Theater Around The Bay: Thirteen Questions With Christian Cagigal

In keeping with our Thirteen Questions series for folks putting theater out there this October, guest blogger Nirmala Nataraj brings us this exciting interview with actor/magician Christian Cagigal.

Christian Cagigal is something of a living legend. A Bay Area favorite among magic lovers and haters alike, Christian’s been lauded with accolades galore and plenty of literary-sounding descriptions of his shows, which toe the line between creepy tableaux straight of Poe and mentalist trickery peddled by wandering street performers. It seems almost silly to refer to him as your typical boilerplate magician. A Cagigal show tends to be centered around a recurring motif or narrative and it’s usually audience-participatory (without being cheesy or annoying)—but it’s also inscrutable in the way that only someone who is accustomed to breaking the conventions he’s utilizing can manage.

Christian was kind enough to chat with me about Halloween, the mythos of the magician, the challenge of balancing the various roles required of being a self-producing artist, and the covert psychic powers that drew me into becoming his friend in the first place.

Enchanted.

NN: What’s your dream Halloween costume?

CC: Running around with friends dressed as Ghostbusters, one friend with a boom box on their shoulder blasting the theme song while I run around with a glowing, smoking trap as we push through busy foot traffic warning people that we have a, “Class 5 Free Roaming Vapor! Class 5 Free Roaming Vapor! Out the way please, we have a Class 5 Free Roaming Vapor!”

NN: What scares you, and does that make it into your shows?

CC: Polka dots. Hell no, they’re scary!

NN: What is it about magicians that freaks people out so much?

CC: Long hair and sequins, or nerds with power. After that it’s the idea that someone has a mysterious power or they can create the illusion of a mysterious power. Either way, there is a mystery we don’t have the secret answer to. We hate not having answers. And we hate nerds in sequins who pretend to have mysterious powers.

NN: Do you ever exploit that to your advantage?

CC: Well I do have a secret sequined shirt collection…

But yes, I’m aware that “mystery” can be off-putting, so I use that to my advantage in my persona and show structure. For example, I love having sets that feel like old living rooms or attic with things that feel familiar, like old furniture, pictures, etc. Then I sprinkle that with weird things like old dolls, animal part (my shows are not vegan…), nothing too overtly weird. Just weird enough. This makes one’s mind ask questions: “Why is that doll placed there? Why does he have a dead frog playing the upright bass? Where they hell did he get these things?” Their minds are finding or creating mysteries out of old junk. Mysteries with no real answers. So even before the show starts, audiences feel both comfortable and off balance.

NN: The aspect of mentalism in your shows tends to be pretty strong. When I saw The Pandora Experiment back in 2006, I was convinced that you were psychic.

CC: I’ve always had mixed feelings about those reactions. During the one or two hours of my shows, I like people to believe that magic exists, in all forms. And I want that feeling to be carried out of the theatre and remain long after the show is over. And yet, I don’t have psychic powers and I don’t want people to believe that I have psychic powers.

NN: What am I thinking right now?

CC: Yellow.

NN: Tell us about your show Obscura, described as “an intimate evening of close-up magic, fairy tales, dark fables, and strange happenings.”

CC: Obscura is different from my other shows in that it’s almost exclusively close-up card magic and it doesn’t have as much audience participation as my other shows. Essentially, it’s a storytelling show with card magic. It’s also much lighter than my other shows. That having been said, I tell stories about death, war, and the Devil. So, ya know…it’s a family show.

NN: You are a man who wears many hats: magician, artist, actor, pinball aficionado. How do you balance all these roles, and how does that figure into your particular brand of entertainment?

CC: Great magicians of yesteryear always wore all of those hats. They were the creator, the performer, promoter, producer. How do I balance? I don’t know that I do…Although for many years I focused on creating work at EXIT Theatre where I’m an artist in residence. But the past couple years, I stepped back from creating more work and mainly focused on producing my shows in other cities in the hope of expanding my visibility, name, and opportunities. So, I guess for now I have my producer hat on. And of course, when it’s show time, I become the performer again.

NN: Do you want people to see your work as “entertainment,” or is that a pejorative label?

CC: I love entertainment. I think entertainment is the perfect place to make change in the world. How? Because more people seek out entertainment than they do art. The thing is, I hate bad or dumb entertainment (no, I don’t think that’s redundant). I love good entertainment because you can sneak new thoughts, ideas and experiences into people’s minds and get them to see things in a new way when they weren’t expecting it. I find that to be the ultimate form of subversion. Get me to like you, laugh with you, clap for you, and just as I’m feeling safe and open, get under my skin and make me see myself or the world differently. I find that quite artistic, indeed. I should say now that I think the difference between art and entertainment is bullshit.

NN: It seems like being a magician requires the ability to think fast on your feet. For example, what happens when one of your devices or tricks doesn’t pan out the way you want it to in a show?

CC: It’s happened…it sucks. I mean, in a regular or more traditional magic show, I can change gears and move on to something better. But when you depend on each effect to help tell the story and they go wrong…oh man… suckage! There’s no way out other than through…

NN: How do you deal with the killjoys—like, hecklers or people who come to a show expecting to be enchanted out of their cynicism?

CC: I don’t. I focus on the others having a good time and let the cynics decide if they want to “come outside and play” with us or not.

NN: Those who love your work tend to be diehards, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as magic aficionados. What’s that special ingredient that tends to capture the hearts and imaginations of your fans?

CC: I endeavor to make the experience of magic personal. The focus is not on the effects/tricks and my skill; it’s on the narrative and atmosphere and how that effects you. Whether it’s a grand Cirque du Soliel show or a minimalist piece of theatre, audiences can be transported to any part of the world and see any fantastical thing, as long as the actors truly commit to the play—and I mean the art of playing, being playful, imagining and living the world they are prescribed to perform. This ignites the audiences’ imaginations too and magic is born, magic that the audience is participating in creating. And so the experience of magic is something they own. That’s what I hope to do in every performance. The effects are there to support and make “real” that magic.

