This week on Be On Air we had the honor of speaking with Tobias Beckwith. He is an author, producer, director, manager, magician, teacher, and speaker. Together we explored the power of words, identified ways to train for better communication, discussed what skills are valuable when growing a business and producing a live show and most importantly how magic can help everybody reach their dreams. This is a truly inspiring conversation, and we are delighted to share Tobias Beckwith’s insight into the magic of voice and theater.
After earning his master’s degree and teaching theater arts at the University of Pittsburgh for several years, Tobias moved to NYC to discover what the real world of theater might be like. He landed on the management and production teams of the long-running Fantastiks and Oh! Calcutta!, and spent two years working on the original Broadway and first touring show of Sweeney Todd. Tobias began helping Jeff McBride develop his first full evening show in 1976, and in 1988 became Jeff’s manager and producer for all his shows. He has worked as manager for Jeff McBride and Marco Tempest for many years and has worked as both director and advisor for many other magicians.
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[00:00:00] – Introduction [00:02:47] – What is theater for Tobias? [00:05:22] – When did magic connect with theater in Tobias’ life? [00:12:00] – How Tobias produces a show? [00:16:05] – Tobias gives live production feedback for Be On Air. [00:20:39] – About the Magic and Mystery School [00:27:05] – Magic Quest Online Show [00:29:55] – What is Wizard Venture? [00:36:38] – The power of words [00:40:14] – Training for better communication [00:44:25] – Experience of astonishment [00:50:11] – The Wizard’s Way [00:50:37] – Tobias’ Podcast Recommendations [00:51:53] – Tobias’s favorite magic experiences [00:53:46] – Best resources for novice magicians [00:58:24] – The great message of magic
K.Lee Marks : [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Be On air I’m your host K.Lee Marks today’s guest is today’s esteemed guest is an incredible human being. And I, uh, I count myself very fortunate that I get the opportunity to interview him. He’s actually the manager of my, my dear mentor and hero Jeff McBride, and his name is Tobias Beckwith, and he is an author producer, director manager, teacher speaker influencer, and last but not least a magician after earning his master’s degree and teaching theater arts at the university of Pittsburgh Tobias Beckwith, moved to New York city to discover what the real world of theater might be like.
He landed on the management and production teams of the long running Fantastics and Oh Calcutta and spent two years working on the original Broadway and first touring show of Sweeney, Todd. He then began helping world renowned, magician, illusionist, and teacher of magic. Jeff McBride to develop his first full evening show and became his manager and producer of all his shows since to bias, managed, directed, and advise many other magicians, as well as authored five books, three for magicians and two for more general audience.
I’m really excited to get into our conversation today. So stick around
tobias, Beckwith. Welcome to be on air. It’s so great to have you. How are you doing today?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:01:59] I’m great. Thank you. I was listening to all that. It would sound really impressive if I was 30 years old, but I’m, I’m, I’m considerably older than that. So I’ve had a lot of time to do those things.
K.Lee Marks : [00:02:11] I, uh, I, I think that you’re very humble and honestly, I’m honored that you’ve come onto the show. I’ve gotten the privilege of getting to see you speak to you, share magic, see you just in the magic and mystery school, which we’ll get into later in the episode.
And, uh, when Jeff kind of reached out and said that you might be interested in coming onto the shows really, um, just grateful and excited. And I have some, I have some very exciting questions for me to ask today, but I thought a good place to start. You know, you’ve been in theater for such a long time, and I do have a lot of entertainers and performers that tune into the show.
And I was wondering, what is theater for you?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:02:51] Well, I used to teach theater, so I have a, an academic answer to that. And that that’s when a performer. Interacts with a live audience members, someone who is actually there and can react back. So right now where we’re in an interesting place, because we can do that online.
20 years ago, we couldn’t, we had film or TV and you could perform, but you couldn’t and that was not the same as theater theater is the live interaction. The thing that happens between the performer and the audience. And so it can be one performer sitting across the table from one audience member, as in some close-up shows, or it can be, you know, a performer or a Broadway musical performing for three or 4,000 people in a giant theater, as long as both sides are live. That’s theater.
K.Lee Marks : [00:03:42] I love that. And what, what is it for you on a deeper, more philosophical level on a heart level? I’m curious.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:03:49] Well, you know, I moved to theater. I w when I was really young, when I was like six or seven years old, I got fascinated with magic and tricks. And then. I kind of drifted away because most of the magic I saw wasn’t very magical, but theatrical productions, Broadway musicals could make you laugh so hard.
You want it to roll on the ground and cry. And to me that was more magical than, than magic shows at the time. Um, of course I grew up in the sixties and the seventies. So magic was very different than from what it is now. David Copperfield, wasn’t on the scene yet. Jeff McBride wasn’t on the scene yet. And so magic was, was the old traditional, let me show you a trick kid and you know, here’s the silk and here’s in it.
And it looked kind of corny and kind of the, the tricks were fun. The fooling was fun, but. You know, unless you actually got to go to the magic castle and see Shimada or someone, it, it, wasn’t very magical. And theater was because to me, the real magic is what moves you? What changes you magic is really transformation.
And theater has a power to do that. Films have a power to do that in a different way, very similar, but, but also very different. And, uh, to me, that was the real magical experience and I wasn’t getting it from seeing tricks back then.
K.Lee Marks : [00:05:14] What, when did magic start to deliver that for you? When, what was the, what was the connect and actually, you know what, let’s back up a little bit.
What is, when did magic kind of enter your life in a, in a, in a more, as more of an art and less of tricks and Foolery and more as a connection to theater?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:05:32] Yeah. Well, I, I had an idea that it could do that, so. My, uh, my, my career in New York, which was fantastic for several years and then Sweeney Todd for several years and then Oak Calcutta, which was a horrible show, but taught me more about show business than anything else.
