their own kind of start them to get their own autobiographical connections to it?
Speaker 2:that's in there. So, yes, it's funny. I was a couple minutes ago. I was thinking, oh, we got to touch on this and you were learning. It was like your next thing, it's so cool, it's so cool. So, which is like, why did I choose certain things and why did I not choose certain things? Right, some of it has to do with just I couldn't. I couldn't think of a good way to do it. I couldn't think of a good way to do it. I couldn't think of a good way to connect it. But another thing is like familiarity. Right, I wanted people, yeah, I wanted people to be familiar, somewhat familiar. So some games didn't make the cut, even though they may be popular, like Settlers of Catan.
Speaker 1:You ever heard of that game before.
Speaker 2:It was like the first game that really broke through between, just like that kind of a different type of a game, right, right, not just a family game or a party game or but like kind of a next level type, strategy thinking kind of game that really and it's up there really high on the top, like 20 it's on the top 20 of all time games sold right. But you know, I didn't even think about that one. I didn't think, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm just not gonna do it, not because because I didn't feel like enough people would know it, even though though it's like really popular. I just felt like it's just not quite, didn't quite reach that level of familiarity and maybe maybe I'll be proved wrong and there is enough and someday I'll come up with something for that. But I thought about it, I just, I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2:So I really tried to go with ones that that kind of, in general, everybody knows, you know, maybe they don't know every, not everybody knows mastermind. I know that mastermind, I know that. But it's easily. If you don't know it, you can explain it in like two sentences and people like, oh, I get that. That makes sense. Right, like mastermind, you know colors in order. You got to figure it out. Okay, I can, I can. I can figure that out, trying to explain settlers of katan to somebody who's never played it yeah yeah, good luck, right, so it's just like next level risk.
Speaker 2:It's like risk but more right you'd say that it's like a complicated but then they. But then there's. There's probably a greater chance that a lower percentage of people that are coming have any connection to it.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to hit the highest mark of connection, which is what you're talking about. So that was, that was one of the things I want. How can I create games? Because the reason is because because gameplay, because play, is so fundamental to who we are and we have these memories, sometimes even childhood memories, associated with these games when we start playing them.
Speaker 2:That, I think, gives me that that permit the story, the underlying story, my underlying, the underlying biographical story that gets that can get pretty, you know, deep and stuff, right, I think, combining the two, that opens people up to the place where they can receive that, where you're combining this playful stuff, this familiarity with something that they don't't aren't familiar with, which is me and my story.
Speaker 2:Right, most of them, they, they won't know this story, right, that's, but it's, it's so deeply connected that it's, it's like the I'm just really fortunate it's. It's this perfect marriage of of you know, my story in the game, in the game world, and then the games themselves, which tie back to our own emotional you know our own emotions, like you were talking about music, how music can do that, and games do the same thing. So whenever somebody goes home after this and they play one of these games. They might remember back like, oh man, I remember seeing that thing and or or it might trigger them to want to play these games again with their families and their friends, right, that that's kind of the. That's the intent it's. It's almost like a subversive way to come in from the back door. Like you know, this is something we I don't feel like I'm manipulating people, because this is something we all love and it's so rooted, like I said, we know this, so rooted in who we are. We're playing games together, but then you can add these deeper elements into it.
Speaker 1:So interesting, and of course it's. It's. I often say it's like when the audience comes in, I want to firstly engage them emotionally that they easily that's how you grab and that's most connected to the character and me actually meeting them and being like I am present with you right here. When you're interacting with me, this is happening Like I am acknowledging the moment that you're here and I'm and I and I want to the things that I do. I want them to have an emotional impact and but I also want there to be more ideas going on that we're connecting to, but it's almost like. And then there's the action that I, the actions that I do, but I want to share the ideas with them and want to share the feelings and ultimately, I also want my actions in some way to.
Speaker 1:In the greatest instance it rarely happens, but that every now and then that somebody goes, take something that I said in the show and they actually make a change, an actual action, an actual behavior that they do in their life. Sometimes those things can be quite nebulous, but in your case, reconnecting with one of those games and that can be quite a direct sort of action that you want them to do so that next time they take this game out, it will be colored by the particular game that you played before. So now they will have their own memories of these games and maybe you are reminding them that that is in a cupboard somewhere in a stack of many of them, and they pull it out and now it's got your DNA on it as well, or whatever yeah, no, that's that's really, that's that's, that's that's part of the thinking behind it.
Speaker 2:For sure, I, yeah, I think that I'm hoping that my intentions are all good. Right, I'm hoping to leave them with something that they can take with them. I mean, that's not what we're all doing as performers and artists, right, we're trying to, we're trying to share part of ourselves because we feel like maybe there's something that we can do to help somebody else. That's my, that's my intent, right, maybe there's something I have that I've seen, that I've learned, that I've I've seen you know, that has happened to me that I can share so that others can benefit from that. Right, that that there's something they can take away.
Speaker 2:Um, I was gonna say, um, the idea of so many things you talked about, but like the idea of when you first, like the intro, like when you walk in and you know creating a, creating a space and and what, what are we walking into? Well, I was thinking about I think it's a lot of it's from listening to your, some of your shows on play, and particularly about the I think it was the geometry. The geometry, oh yeah, episodes you're talking about early on, about the different space, right, there's like the player, there's sorry, there's the, the performer, then there's the audience and then there's a space between yeah, it becomes that playful, that is. That is that? Am I saying it correctly, that that?