NN: So…do you believe in magic?

CC: Yes… 😉

Nirmala Nataraj is a Bay Area journalist, playwright, tarot card reader, and former actress and model. She’s wicked magical herself.

Hi-Ho The Glamorous Life: Why “Songs of Hestia” Should Be on Your Summer-Reading List

Marissa Skudlarek, en route to her own vacation, imparts some advice for summer reading.

Songs of Hestia, the first book of plays from the San Francisco Olympians Festival, has just been released! Our friends at the EXIT Theater (whose publishing arm, EXIT Press, produced the book) threw us a lovely book-release party on Thursday night, where we drank champagne cocktails in honor of the five playwrights whose work is featured in the book. Find it on Amazon.com or at local bookstores.

All right, full disclosure: I copy-edited Songs of Hestia and also wrote the introduction. So if you pick up a copy, you’ll see an essay in which I attempt to say various erudite and analytical things about the plays in the book. But, I realized, my introduction may not fully convey just how fun these plays are. So consider this blog post a less formal introduction to Songs of Hestia. Even if you don’t normally read plays, you’re likely to find that this book has something for you. If you fit into any of the following categories, Songs of Hestia should definitely go on your summer-reading list.

Do you love reality TV and Hollywood gossip? Does “beach reading,” to you, mean a sexy Hollywood novel or the latest Us Weekly? Did you start watching reality television when Survivor aired twelve years ago, and never looked back? Are you (perhaps guiltily) fascinated with the lives of the men and women who appear on reality shows? If so, you’ll love Nirmala Nataraj’s Aphrodite: A Romance in Infomercials. This play tells the story of Psyche Pendleton, former reality-TV sweetheart and current infomercial star. There’s quippy dialogue and a “Dr. McDreamy” love interest, but also a thoughtful exploration of Psyche’s, well, psyche. This far into the reality-TV era, we’re wised-up enough to know that what we’re watching isn’t really “real” – it’s been manipulated and massaged by producers. So how does that affect the stars of these shows? Psyche may be a fictional character. But there’s truth – there’s reality – behind her story.

Are you a current-events maven? Maybe you’re the kind of person who prefers to read nonfiction dealing with current events, especially foreign affairs, business, or finance. You always have a copy of The Economist stuffed in your briefcase or purse. But it may be harder to get you to read fiction or drama, because you find the real world so fascinating and complex that you don’t want to spend time reading a made-up story. Well, I urge you to make an exception in the case of Bennett Fisher’s Hermes. While all of the characters in the play are fictitious – and the cast list includes the gods Hermes and Hestia – this play is tied to current events in a way that theater rarely is. It’s based on the origins of the Greek debt crisis in early 2010, and, as Fisher notes, “any similarity to real persons or events is entirely intentional.” Oh, and there’s also “bro” humor in the play. Lots of it. Somehow I don’t think you’ll find that in The Economist.

Are you eagerly awaiting Series 3 of Downton Abbey? Are you an Anglophile who loves fiction by the likes of Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy? Do you adore Downton Abbey for its upstairs-downstairs plotlines and its willingness to mention what the Victorians never did, like secret homosexual liaisons? If so, you will love Hera, or Juno en Victoria, by Stuart Eugene Bousel. The Hera of this play, like Countess Cora, is a loving mother to a marriageable young daughter. She also has a tart-tongued spinster sister, Hestia, who could give Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess a run for her money when it comes to acidly quotable lines. Add in two handsome young men – one rich, one poor – and a housemaid as capable and intelligent as Downton Abbey’s Anna, and you have the perfect recipe for Victorian country-house intrigue, with a modern twist. (Would Charlotte Bronte ever have dared write, “It’s all right, Hebe. I know what sex is. And your aunt has read about it”?)

Do you love female-centric historical fiction? These days, women are buying and reading more literary fiction than men are, so it’s no surprise that books that look at different historical eras from a woman’s point of view often become bestsellers. Maybe you are one of the readers responsible for the popularity of novels like Kathryn Stockett’s The Help or Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. Shift your focus to the late 1940s with Claire Rice’s Demeter’s Daughter, set in Greece after their bloody civil war. Its all-female cast includes Louisa, a young widow who seeks solace and compassion, and the three goddesses she encounters: Hera, Hestia, and Demeter. The play explores many facets of womanhood: what it means to be a wife, a mother, a survivor left behind after men die in battle. It is a deeply moving story; certain lines brought tears to my eyes as I copy-edited the play. That doesn’t usually happen to editors.

Are you a science-fiction buff? It’s cool these days to be a nerd or a geek, and if you are, you have lots of sci-fi movies and books to choose from. You also know that science fiction isn’t just an escapist fantasy – instead, it uses speculative tropes to explore meaningful themes. So why aren’t there more sci-fi plays? Well, Evelyn Jean Pine is attempting to remedy that. In Hephaestus and the Three Golden Robots (see? Robots!), Hephaestus has created three beautiful androids to help him with his work in the gods’ smithy. Meanwhile, the titan Prometheus has discovered the secret to making artificial life – and created the human race in the process. Thus the stage is set for an exploration of what it means to be human, as opposed to an immortal or a robot. And hey, my sources tell me that a little movie came out last weekend that has an android in it and speculates about the origins of human life. What’s it called, again? Oh yeah – Prometheus.

Marissa Skudlarek copy-edited and wrote the introduction to Songs of Hestia. Also a playwright and arts writer, she can be found at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.