Questions & Answers

Q&A with creators Serge Denoncourt, Criss Angel and Guy Laliberté

What were the biggest challenges posed by the show and also how hard was it to move from television to live stage work?

Criss: Transferring from television to live was very easy for me because that is where I come from. I’m a creature of live performances, more so than of television. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid and I actually did 600 performances on Broadway. I think, for me, the biggest challenge was that we wanted to present magic in a way that has never been presented on a stage before. I wanted to get rid of the boxes, get rid of the typical presentation associated with traditional tricks. I wanted to present a sophisticated version of cutting a human being in half without boxes, to give people a presentation that had the illusions woven in the fabric, so the biggest challenge was to figure out a way to do that, to involve other art forms—the costumes, the lighting, the special effects—to get all these things to seamlessly work together to pull that off. There was a long period of trial and error to figure out if it was even possible to do what had never been done before. So for us that was incredibly challenging and we are very happy to have gone through that process.

Guy: Cirque had never worked with magic, so learning the world of magic was one of our biggest challenges. Also, we had to learn to work with a star, which was new to us. We have a way of working with a collective, so this was an adaptation that was very interesting. The other challenge is to always push our boundaries, both artistically and technically, and one of my biggest concerns was the technical challenges of this production. It might not appear as challenging as “O” or KÀ, but it is. We also made sure that artist safety was respected.

Serge: We did not want to take the easy way and reproduce the Mindfreak formula. This show was all about doing something new and that was challenging. It was about finding a marriage that worked. And finally, it was Criss who came up with the solution.

Guy: For me it was a great surprise to discover that I was working more with an artist than a magician, and this for me was probably the biggest surprise. By challenging and not doing what had been done on TV and trying to explore a new field, it proved to me that Criss was more of an artist because he challenged himself to start this project with a blank page. He co-wrote the show with Serge, and this was a great surprise.

Did your past successes hinder your creativity?

Criss: Quite to the contrary. To try to do what hasn’t been done and to try to push your own envelope and be the best that you can be. . . Cirque has given me the opportunity to do that. This show is about expecting the unexpected; it’s about believing and for me it’s about showing people that there is much more to me than just the Mindfreak thing. People who know me know that I have many areas that I want to explore; I’m interested in being the best I can be as an artist.

Guy, have you learned THE secrets and Criss how did you become a magician?

Guy: The answer is shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Criss: I learned my first magic trick when I was 7. I started performing at the age of 11.

Guy: Actually yes, we have access to the sacred secrets of magic. I knew a little magic because as a performer I had looked into magic a little bit, so I knew some secrets before starting to work on this project. However, there are still things I don’t understand and I don’t want to know the secrets because I’d rather be amazed than figure out the trick. My pleasure with magic is still “not knowing.” I still want to be a child and I want to live that moment of being surprised in a very simple way.

Serge: I still do not know how he does one of the tricks on the show, even though I directed the show from A to Z. And I don’t want to know.

Were the illusions already done and the show built around it or vice versa?

Serge: There was a storyboard with the illusions written by Criss and we discussed that and exchanged on different ideas and we began talking about what we like, what our tastes were. His favourite movie is The Wizard of Oz. One of my favourite books is Alice in Wonderland, so we both like it when a character enters a different dimension. That was our common point and that became our basis for the show. He is the first one to walk on a soft wall in a live show. He might have done it on Mindfreak, but this is totally different, no editing is possible, it is live. It was a nightmare to put that on stage but we loved the idea of the challenge. Some illusions were not in the original script, but probably 85% were in Criss’ original script.

Criss: Yes, but most of the illusions that were in the original script were rewritten to fit in this new setting, so the base was there. I spent many years trying to figure out how to bring these things to life. So much of the research and development was done, and we wanted to take advantage of that. In the end, it was a combination of ideas.