Speaker 1:is that's correct, and then, this thing, that it's sort of evolved from being a thing which is just between them to being it's not. It's this space between them now is not completely the audience and it's not completely the performer. It's a co-creation. It's a third thing, and then it goes from being two points in the line to being three points.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I'm acknowledging this. I'm not using that language, exact language, but I decided I need to acknowledge this right away because that's what this is. So I'm in a space, in other words, I wanted to eliminate that barrier between stage and audience spectators, right, I wanted to make it participants. So like, if you think about it, you're in a theater, right, the theater has walls, right, those are the boundaries of our play space, much like a field would have, you know, spray painted lines or whatever on the field, or something like if it, whatever game it was, or a basketball court has lines on the field, right, but we are, we are in a defined space. That is, those are the boundaries has lines on the field, right, but we are, we are in a defined space. That is, those are the boundaries. The rules We'll see what, we'll see what happens there. The rules are what the rules are in that space, and then, kind of what we make them, obviously. Then there's the bigger rules play, um, fire safety codes, right, things like that. But beyond that, then, what about the players? Right, and, and addressing the fact that you know we're all players, we're all players here, I'm a player, you're a player, we're all here in this space together and trying to reduce that boundary.
Speaker 2:So the very first thing I do is trying to remove that boundary, and you have to.
Speaker 2:You know I've studied this a lot, I've thought about this a lot, I've seen a lot of performances, you know, fortunately, like I said, near the castle, so I get to see so many things week after week whenever I get to go.
Speaker 2:How do you engage the audience right away and how do you create that connection as quickly as you can but not make people feel uncomfortable? And finding that balance of how do I, how do I interact and engage but not make people feel comfortable to the point where they're going to be OK, coming up on the stage with you, right, you want to be, you want to feel safe and all that with all those kinds of things. And, like, I want to go up with that person, this is going to be fun, they're not going to make fun of me, that kind of thing. So so the first piece involves everybody, right, gives everybody a voice, gives everybody a space and and hopefully that begins to break that boundary down between what people are, their preconceived notions of what, the idea of what a, what going out and seeing a show is.
Speaker 1:That's great that's really good because when you bring people in, I mean I very frequently now does this and it's inspired by my friend, jay Gilligan, who is often on the podcast, and I am stuck and it's solidified during the pandemic, when I did some school shows because that was one of the few places where there was still stuff happening. And I did some school shows because that was one of the few places where there was still stuff happening and I was in the room as the kids were coming in. And I'm doing this more and more where I am in the room, talking directly to the people as they come in, helping them, showing them down and talking to them on this level. And at first that's a little bit odd. It can be perceived as a little odd, but what happens when I'm actually going? Oh, actually, there's a few seats over here. I mean, if they got numbered tickets, but most of the events that I do they aren't. So if I'm there and they're coming in, I am already talking to them and I'm connecting, saying you can sit over here and you can come over here, and there's some, there's some more kids, you guys can sit, sit here. Then you see, well, and, and there's some, and, and then I go oh, so you got these clothes on and and what have you been doing? And uh is, if it's part of a festival or you've seen some other things, I am having real conversations.
Speaker 1:And it's more weird in the beginning. Once it sort of started. Then I just become one of the people who are in there talking. Then, when I walk onto the stage, this conversational nature that I've literally started, and every now and then you meet a kid or something, or when I'm doing it for adults, I meet an adult who is oh, this guy is jovial, he can be used or should be avoided, or whatever. You get the sense of this stuff and it breaks down this barrier that you sort of talk about, because, even though this is a show about games and you put stuff out in the foyer, if they're just doing it as they come into the room, you need to, in a sense, jumpstart them a little bit or crack that ice, or to get them into a mode where we're going, everyone here is going to be involved, but no one is going to be embarrassed. It's going to feel natural and yeah, so I think that's a really important thing in the beginning of this, where you are pursuing play.
Speaker 2:It's a good thought I might have to think about. I know I think I'm going to be in the foyer a little bit before it begins, but I'll think even more about how much involvement do I want, creating that balance? Right, yeah, because because it's um, what's?
Speaker 1:what's always difficult for me uh, a little bit is that once I take to the stage, then I have a whole bunch of. I mean, they don't. They can't tell so clearly what is scripted and what's not scripted, but I have, basically, I know everything that I'm going to say, unless the roof's on fire or unless something's happening, or or I ask a kid to come up and now they bring their brother and then okay, so now there's two on stage and you gotta like. So I have, of course, I know what I'm gonna do, and then I take whatever gifts the clown gods give me on along way, but it's what I can then feel like is that sometimes, when I start the show, I then I start to talk a whole lot more. So, breaking that down, having that real conversation, which is now something that I'm really deliberately working in and I voiced it last Christmas when I was working in some and I I voiced it last christmas when I was working with some guys in holland ashton brothers and I voiced it there to design I started to explore this thing where I say, as a joke, several times and I build it up, say it's like, are there any questions?
Speaker 1:And then I do it after doing one whatever ridiculous thing I have just been doing, freak show stuff or whatever and and a lot of the stuff that I do is really sort of absurd and comical.
