Tag: Chicago

Latest Magic News

Sideshow Gelato Brings Magic and Gelato Together

Image of Sideshow Gelato PosterThere are those who ask, “why isn’t there a gelato themed magic event?”

We don’t know these people but assume they exist otherwise how could one (maybe you or me) explain the upcoming Sideshow Gelato Spectacular?  We love gelato and we love magic so we are sure we will love the Sideshow Gelato Spectacular — that’s simple math.

Matt Donnelly from Penn & Teller’s Fool Us and Penn’s Sunday School will be performing along with Professor Pinkerton’s Dead Man’s Carnival.  The latter promising “Astonishing Feats! Incredible People!”

The event will be at [blnk]Haus Gallery on Armitage Avenue in Chicago, adjacent to where North Kedzie Avenue and Armitage intersect – down the street from Walgreens.

The event will be in two parts: First, a come and go General Admission that runs from 1pm to 6pm. Each ticket will include gelato tastings, sideshow, juggling and magic; Second, a peak into The Museum of the Transmundane, a dime museum of strange and unusual objects giving the history of the sideshow.

General admission tickets are $12 for adults and $8 for kids 12 and under.

The event is to introduce those who love (or have yet to taste the loveable) gelato.  Sideshow Gelato, a gelato shop with sideshow theme is set to open in May of 2022.

From the event’s press release, “the shop will offer authentically made gelato in a carnival sideshow setting. The flavors range from the strange and unusual named after famous performers (ie. Koo Koo the Birdgirl – a Nutella gelato with pretzels and marshmallow Peeps) to standard flavors for the less adventurous (Chump Chocolate, Rube Vanilla).”

The store will include a dime museum featuring “oddities and gaffs as well as a history of the sideshow” and all proceeds from the museum will go to, entirely, to a different charity each month.

The shop has the backing of Penn Jillette, so you know it will be fun and very interesting.

Check out the event’s website for videos and more information here.

Inside Magic Favorite Arthur Trace
Latest Magic News

Magician Arthur Trace Comes to Venice California

Inside Magic Favorite Arthur TraceArthur Trace is an Inside Magic Favorite Magician from our hometown of Chicago.  That should be enough for this article: a complete endorsement of Mr. Trace and description of his background as well as his particular talent.  But we feel something stirring deep in our soul to share more about him and his upcoming one-man show in Venice, California.

Mr. Trace, as our social media team wrote last night on Twitter (@insidemagic), is to “magic what magic is to life.”  It is so true.  His magic transcends tricks or even sophisticated manipulation – both of which are contained in his act.  To watch Mr. Trace perform is similar to watching a tightrope walker.  As a magician, we worry about other magicians when they perform magic requiring incredible skills – we don’t want them to fail or fall.  We have seen Mr. Trace walk that taut wire many times and he has never fallen to the magic equivalent of a horrible true finale.  He does not even come close.  His skill set is so highly developed that there is no risk of failure; only entertainment and complete entertainment at that.

He is a delightful person and deserving of the fame he has received and continues to receive.  It says quite a lot about someone who is beloved by the public viewers of an act as well as his fellow performers with whom he spends times between shows.

If you are in Southern California or can get here by September 15th, do make reservations to see a true Magic Genius at the cozy Electric Lodge Theater.

Mr. Trace’s advertisement provides some clues as to what you will experience:

What would you do if you could stop time?  Arthur will show you what he would do, and the outcome is funny and surprising.

An “invisible bee” that’s brought to life

Arthur will transform a piece of rope into a magical violin.

A long-distance call via a tin-can phone – the result is unexpected.

An interactive painting that is transformed through sleight of hand.

Mr. Trace is only the eighth magician in the history of magic to be awarded The International Brotherhood of Magicians Gold Medal and has appeared on Masters of Illusion and Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

Tickets are limited and priced well below what we would pay to see this 70-minute show – and we are notoriously cheap.  General Admission is $40.00 and tickets to the Front Row are $55.00.

Please read all the details about the show and Mr. Trace here: https://arthurtrace.com/the-artful-deceiver.

Latest Magic News

Teller Takes on The Tempest in the Toddlin Town

Teller and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater have a hit on their hands with The Tempest.   Labeled  “Shakespeare’s most magical play,” the Windy City critics have fallen hard for Teller’s take on the play.

Chicago television station WTTW interviewed Teller and the creative folks with whom he has worked to stage The Tempest at the Navy Pier.  The production is set in a traveling tent-show during the Dust Bowl and the unique stage allows the audience to be on three sides while the illusions are performed.

Teller is not adding tricks to a show but bringing the classic story to life through magic.

He explained, “One of the challenges of Shakespeare for a contemporary audience is to make clear all of these ideas that are sometimes realized only in the language, and since the language is hundreds of years old it helps to assist that language with strong visual things. For this show, which is about magic, supporting that with magic that is visual really helps to clarify what’s going on.”

Through the integrated illusions, Teller allows the audience to see the effects the exiled Duke of Milan character performs to befuddle and battle his foes.

Magic, says Teller, gets its edge because “it’s not a comfortable form to watch. You don’t just sit back and let magic wash over you because it’s seriously contradicting all your experience, so what you see is coming into collision with what you know and there’s a sort of explosion that’s very exciting, but it also jars you out of your seat. You don’t watch a magic event like this [strikes a relaxed pose] you watch it on the edge because you’re watching both as a complicit participant and as somebody who’s trying to catch it out, and the excitement of that tension gives it a whole different way to watch a show.”

We pride ourselves on being very uncomfortable to watch – even when not performing magic.  Just eating spaghetti can be unnerving to witness.

Our beloved Cubs are in the playoffs for the first time since 2008 and Teller’s The Tempest is at the Navy Pier – magic is in the air.

Check out the full article on Teller and The Tempest here.