And while I was there, I developed computerized systems. Nobody was using computers. Then it was, uh, the, the mid eighties. And I went up and down the, the street on Broadway and talked to every producer and said, you should put these in your offices. And they all, I don’t think so. W w are ways that work. And so I got the job at Oak Calcutta and the producer there said, go for it.
And we put computers in the offices, in my job as a company manager and theater manager, which is what I was doing for him. Went from eight hours of work a day, six days a week down to two hours aday of work a week. And I had free time in the afternoons. I’d go in and work from 10 to noon. And then I have the afternoon off before the show started and I thought.
Well, what can I do with this? I worked with some dance companies. I did some other things, and it came to me that nonprofit was a bad word for, for funded theater and for funded dance. And that these. Performances would be better if they had to make a living. My, my, my commentary was, you know, Shakespeare would not have written 30, some plays if he didn’t have to have a new play every other week for the audience at his theater in order to eat in order to make a living.
And if, if, if all that money comes into you with grants and this kind of thing, I got very frustrated writing grants because we would we’d have a concert that we knew was going to cost us $30,000. And we’d write grants for 25,000 of it because. The real profit was only going to be, you know, the, the real revenues were only going to be 5,000.
I said, there’s something wrong with this picture. I’m spending part of my day, working on a terrible show. That’s making money on Broadway and the other part, doing these wonderful Lester Terrick dance, things that are losing money everywhere. Maybe if they could be more commercial, maybe if we could add some magic into the dance and tell a story with the magic, I’d be happier, both with the magic and the dance, and we would start to make money.
And of course the choreographers and people that I knew were not that interested in that they wanted to do their pure choreography and not. So I gathered four or five dancers who were friends in a choreographer, and I met him. I had a friend who was a magician who had been performing as rooster, the original rooster in Annie, um, named Bob Fitch.
And Bob came in as our magic adviser and we worked four or five weeks trying to create this story with music. We had original music we had, and it was just not quite jelling. And Bob gave me, he said, here, call Jeff McBride. He understands movement in magic in a way that nobody else in the magic world does.
And, uh, so I went to see Jeff in Atlantic city and went, yeah, he kind of does, we should talk. And I’m really excited about what he has because he had a great 20 minutes. He was an opening act. Then, um, I saw him opening for Raquel Welch to who his manager also manage, but he had opened for Diana Ross and cheap trick and Peter Allen and Tom Jones and all these other people by them was a great 20 minutes, but it wasn’t a full show and.
I said, you know, you should do a full show. There are some other people out there doing great full evening magic and he wanted to, and I said, well, let’s, let’s work on it together. No, no charge nothing, but if we can get it in shape, I’ll produce it for you. And so that was my, you know, I was very excited about the kind of magic that Jeff did.
I spent two or three years trying to convince him not to call himself a magician because he was a pantomime and a mass, you know, use masks and martial arts and Kabuki theater and incidentally. World-class sleight of hand and some illusions, but that was only a small part of the theatrical experience that he delivered.
And at that time he was opening and closing with masks. So he show was really about, I put on the mask and gain power, and then I show you all the power. And in the end I can’t take the mask off because the power’s in the mask and it was a struggle. So when you ended that struggle, it was cataclysmic. It was amazing piece of theater, not just magic, and it would bring audiences to their feet immediately.
And so it was really fun to structure those early shows around how, how that worked theatrically, not just as a magic show. And so it was, it was really Jeff and, uh, it w when, when we, when he signed a management contract, couple of years later, because his manager who had managed Raquel Welch got, um, Hodgkin’s disease, And AIDS and took a year and a half to die.
And Jeff asked me to be his manager and our first contract said, no other magicians, you can manage other artists, but not other magicians. I said, that’s fine. I’m really not into being a manager. I want to be a producer. I will manage you to serve your needs, but that’s not what I, and about a year later, he came to me and said, Oh, there’s this Swiss kid named Marco Tempest, who recently split up with his partner and is doing a solo career.
And I know I told you not to do other magicians, but if you want it to, you could work with Marco who is the other most theatrical interesting magician. I know. And I worked with him for 30 years. And so between the two of them, I got fascinated with magic again, but it was a different kind of magic than the kind that have pended had kind of driven me away from magic.
And yeah.
K.Lee Marks : [00:11:23] Yeah. So what I heard from you earlier was the, the transformation in affecting the audience that the audience actually goes through some internal journey and transformation and experiences, something powerful and profound. That’s the real magic and the tricks and the, and the effects are sort of, uh, vehicles are vessels by which that transformation happens.
And, you know, I really recommend that everyone listening goes and checks out Jeff McBride on YouTube. So you can put some visuals to what Tobias is sharing, but I also feel like you have a really nice visual picture of his show. And, you know, one question that came up for me, me is how like, How do you go about starting to produce a show?
Is there any strategy or framework about how you start to work on a show? Cause I think podcasts, you know, obviously there’s true crime, there’s audio dramas, but then there’s even this interview format. So how would you, especially for the listeners, I’m always trying to think about how can we serve whoever’s listening right now.
How can a podcast or a host kind of look at their own show or bring on a producer and, and start to improve the quality and improve the impact that it has?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:12:34] Absolutely. I kind of think a podcasts. I kind of think any kind of a show. I’m sorry, my equipment’s making noise here.
K.Lee Marks : [00:12:41] We got special sound effects for you.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:12:44] Yes. Yes, exactly. Um, it says I’m supposed to do a podcast. Um, it’s a little late, but, but I always come back to, I, I got my MFA was as a director for, from university of Pittsburgh. And as part of that study, one of the most effective books I got to read was by Peter Brooke, it’s called the empty space. And Peter Brook was a famous director, one of the founders of the Royal Shakespeare company in London and those things.
And he talks about each different kind of theater from street theater, which he calls poor theater or rough theater to Broadway theater, which is drama and, and cultured theater to, to religious theater, which is, you know, a whole different venue. And he said, it’s important to know what kind of theater you’re doing, but what it really comes down to is what’s this for.
