Q&A: Show & Teller

Sunday, April 9, 2000 | 10:55 a.m.

Teller is the silent partner in a comic-magic team that has grown from a street corner business into an international corporation.

Penn & Teller have been performing their edgy routines (which sometimes include maggots and cockroaches) for more than 25 years, on the streets in the early years and now for audiences around the world.

"Penn and I did street performing in the late '70s. That's how we got our start," Teller said.

Currently they are in Philadelphia. They will perform at the MGM Grand Thursday through April 26.

Recently they returned from India, where they wrapped up taping of a documentary on a topic they know well -- street performing, only on an international level.

In addition to India, they filmed street magicians in Egypt and China.

Although he leaves the talking to Penn Jillette on stage, Teller (he legally adopted the one name early in his career) speaks with eloquence when not in the limelight.

He is creating magic routines for a number of Shakespearean plays.

"'MacBeth' is heavily about magic," the former Latin teacher said.

Las Vegas Sun: Why do you not speak during your act?

Teller: It started off as an experiment in college. I did shows at frat parties. If I didn't talk and did things that made people uncomfortable it made things more interesting. The guys would remove their hands from their girlfriends' breasts and pay attention. Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying. "Here I'm holding a red ball. I'm going to make the red ball disappear." It becomes redunant patter -- stuff that is intrinsically, intellectually insulting.

Sun: You and Penn are in Philadelphia right now, but you just returned from India. Did you see any magic over there that inspired you?

T: Right now it's inspiring me to recover from jet lag.

Sun: What were you doing over there?

T: We were there for two weeks filming a documentary on street magicians. It is the third of three one-hour programs for The Learning Channel that will air in the fall. Earlier, we filmed in Egypt and China.

Sun: How did the series come about?

T: A Canadian production company wanted to try a different kind of documentary, using a research crew and a host. They go out and investigate something, taking performers who visit performers from contrary cultures. Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, "Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money." Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.

Sun: Do attitudes about magic differ from culture to culture?

T: In America, magic has never been an important part of peoples' lives. The highest concentration of magicians in the country is in Las Vegas. Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team. India has a real tradition of street magic. China used to, but street magic is the ultimate form of entrepreneurship, and (communist Chinese) don't like entrepreneurs of that kind, so street performing is illegal in large cities. So in China we got to see the old guys who used to do it. An there was not much magic in Egypt. They've got the pyramids. If you need a monument to dead rich monarchs, go to Egypt. If you need street magic, don't go there.

Sun: What was Chinese magic like?

T: More interesting than Egypt. I saw some acts I thought I never would see in my life. A guy just standing there in a robe produces a bowl of water -- and he does it 17 times more. China, in and around Beijing, is the strangest place I've been in my life. We were taken to a communist state-run amusement park that looked like a state hospital but devoted to magic -- sort of a museum. The town where we were was on the beaten path about as much as Gary, Ind. Maybe 35 people go through the museum every day. They give you a guide who has an electronic megaphone, shouting at you from two feet away ...

We are taken to a theatrical performing area, painted up as the American area ... A lovely Chinese girl does a rising card trick, someone does a sword box trick and then lights go off. All the time they are doing this, the guide is bellowing at you through this megaphone. Simultaneously, there was loud disco music coming from an old boom box; two bare bulbs lit the room, which was in an unheated building. The temperature was 15 degrees. You could see your breath in the air. In between acts, the performers would warm their hands on a coal stove. It was like this in room after room ... it makes anything Fellini came up with almost normal.

Sun: What about your experiences in India?

T: There, magic is intrinsic. They were really good. In China I was fooled two or three times, which is pretty good because I've been entertaining and doing magic since I was 5. For 47 years I've been doing magic and so I'm not often fooled. In India, I was fooled several times. One was a basket trick, a kid in a basket seems to disappear. It's classic -- street magicians all over the place do it.

We spent 11 days in Calcutta and Delhi, shooting every day ... Every time you got in a taxi you took your life in your hands. They play an eternal game of chicken, worse than Rainbow Boulevard in Vegas. In India, we actually saw a version of the Indian rope trick by a modern magician. It was a pretty wonderful version, but there was a little problem. The rope rose, stopped and got stuck. We came back later and it was fine.

It was so interesting to see outdoors, with no backdrop, the mango trick -- a legendary trick in which a magician takes dirt from the ground, plants a mango seed in a flower pot sitting on a tripod, puts a blanket over the tripod and goes about doing other tricks, coming back periodically to check on the mango. At first it is a sprout, then a full plant, and finally a bush with mangoes. This would not be amazing on stage, where there could be trapdoors or you could imagine yourself turning down the lights. But it was amazing out in the open in a big oval of people in broad daylight and on the ground. Our jaws hit our chest. We gasped. I think I've worked it out.

And then we saw a wonderful old guy take a handful of rice, put it in a handkerchief and toss it around till it became puffed rice.

For one magician we liked we made a special prop, a certain kind of knife that gives the impression you're cutting a throat. He was moved to tears. One of the things he does is sell souvenir luck rings. He took his own lucky ring off his finger and gave it to me as a thank you.

Nobody in Egypt had phony-looking props, there were no big, painted boxes with trapdoors and triple walls. They used very ordinary objects, out in the open.