by Hazel Flynn
Every element of the new show needed to be bigger and better, and that included costumes. I found an artist who worked in leather making sculpted masks and commissioned custom-fitted masks — despite my ease in front of an audience I didn’t even consider taking the stage unmasked at this point — and a fitted chest-plate. I wanted a bespoke suit to complete the act. Through the good old Yellow Pages I found a master tailor called Adriano Carbone. I went to his rooms in the gorgeous Block Arcade in the heart of Melbourne. It would have been easy for him to brush me off based on first appearances. I was twenty-five, my long hair was now black with blond touches and I had eyebrow and lip piercings: it was obvious I wasn’t one of the upper-end business executives who were the usual market for hand-crafted suits that cost thousands of dollars.
Instead, he showed a real interest in me and what I was trying to do. I wanted to start the show in a Willy Wonka-inspired top hat and tails, the suit jacket being black with bright yellow lining. I would wear it over a collar-and-tie and, in place of a shirt, my yellow chest-plate. But it was the outfit I planned to change into that I’d come to talk to Adriano about. I pictured a very cool white pinstriped suit with black trim, featuring a cutaway design on the jacket, and a black waistcoat. I planned to wear it with a red bandanna and spotless white Chucks. It had to be easy to move around in but also robust enough to stand up to nightly wear. Even though he’d never made a costume before, Adriano totally got it. He took my measurements and we made a date for me to come back for a fitting.
It was the beginning of a good friendship. As I’d done with Mr Smith, I had lucked into finding someone who was expert at their craft and who recognised something in me. The suit was perfection but when it came time to pay up, Adriano wouldn’t take my money. Instead he asked me to give him a signed poster, which he still has on display. He delights in telling people about our meeting, saying, ‘Even though he was just a kid he was very ambitious. I don’t know, there was just something about him. I knew he was going to go on to do something really interesting.’ He also credits me for kick-starting his interest in theatrical costuming: his beautiful craftsmanship is now much sought-after and he has done clothes for musicals including Wicked, Miss Saigon, West Side Story and Singin’ in the Rain.
Shev Wanigatunga
I found another great collaborator around this time in Shev Wanigatunga. He’d been at school in the year below me and we stopped for a chat when I ran into him one day. He was supplementing his income waiting tables but his real passion was graphic design. He’d already done some great work and I asked him to come and talk about the image I wanted to project for Threshold. He got it immediately and we created a poster and brochures that really captured the tone. We’ve worked together ever since — remember, when you find good people, keep them in your life.
For the first time we included behind-the-scenes footage in a show. It was part of building a strong personal connection with the audience, but we thought it would also help them to understand what went into what they were seeing, especially the stunts. We filmed some of the fitness training I did and also divemaster Martin Owen talking about the dangers of underwater escapes, then cut it down into a tight package. Somehow, in the middle of this intense preparation, Adam and I were still going out and doing school shows. Not full-time, just enough to ensure we had some money coming in. I still gave the shows my all, but I couldn’t wait to get back to the factory and keep working on the tour.
Finally, after six months of intensive preparation and creativity we were ready to hit the road with an 8.5-tonne truck, a 3.5-tonne trailer towed by the Jeep, and a crew of five in addition to Adam and me: Ben, Jim, Tim, Ash and Troy. Tim did lighting, I was out front and the other guys did everything else, including appearing onstage. We all did the two and a half hour set-up and pack-up.
We opened in Sale, Victoria, in June 2008. It was an ambitious show delivering a powerful bang for the audience’s buck, and they really responded to it. It’s the nature of live performance that no two shows are exactly alike (thank goodness, otherwise my pants would have split embarrassingly right at the crotch mid-routine every night and not just once!) and no two audiences are exactly alike. But the range of responses we were getting went from ‘liked it a lot’ to ‘absolutely loved it’. We were a hit with the people who matter most: those who pay for their tickets.
We were starting to get a bit more attention in the media as we travelled around because, for the first time, we’d hired a publicity firm. We’d discovered on Evolution that it was foolish to sit back and hope the venues themselves would drum up publicity for us when we were just one show out of many they’d be hosting that month. So we printed our own posters and flyers, made a TV ad, and brought in a professional to make sure we got coverage in each location in the lead-up to the performance. With such good word on the show they were able to get us some good exposure, including things like the Herald Sun and The Age newspapers, various high-circulation kids’ magazines, Tiger Airways’ in-flight magazine and then Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s national morning TV show.
This appearance felt like a huge deal to me, and my parents and aunts and uncles were equally excited. In retrospect, knowing what I do now, the piece I chose was too good for the occasion. What I mean by that is I chose to do Water Trap, the finale piece from my show. I could have impressed with something less special and not risked having people who came to the show feel like they’d already seen it. But, on the other hand, Kerri-Anne was genuinely impressed by it. I was, in turn, fascinated by her professionalism. It’s easy to imagine a host not really giving daytime TV their all, but watching her as I waited to go on I saw she was the ultimate pro, committed to doing a great job for her viewers.