What do I want from this? What do I want the effect to be? Do I want to change somebody’s politics? Do I just want to entertain people at the end of, you know, a hard work day and give them something to laugh and let them feel lighter? Or do I want to reinforce this, you know, dogma, religion, like, um, the, they used to do, I’m forgetting the name of them.
Uh, passion plays, which were these, like they’d set up eight, eight stages around the town square outside of the cathedral. And re-enact the whole passion. And the reason was for the same reason, people go to go to church every week to reinforce their belief system. To, to bring them together in a community and reinforce.
So, so there are different reasons for doing any kind of theater, any kind of show. And if you can answer the question at the beginning, what do I want from this? What is this for that will help you create something that is useful? That’s exciting to your audiences and to you. And, uh, over the long haul, uh, an example in podcasts, I, I watched Jason Calacanis, who is this week in startups, because I’m fascinated by the whole startup phenomenon in Silicon Valley.
The, these companies that go from zero to a billion dollars in 10 years, and the people that drive them and their drive and. His podcast is to serve that community. It was originally to serve the founders now it’s to serve founders and angel investors. And he’s very clear about that. And he has developed maybe if you watch his podcast, it’s exactly what you would expect.
It’s the top people in that industry, in a setting that is more sophisticated than it used to be. It used to look like he was, you know, in his, in his, you know, personal office with no set and no nothing. And now it’s developed into a fully produced with, with an appropriate set with, you know, that kind of thing.
But he’s been clear from the beginning about what that’s for. And I think that’s the thing. It’s certainly what keeps me tuning in week after week. I know what I’m going to get. I know what it’s for. And, uh, that, that, that, that’s the big key for me.
K.Lee Marks : [00:15:55] Yeah. So I heard, um, what do I want from this and what is it for? And then I would also add like, who is it for? Right.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:16:03] Absolutely.
K.Lee Marks : [00:16:04] And so maybe we could even just use my show as a Guinea pig for a second. Um, so you, you know, it’s, I have, I’m just gonna open it up. Would you give some live feedback as a producer? Would you be willing to grace me with some live production feedback about how this could improve, and that might be cool for the audience to hear and listen to, and you have full permission as direct feedback as you want. I won’t have any hurt feelings here.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:16:29] No worries. I, I think, I think we can do that in a slightly different way than you’re suggesting. Let me ask you some questions. Okay. Who is your audience? Who’s your market that you’re really going after that you want to serve with this?
K.Lee Marks : [00:16:43] Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Well, so the, the way that I think about it is conscious creators and purposeful entrepreneurs broadly speaking.
There’s a lot of coaches, there’s a lot of speakers and authors listening and, um, Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely other people listening. So if I didn’t mention a category that fits you, dear listener, please reach out and tell me how you identify yourself. But I would say broadly speaking that’s that fits almost everyone
yeah. So,
Tobias Beckwith: [00:17:10] so that is a very, that’s a definite community and it’s it’s, it is creators. I assume. You mean all kinds of creators from creators are knitters to performers, to, to people creating podcasts and, and, and that kind of thing. Um, but they are by definition, creative that, that that’s who is going to come watch this who is going to be served by it.
Um, So obviously you’re going to have people like that as guests or people or people who can help that as your guests, um, people that can teach those people to, to either either maximize their income or maximize their creativity, or build a better organization or, you know, whatever that takes. Um, and over the years, I’ve, I’ve come to see that.
Cause I, I S I started out as, as actor, director, choreographer designer, all the creative things, except business. And I had a scorn for business business was like, what the producers do, the people who aren’t creative and moving to New York and becoming a company manager and a producer. I very soon realized every business decision in a creative business is also a creative decision.
Every creative decision is a business. Decision. If I cut the chorus by three people that saves me a certain amount of money every week, and therefore I can change the ticket price and therefore I can serve a different audience and these are creative choices. What’s it all for? And it all comes back to that.
So, um, where, where, where are you, how do people find out about your podcast would be another question.
K.Lee Marks : [00:18:59] Yeah, it’s a good question. Um, many places. So I have a lot of touchpoints, uh, Facebook group. I have the, the actual podcast. So if anyone’s subscribed and they get it onto their phone, I’m on all podcast platforms, uh, YouTube clubhouse.
I go into clubhouse a lot and tell people about it Instagram. So social networking, you know, it’s, it gets around that way.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:19:19] Yeah. And, um, so, so it seems like most people find out about it because they are online.
K.Lee Marks : [00:19:27] Yes. Yes. So it is, if the show is particularly for these conscious creators and purposeful entrepreneurs who are wanting to be online and to broadcast and amplify their message and their business.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:19:37] Yeah, that’s great. Um, are there other ways you could reach them?
K.Lee Marks : [00:19:44] Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s probably a lot of different ways that I could reach them. Um, whether that is, you know, I do some email marketing and, and just email correspondence and nurturing. So kind of that’s one way, um, I could be doing even more videos, uh, that are specific for YouTube, you know, and, and do more.
And I could also be streaming this live. So this is not live, uh, but stream yard can, can stream to multiple platforms live, which is something that I do want to move into. Cause that’ll just add this whole other layer of engagement,
Tobias Beckwith: [00:20:16] I would think so. I know we’ve discovered with, with the, the magic and mystery school that as soon as we opened up a live broadcast to anybody for free our, our customer base, our community.
Quadrupled and, and more,
K.Lee Marks : [00:20:35] can we talk about that for a second? Yeah, let’s talk about that because, so just for the listeners, um, so the magic and mystery school is probably the world’s most prestigious and foremost magic and the art of astonishment and magic school that exists. And for, for over a decade, they have been live streaming or they, for over a decade, they have been producing these incredible shows and it has become this live streaming like think, think of an actual TV show that you would see there’s sec there’s prerecorded segments, there’s live segments there’s um, David Copperfield was on there recently, so there is so much going on there.
