Read Online Nothing Is Impossible: The Real-Life Adventures of a Street Magician by Dynamo - Free Book Online

still travelled to Vegas for the odd visit. The more I went and the more magicians I met there, the more it made me re-evaluate my approach and the direction I wanted to take with my magic. I wasn’t like any of those guys with their big stage shows and incredible props. I didn’t have a suit and tie and there were no lions involved in my act. But meeting people like Apollo and Daryl, I saw that I didn’t need to follow the herd. Being myself was actually the greatest strength I had. When I started out, there was certainly no one else like me. I was a young kid from the North of England who, like most teenagers, liked music, video games, films and girls. And that was a great thing. Kids my own age related to me, and people who were older than me were intrigued to see magic done, live, in the street in front of them rather than from via television where they might suspect trickery.
    Being different was the best thing about me; in many ways it was one of my main strengths and it would help me a great deal in those early years.
    Although I didn’t move to Vegas, the money I saved as a croupier helped me to start my own business. The city did help me begin a professional career, just not in the way that I had expected. With my savings, I would travel around Leeds, Manchester and Bradford, making links in the music and television industries. I started to turn up at hip-hop shows where artists like Ms. Dynamite and Jazzy Jeff would perform on tour. I started to put together pamphlets, quotes and clips that would eventually end up on my first DVD.
    While Vegas might not have been right for me as a magician early on in my career, maybe one day I’ll end up there. I have lots of ideas for my live show, but I want to really think about it properly before I do it, so that it’s the best live magic show anyone has ever seen. That’s when I’ll know that I’ve really made it. When I can sell out a few months at Caesar’s, I’ll finally pat myself on the back and say, ‘ Yes, Dynamo. You did it .’

WHILE I’M NOT ready as yet to have a live show in Vegas, I have experimented with theatre in the past.
    In 2007, I did a live show in London. At that point, I’d had some success, but I still didn’t have my own television show. So, as a sort of business card, I decided to create a live show at the Soho Theatre to which I could invite friends, family and members of the industry. It was very stripped back and low-key – it was about as far from Vegas as you can get.
    After the short run of five nights, to my utter amazement, Kevin Spacey invited me to the Old Vic to perform it for him. He had seen me do my magic at a Prince’s Trust event a couple of years before and really liked it. I had various corporate companies interested in booking me as a live performer, so he offered to help me condense the one-hour show into a twenty-minute capsule that would work in the corporate world.
    As the lights went up, I could see him in the audience and, if that wasn’t pressure enough, the actor Jeff Goldblum was sat right beside him. No pressure.
    Trying to translate the close-up magic I do into live theatre turned out to be a lot tougher than I had anticipated. The whole show was based around me interacting with a television screen, and before I’d barely begun, the scart lead decided to break. Not the best start! After that, everything seemed to go wrong and I could see Kevin furiously scribbling notes throughout.
    Afterwards, Kevin took me into his office and told me straight: ‘This doesn’t work’. Admittedly, it was tough to take such straightforward criticism, especially from an actor and director that I admired, but it was what I needed to hear. The show was terrible!
    Back then, being on stage wasn’t my forte. I’d always been a close-up, street performer so I didn’t know about projecting my voice or turning my body out towards the audience. Kevin gave me some great tips and he hooked me up with a drama teacher to help