Kerri-Anne liked what I’d done so much that she asked me back soon after to do Crazy Cell, which left her gobsmacked. (I ran into her in 2013 and she said, ‘You were already amazing in 2008. I don’t know why it took so long for you to make it big.’) Crazy Cell never failed to blow people away — Kerri-Anne’s producers asked the same question the builder had: how does the illusion work? Like him, they shook their heads in amazement when I told them it was real. A rave review of the stage version posted on a fellow magician’s blog said, ‘The magicians in the audience were waiting for a cover to go up, or for the Perspex to become opaque, but no such thing. Cos did the escape in full view and the audience were on the edge of their seats.’
We are not kidding when we say, ‘Don’t try this at home.’
The publicity piqued interest and fuelled ticket sales. The performance at the Darwin Entertainment Centre at the beginning of September was a sellout. That was another very big, very meaningful moment for me — the venue held just over 1000 people and was the biggest we had filled to date. I felt like we were riding an unstoppable wave of success.
At various points on the tour people who meant a lot to me got to see me perform. Chief among them was my beloved Nonna Pina. It was intensely moving for me to have her there and she was so happy and proud to sit in an audience of several hundred people, all of whom had come specially to see me and who were enjoying the show (almost) as much as she was. It was the only time we had such an experience because she died less than eighteen months later. I miss her to this day but I’m so grateful she got to see the beginnings of my success.
Life offstage was great too. The seven of us on the tour travelled really well together. We worked hard and played hard . . . literally. One of our favourite pastimes when we were staying in motels in tiny towns was to play Forty Forty (I’ve also heard it called Forty-four Homes). This is the game where you nominate a spot as home — a pole or a fire hydrant or whatever — and whoever is ‘in’ has to remain there, counting to 100 while the other players scatter and hide. Whoever is in has to catch the others while they try to reach the safety of home. It’s the kind of thing seven-year-olds play but let me tell you, it’s also a brilliant way for a group of grown men in their twenties to let off steam. It got more and more elaborate
as the tour went on, to the point where we were scrambling over motel roofs and under parked cars. Camouflage paint would be applied. We would often start at dusk and play into the night. We prided ourselves on our ninja skills.
We also had huge water-balloon fights and played slow-burn practical jokes on one another and no-one took offence because we were all the patsy at some point. It was fantastic fun. In fact, the whole tour was a memorable, special experience. We drove across the Nullarbor and had some off the wall conversations with truckies over the CB. We avoided being wiped out by a road train by a hair’s breadth. We stopped for the night in the middle of nowhere at a scary, rough-as-guts pub that turned into a brilliant gay truckers’ disco after dark.
When it was time to work we were focused and serious. Adam and I set a standard that the rest of the crew followed: when we turned up at a venue we wore tour t-shirts and we were neat and clean-shaven. Part of our rehearsal routine back in Melbourne included getting the loading and unloading down to a fine art. Everybody had specific tasks that ran in a specific order. Every case was numbered and we had so much equipment we packed the truck in three layers. Dad had prepared a plan of the pack, with overlaying acetate sheets, one for each layer: I sometimes felt like I was inside a game of Tetris, in the best possible way. It was extremely satisfying to be so efficient and professional.
Not everyone responded well to our approach, especially some of the older techs we encountered. We were polite and respectful and the way we did things made their job easier but despite this some of them were openly hostile to us. It was the first time I’d encountered that but it wouldn’t be the last. It was aggravating but I learned that if you’re not in a position to do anything about it, the best approach is simply to maintain your own standards and work around those kinds of human obstacles.
The tour wrapped up in November at the West Gippsland Arts Centre. It had been a huge success. We’d honed our skills, increased awareness and continued to build the fan base — we now had 6000 people on the newsletter mailing list. We’d had a great six months on the road, now it was time to regroup and take some time for family: Adam had got married and he and his wife were expecting their first child, Rosie, any day, and Jilda and John were expecting their second (Savannah was born the following June).
There were a couple of flies in the ointment. Relations with the shopping centre agency had become increasingly strained and eventually it reached the point where the set-up and facilities required weren’t being provided and it became completely unworkable. Unfortunately, there wasn’t another similar agency to go to, so that lucrative outlet simply dried up. A much, much bigger irritation was that despite everything we’d done — a Helpmann nomination; two major tours, the second of which covered forty-four venues right around the country; national TV and press coverage — we still could not get a manager or theatrical agent. Why couldn’t all these so-called entertainment experts see what was right in front of their noses? In hindsight I realise the problem was that I didn’t fit the mould. They still thought of magicians as hokey suburban entertainment. Sure, they’d heard of David Copperfield but they couldn’t ever imagine someone in Australia being popular like that. For me, looking around and realising there was no-one else doing what I was doing was a good thing — it meant I was unique. But to those agents and managers who turned down our approaches, unique didn’t represent opportunity, it just screamed risk. They were good at assembly line entertainers but they had no clue how to deal with difference. I spent endless hours wondering what the hell it would take to open their minds.
Robert Piccoli
MY INSPIRATIONS
PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY
I don’t know how well this 1999 TV movie would stand up now, but one aspect of it made a big impact on me when I first saw it and has stuck with me ever since. The movie is about the early days of Apple and Microsoft, and the fierce rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Apparently the movie gets the personalities just right but sometimes it compresses or changes events around for dramatic effect.