Could you, and when COVID hit, when the lockdown hit, you opened your doors to the whole magic community and it provided this, you had, world-class Dr. Magicians on there giving very up-to-date health advice. You had just so much inspiration creativity that was soothing for the community at a time. That was very traumatic and stressful.
So, you know, can you talk a little bit about that production that you do there, because that is a huge operation that you guys are managing?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:21:38] Absolutely. It, um, It happened. I mean, certainly the, the, the kick in the butt for it was the pandemic and the fact that people can’t go out and perform. And we said, you know, these are our people.
And we had been doing the show for 8 or 9, well, we just finished 500. So we, we do it once a week. So we had been doing it for maybe nine years before the pandemic hit, but it was for members only. And to become a member you had to pay, I think $25 a year or 50 or a hundred, depending on what level you wanted to support the school on.
And we would get 25 or 30 people a week tuning in to the live show. And then maybe a thousand after the fact watching it, you know, via, um, the via the, the posting of the show cause I always post them after the fact, but it was a self-selected community. And we thought, you know, let’s, everybody’s hurting everybody in the world of magic.
It doesn’t really cost us any different to put it on for 30 or 40 people than it would to put it on for a thousand people. And we have had a thousand once or twice who watched it since then. And, uh, and these people need it. Not only that would have, it would be a good thing because it would draw people in who we want to be in our community.
And I had been trying to, uh, Larry Haas is our, is the Dean of the school, another magician educator, wonderful human being. And I’ve been trying to get Jeff and Larry to start to put some classes on the zoom platform, which is what we broadcast on now. And, uh, they had kind of resisted because they really liked doing the live in-person interactive in Jeff’s house, but Jeff’s house, you can’t bring more than 20 people in.
And they have to travel to Las Vegas. And if they’re going to be here for three days and pay the cost of coming to Vegas, and we, we had the charge Mark, so we used to charge 700 basically for a three-day class. And you had to get yourself here and pay for it and all of that. So, so it was a 1500, $2,000 investment for a student.
Well, that was fine when we could only handle 20 a class and did one class, essentially one class a month over the course of a year, but it’s severely limited the scope of who we could reach. We could only reach people who could afford that or wanted it so bad that they would save their money for, you know, uh, uh, a period of time in order to be able to, you know, come and join us.
And all of a sudden we could teach three different classes. Every week. We could do classes that were only six hours long that were two hours and two hours in two hours, and we didn’t have to travel. They didn’t have to travel. So. We could charge $150 for that kind of a class instead of 700 that we used to, and we could serve people.
People could come into the class. I, I have a class that I do Wednesday mornings right now, and I have somebody in from Barcelona, Spain, and somebody from Thailand and a bunch of people from the U S but we couldn’t have done that over the course that, that that’s, that’s a 12, 12 week business class. That would have been impossible before we were going online.
And we discovered very quickly because Jeff, Jeff and Larry were supposed to go to the United Kingdom to do a masterclass at a performance and a seminar on the shaman to show men the, the relationship of medicine and magic through history. And COVID hit. It was way we thought, well, we could probably still get them there, but they’re probably not going to be allowed to come home without core team quarantining.
So we called them. We said, we have to cancel this, but if you want, we could try and do it online. And both of them, because they’re both a little less technically enthusiastic than I am, maybe. Um, we’re going well, I don’t know if we can do and we’re going to do it. Everybody said, yes, we don’t want to cancel.
We’ll do it online. And they were so successful and so much fun that we immediately developed a whole online curriculum, which we’re doing now. And we reached four or five times as many students. Last year, as we did any year before that, and we have a lot of fun doing and did develop new classes added to our curriculum.
I’ve always had, uh, the, the magic and mystery school got famous for being, you know, very small, very dedicated and, and the best teachers we could have, um, hopefully amongst the three of us, but also, you know, Jeff has always brought in outsiders. We’ve had people like David, David Copperfield come in as a special guest.
Jeff has done classes with Alan Ackerman. We bring in Ross Johnson for the mentalism class who was one of the, certainly the best teachers in the world of mentalism and one of the most best known. But now we can do all of that online and we can do three different classes during one week instead of one every month.
And it has, has allowed that thing that happens in the, the online digital revolution to work for the school for, for growing that. And I I’m, I’m very excited about it. We’re certainly going to keep doing. The online, even as we start doing live ones again, we have a couple of live sessions.
K.Lee Marks : [00:27:05] Yeah. And speaking of which maybe you could tell us a little bit about magic quest because you have a very exciting new, online show offering.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:27:13] We do. I, I hope it’s, uh, I hope it’s, it’s really groundbreaking. Um, cause I’m excited about the whole online phenomenon of interactive online video and it allows us to do something that we’ve kind of wanted to do for a long time, but there was no way to do it again because.
The school happens at Jeff’s house Jeff’s house. He calls it, the house of mystery is where he is. If you’ve ever been there, the walls, there were there isn’t a square inch of space on the walls, not filled with masks or magic posters or awards that he’s received, or his light had to add on a section of the house to house his library, because there were was no more room for a single book to come in.
And so it’s like this museum, it’s this magical museum of everything Jeff loves. And we could only invite students in. We couldn’t. There was no way to capitalize on this week. Young, you know, you, you can’t get a, an assembly permit to sell tickets, to do something in your house in Las Vegas, but there’s nothing to stop us doing the show on zoom.
And we can be completely interactive. He can call people out. He can ask people to do things. He can ask everybody to do something at once. So it’s interactive like it’s theater as though you were in a magic museum, except it’s all from his own home. And, uh, and, and it’s different from other zoom magic shows
anyone will see because it’s not just a series of tricks. It’s the story of Jeff’s quest to find real magic in life. From the time he was a kid in school getting in trouble in French class because he was dropping coins on the floor to the time he set a world record, a Guinness world record for doing one of those tricks to traveling to Japan.