Speaker 1:So then at the end of something that's completely idiotic, I say so, are there any questions? And then they laugh. But then after one of my bigger routines, when I'm literally getting changed back into more normal clothes, I go, are there any questions? And then I actually I have a little speech now that I do that is aimed at prodding them and now I'd say, even at a corporate event, eight times seven, eight times out of 10, they will start to ask questions and the show diverges out into. Usually once one question has started and I'm going, else there's. I can get this thing where, like for five, seven minutes now we are talking actually, and the good thing is that I'm like I've answered questions about these things that I do so much that it's kind of rare that we get into completely uncharted territories. I have funny stories and I have jokes and I have ways to sort of deal with all of this and I know where I'm going with it, where it's.
Speaker 2:Is that at the end of the performance, or is that like towards the back end, or how does that fit in?
Speaker 1:Like just past the halfway mark or so, wow, wow, and I really have been pursuing it and now I can kind of engineer that moment because I've said enough things and they've met me and I'm jovial and I've taken it in. And I'm saying all of this because when you talk about this thing of participation and so how, how do you, how do you give them the feeling that they are participants in the show, in the game, like? And it isn't easy, but it's amazing for me when it does happen, because what happens after? There's been some questions from the room where they, even the ones who didn't ask any questions, felt like, oh, if I'd thought of something, he would have addressed it. Seriously, I'm ironically, I'm not making fun of anyone. I take the question and I I answer everything as sincerely as I can, and it breaks down this thing so that it's now when I'm doing my, I have a bit of an emotional closer to the show and this now hits so much stronger as well because I'm now like a real, real person. So, anyway, that's great.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so wonderful, wonderful. I'm curious to hear how that, how that works for you. Like you know, like you said that, the audience's reaction we've you've done it for many years without doing that. Now you've done it and you've seen a huge difference when you enter into that just being right, being letting them see who you are. A lot of times the shows that I see, when I, when I resonate most of them I just want to see somebody be human for a moment Because, from their point of view, they're seeing someone on stage and they're doing something that they feel like they can't do, right, but everybody is human at some level, right, we're all human. So when you just, you know, we're just people, we're just hanging out, we're just sharing some time together.
Speaker 1:I think when they feel that, then that's hopefully what is giving that again, that permission to open up. It breaks down some of the barriers and you feel like I don't need to protect myself against this guy. He's not going to make a dick move and make me feel uncomfortable or whatever, and he's a real person. And this is also when your story starts to really matter as well. When you go yeah, I'm telling you the story of having a dad and the things positive and negative that happened with that, and everyone has that, and what was positive and negative in their life is totally different. Uh, but uh, but it's still. You can relate on that. And then you're relating on the level of the games and everything.
Speaker 1:So it's I just just really pin pinpointing that thing of how or whether you are out there and the idea of the games night and the idea of encouraging them to play some games.
Speaker 1:I don't know, because you don't want to on your first show, to spread yourself like too much butter on a piece of bread, as Bilbo says, like you want to make sure that you can focus yourself on a little bit at a time and not go too big, because I imagine this has a long lifespan, I hope so.
Speaker 1:That thing of making that initial sort of thing, where I mean I know that we specifically said it's not the role-playing games as in Dungeons, dragons, but it's like those games quite literally have a dungeon master, somebody who tells the story, and you are literally engaging in the game. So interesting to hear how that happens, how deeply people get involved. Yeah, that's a good point. Anyway, I also would be interested if you have anything to share about this, the magical realism that comes from telling a real story, playing a real game, but the nature of some of the magic moments that happen. If there's one moment that you can share, that is, that can be like exemplifying for how of the coming together of the story and of the effect and of the what I think of as magical realism or what I imagined when you said it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way I structured it was. I mean, I'll just kind of briefly outline the structure, the overall structure, then maybe we'll hit on one. So I thought like let's start off, like I said, something with participatory, and then it's all something where I'll just tell you so the opening one is going to be rock paper scissors. I did a lot of research on it, it's been done before. I was like I didn't expect to be completely original on this. There's a couple of things that I'm doing, hopefully original, but it's it's. It's going to be all. We're all playing together, and then somebody wins, somebody ends up being the last person standing, so to speak, right, and then they come up with me and then we play it together a final time and then at the very end of that, like a magical thing happens. But of that, like a magical thing happens, but it's not so magical that it's like like again, the effects are not magical, nothing transforms, nothing vanishes or disappears or anything like that, but a piece of information is revealed. You're like wait what? Because we're just playing this game, we all know, and then all of a sudden something happens. And you got to remember.
Speaker 2:I, you know the way I'm, I'm advertising this, but I don't know how people are going to walk into the show. I don't know their expectations, right? Some people might just think, oh, it's going to be, we're going to have fun playing games, this will be interesting night. And then the first effect is like, oh, that's interesting. But then, wait, what, what was that? Okay, that's interesting, that's curious. And then, right after that, what I decided to do was I grew up friends with one of the few of them, but one of the guys who was like the most successful one happened to be like the nicest guy and we've maintained contact for like all these years, like I've known him for like over 30 years, before his game was even successful, and now he's got a couple of successful games.
