Carnegie Magic -Full Magic Special - At The National Theatre

 

Excited to announce my first magic special on Youtube! It's a full show that I did a number of years ago at the famed National Theatre in Washington DC. I was in the Helen Hayes Gallery as part of an ongoing program called "Monday At The National". I did a 50 minute show on stage in front of a crowd of around 100 people. I know we sold out. Whether or not that was due to me, or just because Monday At The National has a built in audience is something I can't answer. I know I had about ten really well known magicians in the audience. Everyone else were lay people.

The day of the show, The Washington Post had a piece to promote the show that included this quote, "Take Howie Mandel's Boyish Bald Charm, mix it with David Copperfield's magical charisma, and POOF! You get Carnegie: Artist of Mystery!"

One thing I will say about the Helen Hayes Gallery Stage, there is a stage and there is a platform in front of the stage. I chose to do the entire show on the platform in front of the curtain. It had better visibility and  worked fairly well overall. I think the only routine that I had a tiny bit of trouble with was the Hula Hoops because of the tiny platform. Other than that, it was all good. 

The funniest part of the show for me now is watching those older routines. Some of them have changed drastically over time, a lot are no longer done. The opening routine, The Lesson in Magic, has more comedy, and is tighter, and a bit faster in it today. It's also not used as an opening anymore. I generally open with the Hula Hoops for stage shows, why I changed for this, I don't know. The Sack Escape, today, has a new sack. I wasn't thrilled with the purple sack to be honest. It just looked odd to me. And Im the one who had it made, lol. The Steel Straitjacket which was built by Mark Cannon and the Plexiglass Escape Box which was built by Richard Sherry, made for an interesting ending. But that may have been one of the last times I used either of them. Both men were excellent builders of escape props. 

Please watch the video and enjoy. I will be posting another full length show soon. The next time will be from the Underground Magic Theatre which was a theatre in Sterling VA that I shared with two of my performing buddies. We had a 50 seat venue and did the wildest stuff there, a full illusion show 2 feet from the first row! That will be on the NEXT video, once I finish the edits.

Carnegie The Magic Detective LIVE IN PERSON in 2024

In 2024, Dean Carnegie spoke at two different magic history conferences and gave two totally different lectures! First, in February of 2024, Carnegie was at the Florida Magic Collector's Conference. I had the great honor of presenting my lecture on The Great Maro, who was a very popular magician from the early part of the 20th Century. This was my third time presenting this lecture. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to present the lecture at the W.T. Best Theater, which was a building created in the honor of Maro's wife. His real name was Walter Truman Best, but he changed his stage name to Edward Maro.

Later in November 2024, Carnegie spoke at the New England Magic Collectors Association, their event is called The Yankee Gathering. This time I got to speak on one of my favorite magicians, a 19th Century magician Robert Heller. This man was a very popular magician but he was an equally famous musician. His real name was William Henry Palmer and he began life as a musical prodigy. His story is amazing, filled with plenty of drama, as well as exciting popular moments. I am gathering information on Heller to eventually write a book on him. 

Other than that, the Magic Detective appeared regularly on his podcast The Magic Detective Podcast. It was an exciting year for that side of Dean Carnegie's career. NO doubt 2025 will hold more exciting moments to come!

On Stage Lecturing on Robert Heller at 2024 Yankee Gathering

ASTONIFY at The Secret Parlor Theatre Completed

I have finished my run of shows at The Secret Parlor Theatre in Chantilly. The Secret Parlor Theatre is now gone, vanished into the night. That was the plan all along. It was an experiment  and was not planned to run more than the month.  Will the SPT ever appear again? I'd say the chances are quite good, but in a different location(s).

My final performance at the theatre was great fun. I got to share more of the light seance routine, but as with other nights, I did not do the full seance. We had a small audience and I held some things back. Also, on this night, we had ZERO actual spirit interference. What does that mean? The building we were in is haunted. Every night we were there, something unusual would happen. People heard footsteps, people felt a presence, things would not work, it was crazy. But on the final night, not a peep out of our ghost. Now, that isn't to say there weren't manifestations during the seance, because there were. But as I mentioned in the show, this was an example of Spiritualism without the aid of Spirits! By the way, that line comes from a handbill belonging to Professor Harry Cooke, which I now have in my collection, and which is part of The Astonify Show. (see below the article)

The straight magic from the show included: Hofzinser's Everywhere & Nowhere, A Surprising Rope Mystery, and a Classic Ring in Nest of Boxes. There were other pieces, but those were the main ones. The seance part of my program begins with my Spirit Photo routine, which is so much fun to do. The Spirit Dial, which is shown at the top of the page is presented during the seance portion, and it concludes with the Spirit Horn. Missing from the seance was the new slate routine, and one other routine that I'm forgetting at the moment. Because this was the smaller seance, it does not include the Spirit Cabinet.

The Astonify Show is a work in progress. I wanted it to be a smaller venue show, but it seems that it will be growing in size very quickly. I plan to  add a couple true Victorian routines to the show, and then some adaptations of modern routines. Kind of like when I steampunked some props in my other show. I'll Victorianize props, lol. to make them work in this show.  Then of course, there is another option and that is recreating actual forgotten Victorian era magic. And I have two routines in mind, the bad part, no one knows how they're done today (thus the forgotten part). One routine, The Devils Cage, is a routine I've had my heart set on for a long time. I sense it's in my very near future.

I continue to write routines for the show, so expect amazing things to debut in next years version of the show!

Magician Doing Magic In Jail!

The Astonify Show will be one of the features of an upcoming Sleepover At The Old Jail, in Warrenton VA, on August 11th. This event is a fundraiser for the Jail, and my portion, The Astonify Show is only part of the overall festivities. There is also a paranormal tour, and of course the actual sleepover at the jail!

My show, ASTONIFY, is a perfect fit to get things started off. If you're at all familiar with the show, we end with a light seance. Given the fact that this jail is already known to have paranormal activity, this should be really interesting!

I am told that they expect this event to sell out, and I'm not even sure how many tickets are left. But I wanted to mention it here on my blog! Here is the information on tickets https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-night-at-the-old-jail-a-sleepover-for-adults-tickets-46850348654

I hope to see you there!!!

The Astonify Show is Moving Full Steam Ahead!

Here is another update on my new show called ASTONIFY. Today, the rack cards arrived. These are the first pieces of printed marketing to help promote the show. I was very happy with the way these turned out.

If you go over to the website Astonify.com, you'll notice a number of changes. I have resisted adding more pages to the site, but I do have a menu that takes you to the various sections on the first page. There is no video, yet. But keep watching.