And you see a little bit of him on the Mikado, which at that stage, which at the time was the world’s largest nightclub in where he actually, the owner took him out and across the street to study Kabuki at the Kabuki Za, which is where they train Kabuki theater performers. And then you can see his posters from his shows in New York and from his opening act with Diana Ross at, at, at radio city and the story of how his magic progressed through each of those.
So at one point he thought it was going one direction and that wasn’t satisfying. So he moved it in another direction and that took him here. And it’s a whole journey. To a conclusion that, that I hope is, is an emotional payoff in a way that you don’t get in very many, many magic shows and it’s all possible because of the online platform.
We’re very excited about it.
K.Lee Marks : [00:29:54] Yeah. It reminds me of like one door shuts, which is another door opening and it has given us this platform. And, you know, Jeff has honestly made me cry just by doing magic on zoom. Like I ha he is so moving in his, in the potency of what he’s conveying. And I think that ties back to the theatrical element.
I also wanted to talk to you a little bit about wizard venture. Could you, could you talk to us about that? First of all, I love the name. You guys always come up with such great names for, for the, the classes and the shows. And so yeah. What is Wizard venture?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:30:26] Thank you, that’s um, well, that’s me responding to my own book.
I wrote a book called the wizards way, which was originally going to be a way of sharing performer secrets. With people outside performance. Um, the idea that, you know, if, if an actor can snap into character in a matter of 10 seconds, there’s no reason a business executive can’t snap into character in 10 seconds and access more powerful parts of their being than there they normally do.
Um, performers do this every time they go on stage or one person in the wings. And by the time you hit the stage, you’re that character, whoever it is. And we become, we do access different parts of ourselves, the person who is really shy and afraid to speak up at a meeting and things can suddenly.
Transform themselves into someone who is a powerful speaker and communicator. And there are little tricks to that that actors know that can be useful to business executives or parents or whoever. And if you think about it, we all shift roles all the time, but there are other things too. And, um, what it came down to eventually was I shifted from just, you know, a magician’s learned to direct your attention.
Well, politicians know that, but, and marketers know it, but it’s really important to know that the reality people experience is the reality that we call their attention to because people can only really pay attention to one or two things at a time. And so, you know, when, when, when we stage a war in Iraq, you don’t pay attention to the fact that all the vice president’s buddies are getting rich by selling arms to the government as a result of that war.
And, uh, because the news and everything, we can keep you fixed fixated on the big picture. The thing we want you to look at there, there was a movie years ago called wag the dog, which was a great example of this in politics, but these are all useful techniques. If you want to change the world, which a lot of businesses do.
If you’re not a business to change the world, you’re only in business to make money. I’m not interested in working with you. So, but the wizard venture is there to teach you ways to change the world, using the methods, not only a performance, but I got interested in real world changers people. Um, my, my, my model was Merlin, the magician who is probably mythic, but there was a very clear story of what Merlin did and it wasn’t being a magician.
It was. Noticing what’s happening in the world. He wanted to unite like the worlds of, of Roman Britain with the pic dish, the original, you know, people there. And so he found a King who was Roman and someone who could be his queen that he was passionate about, who was from the other side, the pick dish and got them together.
And they had a baby who became King Arthur. And then he saw that Arthur was going to become just like his father, if he couldn’t get him out of the court and educate him differently. And eventually he created King Arthur and that whole myth by working behind the scenes, like a producer, like a producer or like a director though, he was never the one to step on stage.
He was the one pulling the strings behind the stage. And that is a great model. You saw it again with Mohandas Gandhi who never held any political office, but changed India. Created modern India through the, you know, cause cause the, the Raj to go out after two or 300 years and the Indians hated the British, but they didn’t have a way to, until Gandhi came along and created non-violent protest and all of that and learned to think differently that it comes all the way through Einstein and Richard Feynman and down to Steve jobs who actually, you know, my, my favorite commercial of all time is that here’s to the crazy ones, commercial with, with Einstein and Martin Luther King and all these.
And, uh, so the idea is to teach people to think like those world changers, to think outside the box, to train themselves, to build their own meta skills is one of the things, memory learning, speed reading, persuasion. Um, my, my favorite class to teach is, is a power presentation. And it’s exactly what we were talking about.
Kind of all of this comes circle with the podcast. What’s it for, if I want to teach you to be a better speaker, what do you want to get out of this speech? Most people don’t ever define that. How do I want to persuade my audience to be here at one point and then here and here, and I get them to this point and if I can get them into this point, they’ll go get vaccinated.
Or if I, you know, and whatever it is, if I know what that’s for, then I know how to build that presentation. And that process does interesting things, like get people over their stage fright because if I’m doing a talk and I’m only worried about you looking at me, do I look okay? What do you think I get stage fright.
If I worry about you’re not listening. Your, I need to get you to lean in. I need you to do all the things we teach in magical for magicians. I need you to clap at this point. I need you to go for, I need you to listen to this story, which is going to change your point of view and give it a, an emotional punch, which can be a magic trick, but you know, it, it all weaves together in interesting ways.
So that’s, that’s basically what the wizard venture is about. It’s saying let’s take what we know as performers and magicians and things. That’s kind of esoteric knowledge and get it out there to a community of business people or community organizers or whatever it is to give them the new tools to handle change.
It’s really all about change and transformation.
K.Lee Marks : [00:36:37] Mhmm, the new tools to handle change, and I’d love to go down the rabbit hole a little bit here. Um, so abracadabra. And the power of voice I’m. So I’m so invested and inspired by the power of voice. And that’s why I believe in podcasting so much. And you know, we’re talking about change agents of change in Gandhi and, and Merlin and how you, how away with our words.