Speaker 2:I'm like you know what? I'm going to include a little bit of that in the story and we're going to play a couple of games that are real games and there's no like surprise, there's no, it's. It's like light-hearted and sort of not comedic, like funny, ha ha ha, necessarily, but there's some comedic moments in it, right, just to kind of add some levity. But it's like so we start off with something that's like wait, what was that? And then, all of a sudden, then it pulls back a little bit, so it enters into it, and then it pulls back a little bit and then it turns into something that's a little bit more like oh, I could see how you could do that, I could see how people could figure out to do that, which involves, like, the idea of tells, like the idea of, like, we have different tells, and this involves the game of Uno, right, and how you can read people's tells.
Speaker 2:And again, this is from oh, I did this during that strolling thing and play testing it. I got to the point where I could actually read people for real like, for real Like. So it's actually real, it's really. It's like it's so the idea I'm going to do it and then I'm going to teach somebody else how to do it Right, so again it's, it's bordering on, it is real, like it really is real, like I got to the point. I really did get to the point where, like, I can tell when it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:I learned and I only learned that from doing it like back to back 30, 30, you know, 30, 30, 40 times in a row, over and over and, over and over again, all those reps, Um, and then so, and then from there it kind of like starts to I don't wanna say devolves, but evolves into, into more magical things are happening Like oh, oh, that, Okay. Wait, what was that Like?
Speaker 2:that it's I love I love it on the edge of. Is that possible or is that impossible? That's what it is Not magical, but it bored. It's on that verge of possibility or impossibility, right when it could conceivably happen not likely, but it could. It could happen. Everything in the show, everything If I think about it, everything could happen. Statistically impossible, but it could happen. So it could. If I really think about it, I think it could yeah it actually could.
Speaker 1:That's so awesome. But it's so awesome as well. That's what blurring does as well. A magic thing happens and you, or like something, you go, oh that's amazing that that happened. But then, as it goes and it stacks on top of each other, keeps being more amazing, and then you are also becoming aware that there is something more that's going on here and and then there are, there are a couple magical things towards the back.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to give these away, no, where it does become, it pushes. It pushes over that edge a bit, not so much of like here's this, this, now it's gone, not that, but it pushes it to like, yeah, where they're definitely mixed their brain. That's the idea. Like, what am I watching? What is this?
Speaker 1:You want that though. You want that. You want the almost like the Karnis and the magicians. They were always the providers of the proof of the supernatural. I was there when it happened, and then us who are steeped in magic history or whatever you're going. Isn't it weird how often supernatural events takes the form of marketed magic tricks, yep or spiritism, all these kinds of things where you're going? Isn't it weird that those were all those are branches of magic, mind reading or whatever these things are. It's like sometimes when somebody goes no, I saw him bend a spoon and you go. Isn't it weird that you can buy a dvd and that I could ask you, he didn't twist the fork as well and one of the times was bent as well? They did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's on the same dbt it's amazing what people remember and how they reconstruct things too. It's they will, you know, we know they'll tell better stories than we tell ourselves. Right, they're so good at that absolutely.
Speaker 1:What was that just thought of here? Oh yeah, and that, if nothing else as well, as you're stepping into the towards the end of the show and you've gone through emotional stuff together with them, by sharing and hopefully having the resonance of going. I am telling you this story because it's my story, but I'm telling you because it has it's our story.
Speaker 1:It's our story and that somehow, in the end there that you go. Well, when you play, when you're there together with other human beings engaged in the activity of play, that is when magic happens, that's when something happens that you can't quite explain, but you go, I was there and he rolled six sixes in Yahtzee or whatever it happened. Actually, I was there. It should only happen one Crudel quadrillion. I looked at that one.
Speaker 2:It did not make it into the show. Oh yeah, you did. You got it. I looked at all those methods, ways to do that. I just thought it was. I Looked at it, I just couldn't tie it in. Yeah, yeah didn't make the cut, but that's like I have so much material to plug and play or to create other things. It's like I could write a book now almost of all these different ideas.
Speaker 1:Hey, I mean this as a magician who goes to conventions and sees people lecture. This is fertile territory to tell people to if you're taking, you take five or six of the effects that you have discarded and you show even the thinking of taking a marketed effect and twisting it into a game, Because I mean, how much mileage have we gotten out of the Rubik's Cube? Oh, my gosh, Like there's so much of that that goes on now, because it's like-.
Speaker 2:There's not a Rubik's Cube trick effect.
Speaker 2:if anybody cares, there's not a Rubik's Cube effect in this show. Okay, fair enough, it has been done, it has been done. I could if, again, if I could think of a way like I did, think of one way that I would even do it anywhere at all. Like I don't have, I don't, I don't have a Rubik's cube routine, like I I here's the, here's my thinking here get into the thinking a little bit about how, how, how I would approach something like this. So look at the Rubik's cube, okay, seeing a bunch of people perform and seeing the best people perform it, right, the what are arguably the best presentations of this effect, right, and there's so many different methods and so many different ways to do it. Um, how can I do it? You know, how can I do it? How, what would be a way to do it? I'm like, oh well, you know, one-handed I could solve it. One-handed, I could train myself to do it.
Speaker 2:There are people who can solve a Rubik's cube one-handed in like 30 seconds or something like that, like super fast speed records, and I started working on it and trying to figure it out and like I, like you know, but we're just watching somebody do a skill, which is cool, and I'm not into like the whole. Like you know, look at me, look what I can do kind of thing for this kind of a presentation, right For this kind of a thing. It's cool and it's a and the best effect I ever saw was, I think somebody who actually solved it for somebody solved it and then they did the match thing after that. But I thought that was I was. I thought that was so cool because it integrated like the realness of solving. I'm like, well, that's the, that's the bar.