The scene that fired me up is said to be among those that’s not so historically accurate but that’s okay, it’s the emotional truth of it that hit me. In it, Jobs is meeting Gates and his team and showing them the Macintosh he and his crew are developing. He introduces them to a couple of his developers and talks about how loyal they all are, saying, ‘The Macintosh team is like a family. Everybody else is on the outside.’ They pass a desk with a small pirate flag on display. Gates asks about it and learns that Jobs’s motto is ‘It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy’. It’s obvious how hard Jobs pushes everyone but it’s also obvious that they are more than willing to give their all for the team. I watched the movie along with Jim and the other guys in my crew while we were on tour. Afterwards, I said how much I loved that scene. Not long after, Jim presented me with a gift: a pirate flag of skull and crossbones. It symbolised so much to me. We were a crew, absolutely loyal to each other, and we had to come in to each new territory and conquer it, make our mark, and do it together. Backstage at every show since then, as well as hanging up the MJ flag (see Chapter10) we’ve hung that pirate flag. I also wear a skull and crossbones necklace that keeps the message of loyalty and teamwork close to my heart.
Shutterstock / Richard Jary
To some people what I’d achieved so far would have been satisfying enough. But I’VE ALWAYS BEEN HUNGRY FOR MORE. NOT BIGGER FOR THE SAKE OF IT BUT BETTER BECAUSE I FEEL DUTY-BOUND TO MAKE THE ABSOLUTE MOST OF WHATEVER TALENT I’VE BEEN GIVEN AND TO HELP GIVE MAGIC ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE.
But even when you’re ambitious, maybe especially when you’re ambitious, it’s important to enjoy your achievements along the way, and we were riding high on what we’d managed to do. Despite having no manager, no agent and no tour promoter, we’d sold 22,000 tickets for the Threshold tour over forty-four venues. Evolution had been a foot in the door but Threshold showed I could really deliver the goods.
It also suggested a new route for trying to break into America — perhaps rather than the Vegas magic scene we should try the US theatre market. We put together an impressive information package including a CD-ROM and sent it off to dozens of American agents. And at the beginning of 2009, Mum and Adam followed that up by heading to New York in the hope of getting the act signed. We did get a positive response from one agent, with an offer of six gigs on the college entertainment circuit, but financially and logistically it wasn’t worth doing for so few shows.
Instead, I returned to performing in schools. I went from selling out 1000-seaters with a crew of seven, my name literally in lights and the freedom to put on a glorious big show full of wow moments, to me and Adam getting changed behind our homemade curtain in a draughty sports hall. It was so damned disheartening. I tried to tell myself it was a test of character and I just needed to keep going but it was hard work to stay positive, even though I still had at my core an unshakeable belief that it was just a matter of time before the world caught up to what I had to offer.
I reminded myself that anyone who achieved anything great had persevered through setbacks far worse than this little stumble. And I thought about the implicit promise made to every audience at every show — that they would be entertained. Today’s school show might be the thousandth time I’d performed essentially the same act but it was the first time these kids had seen it and I owed it to them to do the best job I possibly could. We performers are incredibly lucky: every bit of energy we give out to an audience comes back in spades. Shaking off a sense of disappointment about being back in schools and giving it my all meant that I got a huge lift out of every show, and that played a big part in helping me stay away from negative thoughts.
State Library of Victoria Bk.14/No.267
Houdini was very much on my mind: 17 February 2010, the one hundredth anniversary of his Queens Bridge escape stunt, was only a year away. I began daydreaming about how I might commemorate it. Houdini’s unique place in the history of magic and
in my own history, combined with the fact that this memorable event had happened in my very own city, made me feel that if I let the opportunity pass I would always regret it.
I’d already read quite a bit about the original event but now I sought out everything I could find. By the time he arrived in Australia, a shackled Houdini had jumped off various bridges in the US. During a performance at Melbourne’s New Opera House he told his audience he was keen to do the same thing from a bridge over the Yarra if the authorities would allow it. They did and on Wednesday, 16 February the newspapers ran a notice saying Houdini would do a ‘daring dive’ from the Queens Bridge the following day at 1.30 p.m.
Melbourne was in the grip of a heatwave, but despite the temperature hitting almost 37°C by lunchtime on the 17th, 20,000 people turned out to watch, lining the riverbanks for 550 metres on both sides. A reporter described how Houdini’s assistants looped a chain around his neck, fastening it with a padlock just under his chin then running it over his arms to his back. Handcuffs were fitted with his hands behind his back and the chain was used to secure them using another padlock. It was announced that the chains and locks weighed twenty-five pounds (eleven kilograms).
Houdini then leapt onto the parapet grinning ‘as if the proceedings were a huge joke’ and plunged six metres into the river. Despite having his arms behind him, he reportedly managed to execute ‘a beautiful header, cutting the water clean and with the least possible splash’. It was low tide at one of the shallowest parts of the river, only about three and a quarter metres to the muddy bottom.