And then the, you know, there’s, um, a fantastic magician, uh, Canton, right? And, uh, it has wonder words and the power of words. And I just want to hear from you. More about the power of voice and words for those listening, because everythingTobias has been sharing, uh, cues and, and, and kind of helping direct attention is all extremely applicable to being a talk show host it’s every everything that he’s talking about is so applicable to being a podcast host and helping guide the direction of the conversation.
So, yeah. Could you talk to us about words and the power that they hold?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:37:39] Absolutely words and just the sound of your voice, because we can talk with a light voice and be one person, or we can draw our voice down and command an audience, and it’s all in the tone. It’s um, this is something, if you ever take a training as a hypnotist, you learn about the power of voice.
You also learn about the voice does direct the attention. It tells the story, but it’s a tool for trance. And the hypnotist knows that if they speak in a certain cadence and they drop at a certain point, they’re going to change your state. What most people don’t understand is that we’re in trance most of the time.
And if you watch a TV show, you’re in trance, you go into that world and yeah, any storyteller has a chance to take you into their world. I read a book once about, um, hypnotic marketing and basically the, you know, you can save reading the book. It says, if you start to tell a story, if you take people into another world, they go into trance and they become suggestible.
Suggestible means that I say, you know, your left hand is getting lighter than your right hand. And your left hand will eventually, you know, lift up and lift up. And before, you know, it it’s, it feels lighter than the right hand. Um, that suggestibility it’s something great speakers really understand getting people to respond.
In, um, in unison in a rhythmic unison. I, I have a theory that, um, I’m a big fan of Barack Obama, but I think the reason he that pushed him over the top when he was originally campaigning, was getting his audiences in these big statements, say stadiums to chant together. Yes we can. Yes, we can. That puts you in trance that makes you part of an audience that makes you part of a group that you want to be part of a group and gives you an emotional lift.
It changes your state. Tony Robbins talks a lot about changing your state and how easy it is. And it as it’s kind of a parallel method message to what I’m doing there. But if you learn to control your voice, if you actually, with pitch, rhythm, volume, and the words you use. You can change someone’s state just, just as they listen to you and that’s tremendously useful.
And if you listen to the great newscasters or podcasters or whoever you get drawn into that world, it just happens. But it’s, it’s good to be conscious of it. It’s good to be trained, train yourself.
K.Lee Marks : [00:40:30] Yes. And it actually takes some training, right? Is what I’m hearing. That you have to have some role models.
You have to have some guides to, to learn some of these skills so that you can convey your message in a more effective way. And you know, we’re not talking about manipulating people against their will. We’re talking about how to. You know how to get your actual message to be communicated because oftentimes we think that what we say, the other person understands, but what’s really happening is I have a mind movie.
And then I say some labels that you then interpret into your mind movie. And those mind movies may not be the same. They may not even be the same genre. And so we need to do some more in order to have that message be transmitted and be communicated.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:41:14] Absolutely. And, uh, I think my training as a director is what led me to a lot of this because being a director is about creating B taking responsibility to create an experience for an audience.
you learn very quickly that if you change the, the color of the light, they get a different experience. If you, you know, like the whole set and big, they get one experience. If you light them, somebody in just a tight follow spot, they get a different experience. If you have the actors slowed down their speech, that creates a different experience.
And all of those things are real experiences. They’re, they’re real, you know, and you can learn as a speaker to do them. I, I, I have a workshop that I think might not happen because I only have like four people signed up for it and I need twice that. Um, but it’s about theater games and simple things
K.Lee Marks : [00:42:07] When is that?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:42:07] as a performer? Um, it starts April 7th for six weeks.
K.Lee Marks : [00:42:12] I’ll see if I can find four more people. I mean, I found myself
Tobias Beckwith: [00:42:16] great, but, but the idea is to take a piece of magic or a story that you’re telling, and we’ll put you through actually doing, I’m calling it theater games, but it’s, it’s a series of exercises doing things like I want you to tell the story as slowly as you can.
Now, I want you to just handle it just as you can. Now, I want you to whisper the whole story and each time you do it, you discover things about it. You, you take control of your own ability to express that thing in a different way. And after you’ve done it, 10 different ways you come back and you find out things like, Oh, I memorize the script without trying.
I’ve cut all the extraneous movements. Because when I did it really fast, I didn’t have time to do anything, but the essentials or when I did it really slow, it felt ridiculous to do this thing that I didn’t have to do. Or when I whispered it suddenly, I discovered that there are parts that are better for the audience.
As is something that I’m offering in confidence. This is a secret, you know, or that I shout at them. And you really only discover those things in the whole mind body. You can read about it. You can go, Oh yeah, I get that. But you don’t really discover it until you do it. And so that’s one of the secrets and one of the things we do in the wizard workshops for, for the wizard venture,
K.Lee Marks : [00:43:51] Just so the listeners know that, that we are actually having an interview with a real wizard here.
So this is, this is, this is if you’ve done any public speaking, if you’ve done any performance, I think that this is you. You will understand the magic and what he’s sharing here and how, or if you’ve struggled with that, then you’ll really understand the value in what Tobias is sharing. So please go check out wizardventure.com, check out TobiasBeckwith.com.
And I was wondering if you could share a little bit, you know, we have about another 20 minutes or so on this interview. I would love it. If you could share about the you know, you said our role is to create an experience for the audience. Can you talk about the experience of astonishment?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:44:33] Uh, yes. Um, I was taught about this experience of astonishment a little bit by, by, um, Paul what’s his last Paul Paul Harris, who is famous because he was probably by far the top close up magician in Las Vegas for a while, and made most of his money doing corporate walk around.
You know, of course, there, there, there, there were a hundred conventions in Las Vegas at any given moment. And he would get hired every night at a cocktail party or after dinner to make the rounds and do magic. And one day, and he went home and his house burned down with all this magic props in it, and he never got another house and he stopped doing magic.