Speaker 2:If I, if I'm going to do one of these, I got to get to a point where I can solve it and that's part of the deal. But I just couldn't figure out a way to for this or for any other presentation of magic that I do in any setting. I couldn't figure out a way that was original enough and unique enough that I wanted to do it.
Speaker 1:And you gotta somehow also connect yourself to it. And in a show that is story-driven like yours, it's gotta somehow be reflected in your own story as well. And just like you say, okay, am I gonna do it one-handed? Was I the prodigy back then of wanting to do it? Of course I do it one-handed. Was I the prodigy back then of of wanting to do it right? Of course I became the one-handed champion because I that was my, my lot in life.
Speaker 2:But that almost like takes it right, that takes it out of, like this story. It's like now I'm looking at this person doing some kind of a yes, skill, performance kind of thing and that's not. That's not what this is right not usually that's not kind of what I present in general. It's just in general. It's just not my thing no.
Speaker 1:But what I also love about this whole project here again, it's that it is multidimensional. It's got your own story and then you're taking the elements from that story, really lifting them out, analyzing them all. So you've got eight games or whatever, and then you are using them specifically to connect up to the different epochs of the thing, of the story, and the story will then have an emotional ending which is not tacked on because it's the actual end of that story and it actually is just whatever it is. It's the store closes or whatever, and it's like that was it. You actually put the lock on the end.
Speaker 2:So where do we go from here? Right, the store closes, but where do we go from here? Yeah, right Play obviously lives on. That's, that's the, that's the important thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you thought for a while that it didn't. And uh, here you are.
Speaker 2:Well, I yes, I I didn't allow myself to go. I would say I still knew play was there. I still had a lot of fun playing. I just did it in different ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I did it in different ways. Of course it does. Of course it does. I mean someone like yourself who's got these things. I think they are. They came in with the mother's milk and are part of the DNA now in how you relate to the world as well, of the dna now in in how you relate to the world as well.
Speaker 1:So I mean, yeah, it seems like in the time when I say there was a time when I didn't do magic, I pursued other types of performance, which is how I've ended up with this podcast who is so interdisciplinary, because I got into performing through doing magic and then I identified as a juggler for a long time until I went to circus school, saw these crazy machine jugglers and went I'm never going to be that good, but I'm pretty funny as well and then got into freak show and then whatever cabaret, contortion stuff that I just have sort of identified as many different things.
Speaker 1:But the thing which unites them all is standing in front of an audience, and my shows now are me doing the shtick of a showman who does that.
Speaker 1:I want to give the audience the feeling that whatever it is that I grab, so that each act is in a different variety, so that when I'm performing for adults, I'm doing some freak show stuff and I'm doing some magic and I'm doing something which is very funny and something which is surprisingly moving, also because they don't expect it. So I'm trying to have it like hit all kinds of things and, just like you, looking for the theme of the game everywhere, I want to kind of give them the feeling that whether I pick up and play the saw, or whether I am doing a magic trick, that it's that we could really grab anything, or I'm telling a story, or I'm literally making something fun out of questions that they ask and tying it together into a thing. So so, yeah, I love how your uh, your uh show has so many different aspects and I think it would be a powerful lecture for the magic community to think like this, because many people do not go further than to, even when they do their presentations in their life, like here's a trick.
Speaker 2:It goes like this here's another trick, that's like this, you know, interesting, like last year I was at I went to the magic, you know the magic live convention. It's that big magic convention every year in Vegas.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was there a couple of early, a couple of days earlier, for a different, a different kind of convention Well, very aligned convention and I got like wind early on that there was going to be the theme of play at the magic live convention. I was like, oh man, this is going to be the theme of play at the magic live convention. I was like, oh man, this is going to be interesting and I'm like I hope it doesn't do what I, what I'm doing, cause I was already like in the middle of developing this Right, and I'm like, oh, and I get, I get, I don't have it, oh, it's over there somewhere. But like the in the, in the writeup in the in the book, it's like you know, we're going to talk, we decided that the theme of this is going to be play, it's all going to be about play, and I'm like, oh man, oh, no, there's going to they't know the behind the scenes of how that worked.
Speaker 2:But nobody, not one person, gave a talk on play Right, all the books you've read and I've read a few of them Nobody mentioned one of them or any. Like nobody gave a talk on play. I was like I was, I kind of didn't understand the connection, other than I don't think it was ever mentioned. Maybe it was mentioned once in the introduction and I don't know. I I was, I was baffling, I was like, yeah, I couldn't understand like what, but but like I would love for them, like that or some other, you know whether it's me or somebody else, or you, you, you know, you, honestly, you should be, you should be going there and giving a speech. You should forward your name to stan allen and have him bring you up on stage and give it, give a, give a your presentation. You've done way more homework than I have.
Speaker 1:You would be the person to do it, you know no, but it's um, but it's also, it's um, I don't know if, uh, magic conventions often are the place where people come in and like in the way that it happens in an academic convention, where people are writing specific lectures for the convention and and like where you go, magic Live is unique.
Speaker 2:I don't know, have you been to one before? No, I haven't. No, the sessions they are like math, they're like TED Talks they have. They're not just magicians, they bring in all kinds of different creative folks and yeah, it's not just like, oh, here's the magic. I mean it's really varied. They in unique speakers, which I think is is it's. It's one of the greatest parts of that convention, I think, because they you just never know who you're going to, who's going to show up, and they're really have a good track record of getting some unique speakers.
