As they perform for packed houses at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Barry and Stuart were nice enough to answer a few questions from us here at iTricks. We thank them for their time. Enjoy.
Our questions are bolded, their answers are in plain text.
- In your first series, ” Magick”, you played a bunch of recurring characters. Will we ever see any of them return?
B: Possibly, we certainly had lots of ideas for developing these characters further, but we haven’t really found another vehicle to bring them back just yet.
S: We certainly still play around with characters and disguises – as you may have recently seen when we pretended to be a Russian psychic and a paranormal scientist for an online trick for the BBC.
- Many of your routines play with the concepts of narrative, where does that come from?
B: I think that we were initially frustrated with the lack of motivation in most magic routines and plots. Why on earth would someone want to eat razorblades? Why would they swallow thread? How the hell did they discover this phenomenon? So we like to come up with stories and plots that make the props and the actions make sense.
S: We were fascinated with the idea of taking ego out of performing magic. We do not like the classic status of the magician as Man of Power, who can do all these wonderful things that you cannot. We took that and turned it on its head, so that the magic was not a power for our characters, but was rather a curse.
B: We often achieve that by having narrative twists so that the performer doesn’t always come out on top every time. Like our character of the homeless magician, who did magic that no-one could see, or Diego the hustler who was a great swindler but always ended up losing more than he gained.
S: A particular favourite was Suicide Boy, who desperately wanted to die, but his magical powers caused him to fail in his suicide attempts. For example, when he tried to hang himself, his neck unfortunately just magically penetrated the rope. A scene that was deemed so dark that it was censored by the channel from the final cut.
- What are your biggest influences outside of magic?
S: Films, mainly horror films and in particular a lot of foreign horror films. We like short stories also, classic tales and the cautionary children’s tales from the Victorian era. We also like unusual music and instruments that either don’t look like instruments or make weird sounds. We just can’t help but incorporate these sorts of things into our routines.
B: Our show this year makes use of both a Theremin and a Stylophone as well as some of the weirdest and funniest music we’ve found on old vinyl records over the past few years.
Hear what the boys say about the realm of “good taste,” if they ever hope to crack the American market and how important dark comedy is to their act AFTER THE JUMP
- You’ve often pushed the lines of “good taste” with fantastic results. What are the dangers of performing something that could be found offensive? Is there even more pressure for the routine to be solid when you know it will be scrutinized extra hard for content?
S: I suppose so. The real pressure comes from knowing what you are trying to achieve with your material. We don’t care much for doing items that do nothing more than just offend people, as a goal that is fairly vacuous.
B: The very first performance of ours to be aired on TV was a trick in which we magically produced an apparently starving African child on the streets of London, whilst disguised as charity workers. This was in the same show that contained full frontal nudity, suicide and quite a lot of blood. Weirdly the “African Child” was the only item that got an official complaint, but this was due to the fact that some people believed that the child we produced wasn’t well looked after! Sounded crazy to us. They probably just felt guilty that they don’t donate.
- Is performing in the US, either live or on TV, a goal?
B: We certainly would love to perform live in the US. We get lots of emails from people all over the world requesting us to come and perform in their countries.
S: We’ve never targeted the States directly, none of our shows have been broadcast over there yet. We certainly have a good bank of material to fall back on should the invitation arise, and I think we would enjoy the audiences. The UK seems to be a lot more critical and harsher than most other countries, which is actually a good, challenging breeding ground for creative minds.
- For my money, few perform dark comedy better in this industry than the two of you, do you have any advice for magicians who would like to go down a similar route?
S: We think that humour is very important when you are performing material that could be considered ‘dark’. Audiences come and see shows to be entertained and like a good horror film you need to have light and shade in order to make the experience richer.
B: There is nothing worse for us than a performer who takes themselves too seriously, telling long, far-fetched stories while claiming they are performing a bizarre ritual with an obviously fake, plastic skull which they say is the shrunken head of a medieval warlock. Especially when it is being performed by a teenager who clearly hasn’t travelled more than 50 miles from where they were born. There’s a natural humour there that is sometimes better embraced.
S: Humour can break down barriers, make an audience feel relaxed and entertained, it can be used to push your performance into avenues that you may not have been able to otherwise. Just keep pushing it ’til someone pukes while laughing, then you know you’ve got something special.