And we have Paul as a special guest at something I think was world magics, which was a festival Jeff and I produced. And I picked him up at the airport in New York and drove him to Buffalo, which is where the thing was. So I got six hours in the car with him and I had read all Paul’s books at that point and learned a lot of his magic.
And so I was just so excited. I was, you know, the, the fan boy and I said, but I need to know why you stopped performing. And his answer was, well, I got really good at it. I got so good at it that I could hurt people’s heads because there was a moment when, what happened caused their entire worldview, their paradigm to shatter.
He said, one day I did it in a room with him and he like ran to the wall and started banging his head against the wall and went, wait, wait, wait, wait. He said, I don’t know what to do with that moment of astonishment. The moment of astonishment is that moment when your world changes, when. You go, Oh my God.
I never knew that could happen. And it, hopefully it gets bigger hope, hope, hopefully things that you didn’t know were possible are suddenly possible to you. Some people can deal with that. Some can’t. He said most of them can’t. And so I was telling weak jokes at that moment to shatter the moment of astonishment.
And he said, I kind of don’t want to perform again until I figured out what to do with that moment of astonishment. And so I think it’s a tremendously important thing for magicians, for performing magicians to figure that out. That’s why I keep going back to what’s this for what’s your purpose in doing this?
And we talk about it. When we structure a show, we do, you know, Jeff Jeff’s show used to open with him doing a spooky mask piece, producing masks, going through eight different characters in the course of two minutes. And that set a tone. But then the next piece would be him doing the cards, the card manipulation, which was an upbeat, super high skill piece of magic.
And so now, now the audience knew that we’re in for a magical spooky time and we’re in really good hands because this guy I’ve never seen anybody do anything like that before. That must take tremendous skill. At that point, they didn’t like him very well yet because he was in white face and he was scary and he was this kind of angry, mysterious character.
So then we put his coin piece, which is an initiation for a boy from the audience and it’s hysterical. And at the end of the piece, if you don’t love Jeff McBride, You’re never going to love anybody.
K.Lee Marks : [00:48:04] I couldn’t agree more. And not only is it history, is it hysterical? It’s also extremely empowering for that young, the young person who comes up on stage, whereas some other magicians will make fun of and degrade basically the guest on stage, Jeff initiates the young person on stage into sorcery and into magic.
And it’s, it’s, it’s almost heartbreakingly beautiful and funny and inspiring.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:48:31] Yeah, absolutely. But, but, but, but the point of the three things is there was a reason for each piece. The first one was to set a tune and move a tone and move the audience into a kind of a world and experience. The second one was to make them really comfortable because if you’re not comfortable, if you think things are going to go wrong with this performer, and I’ve seen too many magicians where I just I’m just waiting for, okay, what’s going to go wrong because he’s really not a master of his moment.
And that PA you can’t watch him again, do the cards and know that, not know that he’s a master. And, uh, w when, when I started working with him, nobody else in the world could do that card routine. And since then he’s taught it on video and things. And, you know, there are, there are a lot of 18 year olds that can do it, but then there was no question.
He was the best, the most skillful in the world. And it was just obvious. So we, we had a message for each piece to the audience that was subliminal, but there was a reason for the piece.
K.Lee Marks : [00:49:35] So to connect this back into podcast land, I would say that that this is really important. Like each episode you can ask each person you’re going to interview.
We can ask what, what is my goal here? What is their goal here? What is this for? You know, and to think of each piece as a performance, each interview as a performance.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:49:53] Absolutely.
K.Lee Marks : [00:49:54] And you know, so Tobias, as we’re getting towards the end of this interview, I could ask you questions for hours and hours. And I really do hope that you’ll come back on.
Um, I have a couple rapid fire questions that I ask every guest, and then I’d like to open it up to you to, to share, uh, anything you’d like in, in closing. Um, so the first question is, and you’ve already mentioned, uh, the empty space, which is really cool, but I want it to just what’s one book that you would like the world to read.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:50:20] Hmm. Other than my own.
K.Lee Marks : [00:50:23] Oh no, it can be your own. It can absolutely be your own.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:50:26] Okay. My, my favorite book that I’ve I’ve written is the wizards way, which is the secrets of the wizards of the past for world changers of today.
K.Lee Marks : [00:50:36] Amazing. Amazing. And what about a podcast that you listened to?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:50:40] Um, boy, there are so many that I love. Um, I think the one, I mentioned that Jason Calacanis this week in startups. Because you’re going to be introduced to a lot of people who are changing the world in interesting ways.
K.Lee Marks : [00:50:59] Amazing. That’s amazing.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:51:01] The other one I like is, um, Debbie Millman design matters. It’s one of the oldest podcasts out there and she interviews people like your audiences, the top creators.
She, she teaches at the new school and, um, in New York and its design and branding, but she talks to authors and artists and designers and people, people like us that I think of people who are really creative and really. And just talked about their experience in life. How did you, you know, how did you grow up?
How did you, you know, get here? And, uh, it’s very New York centered, which I like, because you know I lived in New York, 20 years and I still feel like I’m a new Yorker and I miss that intellectual energy that, that you find there.
K.Lee Marks : [00:51:52] Yeah. When creators get together, it’s a really inspiring, powerful thing. And now since you’re a magician, um, uh, okay. First of all, I’m curious, what, what is one piece of magic that you’ve just absolutely love? And I think that will, that might be more for the magicians who end up listening to this and that’s okay. And then I’m going to ask you a question for non magicians, but what is a piece of magic that you just love?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:52:14] Hmm, let me think. Yeah, take your time. I can tell one of, one of my favorite experiences watching magic ever was watching norm Nielsen. Do his manipulation of cards and coins. And the thing I loved about it was the absolute gentle precision that there was never a sense of I’m making something happen. It was just here it is.