Speaker 1:Awesome. What uh, what uh. What time of the year is that? On? It's in August and I actually might not go this I leave mid July and I get back end of August. Oh it's a win. And then I'm like I'm completely stuck because I am away so much. I'm going to Vegas twice for two months each and I'm going to Australia in a few weeks to be there for six weeks. So I mean, my family comes twice and like they, they book you.
Speaker 2:maybe you'd show up, maybe you'd go. I'd love to see you. I'd love to see you. I mean, I've been to a bunch of these. Your talk would fit If you did a talk on play, if you condense what you've been doing here to whatever. They give you 20 minutes. Oh my gosh, that would be amazing. That's what I was looking.
Speaker 2:That's what I expected the whatever. They give you 20 minutes. Oh my gosh, that'd be amazing. That's what I was looking. That's what I expected. I almost expected you to come out on stage and like give a talk but that didn't happen.
Speaker 1:No, no, this is uh, this is still a secret. We're not telling anyone about it. Yeah, I know I know no, no, it's great. Hey, uh, I think that's uh, I've sort of uh, gotten to the end of my list of questions and and what I have brought on, uh, what I've thought of while you were writing, is there anything? I mean it's like how was it to be on Penn and Teller?
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, that was unexpected. It wasn't like, like I told you from the beginning, what my goal was not was to do something like this, like to do a theatrical kind of thing that involved like all all the different things I've worked through in the past, like directing and music and you know, just staging and all these things and magic of course too, right? Um, so the idea of the Penn and Teller thing wasn't, wasn't a goal of mine, right, or like a GT or any of the. I haven't been on a GT but, um, that wasn't, those weren't, those weren't goals, they were. It was a really nice thing. It was. I mean, it was amazing, right, it was a great thing. I'm so it was so thankful and fortunate that that happened, because it I learned a lot. Um, so it was.
Speaker 2:I think it was during the pandemic. I first submitted something, cause we were all sitting around. I'm like, oh, you know, I'll submit and I think a it just, I just didn't do that. I've watched it a lot more now, cause I'm, cause I now I know the behind the scenes of it, how it works. But so I was like, hey, I'll, I'll try something. I submitted something. I didn't hear back and then I think what happened was maybe I submitted again. I think I submitted. That was, I think, yeah, during the yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 2:I submitted again after after the pandemic was over or mostly over, I, I think I got a video of me at the cause. The first one I submitted was like me at home, right During the thing. There was like no audience. So it's, it's not, you know, it's not that great the thing, you know. So I went and I think I filmed something at the castle and and then I submitted that and I didn't. And then, and then I heard back from him. I was picking up my kids from school and they're like hey, we saw what you have. The quick story is, I was at school picking up my kids, I get a phone call from an unknown number, my guy, who is you know? Hey, you know, we're the producers, we'd love to have you on, we like what you know. Hey, you know, we're the producers, we'd love to have you on, we'd like what you sent, but we've already got something that's kind of like that Do you have anything else?
Speaker 2:And of course I said, yes, when do you need it? And they said, uh, how about like a week? I'm like sure, of course, I'll get you a video in a week. So then then I created something. I was like this is cool, now I have freedom to do whatever, whatever I can think of, right?
Speaker 2:So I called up my, my friend, howard Hamburg, who's a really well-known magician in this town. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, he's a, yeah, he's one of the, he's a, you know, he's one of like the, the pillars of magic right now. And, uh, I called him up. He was the first person I called and I said, hey, howard, this thing happened like, will you brainstorm? He was more than generous to like brainstorm with me.
Speaker 2:We came up with a couple ideas and then I ended up putting this, this I wanted to tell a story, right, and that's that. I'm a storyteller. So I I was able to like take it and put some ideas together and I knew, I knew they wanted cards, because that's what I had submitted a card thing, and that's kind of the thing. If I was going to get on that show, like that would be the first thing I wanted to do anyways, like I probably should do a card thing to pay tribute to Renee LaVaughn and my dad and that kind of stuff. Like you know, just the, the, the card thing. So I was able to create this, this unique piece that was a story, and all these inside references that are not even disclosed in the show that I built into it, just Easter egg kind of things for myself and if it ever comes out in the future.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, so that was that, it was great. So they and they loved it, they liked it, they really liked it, they did. You know, like I said, a lot of friends that have been on the show, so I know how kind of how it works and they had very few edits for my script, which I was thankful for. All the, all the ones they they suggested were great because they really know that medium better than, like, they know the television medium and how people think and their audience better than anybody, because that's their job and and their notes were so helpful and like, making me think about, oh yeah, that's true, that's not quite clear enough, like you need to be really explicitly clear on these things, because people just be getting our own heads. As you know, performers, we don't know and but they will know, they or they won't, they won't know, they won't see that. So that was great.
Speaker 1:And behind the scenes was like they actually they actually have like writers, or so that is helping you.
