“Being a magician is acting and stand-up is acting,” he says, “when the stand-up is on stage, they’re acting their persona.”
Hughes brings his funny, larger-than-life persona to his residency, “Bag of Tricks,” running from now until Feb. 16 at Liberty Magic.
1 comment:
Being nominated to be Magician of the year by the Magic Castle is a huge honor, so this guy must be pretty good. This guy’s story is impressive and I’m surprised about the order in which he did things. If I put my senile hat on, being funny and having another skill is a crutch. The people that are really good a standup comedy are able to manufacture the entire experience of the audience, having been given nothing but that mic stand, stool, bottle of water, and hopefully a pretty good audience. Being funny is all about the setup and being a live performer with something else just hands you that setup (for better or for worse.) That’s why I’m impressed that he was a standup comic first before he was a magician because that feels almost like he’s back tracking with respect to being a comedian. However, he sounds like the type of performer I would love to see. He had a quote about “playing a persona” just like in acting, and I think that’s definitely true to some extent. That being said, a lot of people’s persona’s are just themselves which is interesting. Some performers shield themselves through character like “Piff the Magic Dragon” or Teller from “Penn & Teller.” Many performers also just play themselves like Penn Gilette from “Penn & Teller”
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