And bang, there it is. And it looked like real magic and it was delightful. So I think that would certainly be one of them. Um, I’m, you know, several of Jeff’s pieces are my favorites and, and continue to be, um, certainly the coin piece we talked about his piece with the water bowls, I think is, is a masterpiece that almost nobody else can touch.
Um, there, I, I saw a magician, a French magician at a convention. John Pierre Volo Reno, I believe his name was who had an elegance with card magic. That was unbelievable. You couldn’t believe, you almost couldn’t believe he was human. It was like dancing hands. You know? It, it, it, it was and, and no extra moves.
No, no, no tells, no nothing. I don’t usually love card magic, but in his hands I could have watched it all day. So those were a few.
K.Lee Marks : [00:53:46] That’s amazing. Thank you for that. I love, I love hearing about magicians favorite experiences with magic, and now for the audience who is, who have never touched a magic prop who have never learned a trick, or maybe they’ve learned one, but they’ve not done it and performed.
What, what would you recommend for, uh, the novice, the new, the newcomer to this magical world? What could they do to start? Or where could they go to start?
Tobias Beckwith: [00:54:11] Um, there are lots of books. It depends on whether they think they might be serious about magic or not. If they think they might be serious. There’s a book called the amateur magician’s handbook by Henry Hay, which is to me the best introduction for somebody that thinks they really want to learn about magic.
Other than that, where would I send you? Um,
I don’t know. For somebody that just wants to begin. There’s so much on YouTube and that kind of thing. I hesitate to send, spend people there. And yet it’s a really good place to see something and then learn to do it
What about magic flicks
K.Lee Marks : [00:54:56] or the magic and mystery school. Would those be good resources for, for someone new to it?
Or would you recommend more like one book? Because obviously with magic, there is a huge world of magic and a huge lineage and it is an art, so it can be overwhelming. So I love the idea of the immature magician’s handbook, like a, a single resource, uh, for, for new people.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:55:18] Yeah. Um, I wouldn’t recommend man magic flicks right now.
Cause I don’t know if it’s really coming back or not. They had a big business problem and lost funding and lost, lost control of their site and that kind of thing. I totally loved the concept and the, the spirit behind it. That Stephane Vanel put together and he, and Jeff and his team put together a really great resource.
But at this point, I don’t think you can even get into the site. Oh, I’m glad I got it while I did. Cause that was an incredible compendium. But the magic and mystery school offers a free, some free resources upon signing up. Is that right? We do. Um, certainly, um, if you sign up for our, um, as a member, if you go to non, not the $25 level, but the 50 or a hundred dollars level, which it might sound like a lot, but that’s for a year.
Of live podcasts, plus some bonus teaching material. Plus you have access to all of the episodes that we’ve ever done. So there’s 520 episodes there. Now I think, and a four for $50, you know, it’s hard to beat that, to amaze there, you know, and, uh, but, but a lot of what you get on the Monday night, isn’t teaching tricks.
Some of it is however. Used to be when, when we were closed to the general public, we did teach tricks. And we had a thing called wisdom Wednesday for the last six months where we would teach tricks every week because it was a closed audience. But when it’s open to anyone, which it is when we publicize it on the web, we don’t want to give away tricks, secrets, and we don’t teach tricks.
We talk about who’s doing this and this kind of magic. And, you know, last night we did a thing on magic in Philadelphia. Next week, Jeff is doing one he’s interviewing Piff, the magic dragon, um, who is moving to a bigger theater at the Flamingo and has a lot to talk about about that. And who has an interesting approach to magic.
You know, it’s not just tricks. It’s an interesting character with interesting story with, you know, with his little Mr. Piffles dog and all these things. And I just love it, but it’s that, that’s what that does. It, it’s a great introduction. To the world of magic. Cause we always show tricks. We always show magic.
We always talk about or talk with great magicians, but, uh,
K.Lee Marks : [00:57:47] it’s a community. Yeah. Which I think is important for, for new magicians to be around. Uh, Jeff talked to me about this when I first met him, oftentimes new magicians will work at a peer level and so it’s very hard to get better. And so when, when magicians are around people who are better than them, they can be brought up.
And so it’s so important to have sunga as we say, in the yoga community or like a community of like-minded people. So Tobias as we’re wrapping up here, I want to open this space up to you to share anything that’s on your heart or mind for our listeners.
Tobias Beckwith: [00:58:21] Um, okay. I think the, the great message. Of magic.
And the thing that has drawn me to it over the years is that the world is a bigger place than you imagine it is. And I love there’s a Marianne Williamson quote, that people aren’t afraid that they don’t have any power. Your greatest fear is that you have ever greater power than you can imagine.
And therefore you’re responsible to do something with that. And to me, that’s the great joyful message of the magician is, guess what? You don’t have to suffer through life. You can create the life that you dream about. You can create the world that you dream about and magicians are here to point the way to that.
My, my new business , the wizard venture is here to help you train yourself, to break out of your box and become more powerful because it’s so rewarding and it feels so good to do that.
K.Lee Marks : [00:59:26] I love that message. Thank you so much for sharing that with the audience. I am mystified and blown away that, uh, I get to interview folks like you that have connected ever since I connected with Jeff, my life has only become more magical, a hundred percent more magical every month, more and more and more.
And so I’m really grateful to connect with you. I’m really excited about magic quest magic quest is, is coming up and I cannot wait to experience it. And so for the listeners who want to connect with Tobias, please head over to wizardventure.com one word wizardventure.com also tobiasbeckwith.com and, um, I would love it if you’d come back on, I feel like we could talk about a million things for, for many hours.
So this was just the, the first phase. Fantastic.
Tobias Beckwith: [01:00:16] Thanks so much, K.Lee.
K.Lee Marks : [01:00:18] Yeah, it was wonderful having you and have a magical rest of your week.
Tobias Beckwith: [01:00:21] You too
K.Lee Marks : [01:00:22] take care.
Tobias Beckwith: [01:00:24] You too be well.