Speaker 2:Or or just, well, this, or someone who just comments on on your tape yeah, they've got, they've got a, they've got a team of people, they've got the producers right, and those are the ones who are like kind of determining, I believe, like filter. Well, they probably have different people filtering through the acts and they get eventually gets to the producers and they they kind of have to decide is this something we can? This is something good for television, right? That's the thing. Is this gonna, is this gonna work? Is this gonna play? Is this person, is this persona? Probably, is this piece going to play? Is it going to make sense? And you have like five minutes or whatever their time constraints are you know, is it going to work? And then they have a consultant, michael, close, he's a, he's a magician, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, used to be johnny thompson, then he passed away and then michael, I think, was already working with the show.
Speaker 2:So michael's involved as well and he goes over more of the technicalities of it to you. But also, like for clarity purposes too, that the producers are there for the. The producers are there more, there for the scripting, yeah, for the scripting and the overall presentation. So they're, they're. There's a lot there's back and forth with them about that and I wouldn't say they, I for me, they didn. I wrote it and I changed, they tweaked a couple of little lines for clarity, but they didn't change the fundamental nature of the story for sure, and um and uh. But for other people I know that there's more. It's been more involved, like more involved depending on just massaging it, and that's just. That's just how. That's the nature of television, like, and not every. You know I've I've the benefit of. You know I got to go to school for, like, filmmaking and screenwriting and stuff, so I think I was able to bring that with and I gave him, like, a pretty tight script, you know yeah that's the way tight routine, tight script.
Speaker 1:If you have that and they usually don't need to then they are usually not out to screw you or whatever they're there right?
Speaker 2:no, no, this show does not do that at all. No, no, this show is that that? So this show fool us right there. In comparison with the other ones that like the talent type shows, like the competition type shows not the just the magic shows, but the competition ones this one is the, the best one for magicians that they are there to make you look, look your best, in your best light behind the scenes. Everything is geared towards not asking you to do ridiculous things or do anything. It's all about, like, getting you ready for the, for that, for that moment, and just putting you in the best possible light yeah, but also that that the judges, yeah, are actually absolute experts in their field.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So yeah, the two people who you are sort of engaging with are on your team. They're never out to make you look bad and they don't want to and this whole kind of game of like are you there?
Speaker 2:It is a game. I mean, it is actually a game Like in the contract. It's a game, it's like a game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ah yeah.
Speaker 2:Because, it is kind of a game and they are the game masters, right, and we're the players, and they are great at what they do.
Speaker 1:They sure are, and to have that, to have to say to somebody that you know he mentioned specific people and all that he didn't like. You know and Rene Levan and you're doing an oil and water and it's like this in your whole specific thing. But they know and so you're. That was like with Easter eggs. You're referencing also stuff that I had when I grew up. I had. I've got some VHSes sitting up on the shelf there that I still Are those Star Wars figures in the background.
Speaker 2:Something's up against the wall I'm trying to see what those are All Star Wars. Oh, those are posters.
Speaker 1:No, there are posters too, that star wars, all those figures are they?
Speaker 2:are star wars figures.
Speaker 1:Oh, there we go on all those that small spaces where I can't hang a poster and there's a one space on the back.
Speaker 2:I got my boba fett right here.
Speaker 1:He's right here, my star wars ah, sweet, yeah, and the black series as well. Yeah, I got bob effect as well here. This is the I. I have, uh, my old figures that I used when I was a kid. I have them standing in the in the stairway. Uh, they wanted out of the packet. But this is the I. I have loved star wars all my life but, um, when I, when the mandalorian came out, then I fell completely back in love. So this, this is the mandalorian figurine that's great.
Speaker 2:It did it for me too. I thought that was.
Speaker 1:I thought that one was hitting some of the marks yeah, the first and some of the other stuff wasn't quite hitting. Yeah, no, that's right, and andor as well yeah the series, andor, that's also I like I like that more than I expected to yeah, oh, but I really felt like it now and now this is like right at the top. I have watched it several times now.
Speaker 2:Wow really it's like a really great heist film, but so much more in depth.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and it feels a little bit like we're in a slightly different dimension of Star Wars as well, like we've moved out of the Skywalker saga.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a periphery kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the second season is coming out sooner now, so it's very exciting, I think, and that's going to take us right up to just before Rogue One, which was also out of all of the movies that came out, the rest of the Skywalker saga. So when we were kids, right?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, we dreamed of this day. We were, cause there were always these rumors Lucas was always talking about I don't know if you know that, but if I don't know if I conveyed over over the pond or over the seas, but Lucas was always talking about a live action thing and he never did it Right, cause he was around and he finally did it, but it never happened. And it finally happened and then it's like almost like a deluge, like too much content, like I. You know, it's so much so we'll see.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's, that's over. Now everything has been cancelled. It's like Skeletor crew finished a couple of last week or whatever. They're pulling back now and you need to figure out that universe.
Speaker 2:They need to figure out that universe. It's, it's an. It's a really difficult thing and I understand it's just really difficult to crack it, but but they got some.
Speaker 1:They got some smart people on that yeah, they do, they do, they do absolutely uh, but I think it just a uh turned the fire hose a little bit too much and didn't quite finish all the yeah thinking as deep as it could go. So now the last season of us, the last I heard, the last season of uh mand Mandalorian has been canceled and they're now making a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right. I have heard about the movie. I didn't know it had been a canceled series too. Wow, okay.
Speaker 1:And also there was supposed to be three seasons of Andor and that has changed the nature of the writing of season two.
Speaker 2:now I walk through the stores here and I look at the toy sections. I still do that, right, because I get it's just in my nature, right, I've done this forever. I go look at all the games and I look at all the toys, and I, because I look at it from we also live like near a school of design, like we're like I got to visit that one time with, actually, with my game inventor friend he, he was there for doing a documentary and I got to go down and it's I think it's called the Otis School of Design and it's literally training for, like people who make action figures and toys and stuff like that, right, so I got to see a little behind the scenes of that. So when I go look down the wall, down the aisles of, like Target or something or one of the stores, I look at all the toys, but I also see, like the designers that are behind it, right, and I'm thinking like what are the cool characters are making or what are the and what are the games that are coming out?
Speaker 2:And I noticed the star wars section keeps shrinking, yeah, like huh, but I think yeah, so you can see what's popular and what's not based on, based on what they're selling right, because a lot of these are just they're. You know they make a lot. It's a lot of the back end. Is that all the all the merchandise too? I was like ah, it kind of makes me sad you know man I was thinking about.
Speaker 2:Oh, because, because, like the to the, to the play aspect again, right, because like, oh, we didn't talk about this. So when I was a kid, I mean when my kids were younger I was, I was a kid, I was an adult and my kid, my two kids, are, I have a boy, a boy and a girl, 14 year old boy, 11 year old girl but when they were younger we played a lot of peppa pig. Like every morning, my kid, my son, my son would make me up at like like six in the morning. You'd be dad. We got to play Peppa Peppa, like OK.
Speaker 2:And so my son was like six and my daughter was three and like he wanted to be like the bad character, like every time he wanted to be like the bad guy and I had to do like 12 voices of all the Peppa characters, peppa Pig characters, right.
Speaker 2:So it was like I'm like it was really hard, I was exhausted, but like you know what, this is probably really good, like improvisational training, because I we have to make up a new story every single day, right. So when I see the Star Wars toys going away, it makes me sad. I'm like, oh man, I hope, I hope that's still there, I hope kids are not a Pope parents aren't just you know Like we're guilty of that with like tablets and the kids and stuff. But like I tried to be tried really hard to play with them with physical things and create stories and do have them like the free form, infinite game of storytelling. The games like had chapters or the stories had chapters, sort of. My son was like, oh, it's now, it's chapter nine, but they just never ended right, it was a never-ending adventure and that was. I'm hoping that that like I imprinted that on them so that they they do that and I'm sure it's in there. It's got to be in there somewhere oh yeah, yeah, play still affects us.
Speaker 1:The other day I came home from stockholm I've been there recording a bunch of episodes for the podcast and, uh, as I was on at the airport, I was calling my daughter and I said oh yeah, are you going to be home or maybe we'll have pizza and watch a movie or something to gather the family? And she was out and there'd been snow there's been snow here, lots of snow and they were out sledding down at this beautiful place and it was blue sky and the sun was going down over the horizon and it was so beautiful and she was panning around and she said yeah, it's so beautiful here now, so nice, the sun's going down, which just means it's like flipping four o'clock in the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, you're up there.
Speaker 1:So she said yeah, it's so nice that there was this. Um, there was this lady that was out just going for a walk and she came over to us and she said isn't it so beautiful? It makes me so happy that you kids are out here sledding and having a great time. And it sort of occurred to me that when you are walking around and there is so much uh to worry about in the world and there are wars and this is a tumultuous time that we're going through and as an adult you're aware of it and then you're walking down and the sun is going down behind and they're sledding on the hill by where there's a national monument there where the kids can yeah, they don't remove the snow, so it's really and you just go.
Speaker 1:It's so beautiful and I'm walking here as an adult. I don't know these kids, but I have to walk over and tell them how beautiful it is, because it's Somehow, when the kids are squealing and sliding and throwing snow, you sort of go. I don't know exactly why, but but it's going to be okay On this level, here, between these kids. Now there's all the good stuff that you need to make the world a better place. Yes, anyway, what a great conversation. Thank you so much for talking to me and I really hope that I get to play some of your games and see the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, I listen to play some of your games and see the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's been, like I said, I listen to your podcast. It's amazing to be able to speak with you and I hope to come see you in Vegas. I know you're coming back in a couple of months and I'm going to try to do everything I can to get out there and see you.
Speaker 1:That would be great, and if not, maybe I'm putting it out there on the ether now that I am hoping to uh get nick to take me to la again and oh yeah, if he brings you out here, please let me know.
Speaker 2:It'd be like great to see you yeah, it'll be awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming on. Ah, it always pleases me to no end when I meet people that have actually been inspired by the podcast. I mean, sometimes it's just just people that come up and have a conversation and say what it's meant to them, but in this case, to hear Chris tell me about how he has been inspired along the way, it thrills me. So maybe there is someone out there, someone that you really like or someone that you think needs some help in any aspect of their showmanship. Please point them towards the way. Maybe they will find in this podcast whether it is in the season one, where we look in depth at what showmanship is and can be, or whether it is when we look at what the play is and the relation that we all have to the world and to our audience.
Speaker 1:Of course, maybe there's something in each of these seasons or any of the many interviews, conversations that I've had with great performers. There might be something thought-provoking that might help them in the way that it helped Chris, and I hope that it is helping you as well. So keep the way that it helped Chris and I hope that it is helping you as well. So keep the way in mind. Tell one friend, maybe they will find something that's valuable for them. I really hope so, and until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.