The magic of the moment _{by Madelaine Empson}

World-renowned illusionist Cosentino is coming to town to defy gravity and death in a staggering stage spectacular this spring. Decennium: The Greatest Hits Tour sees Australia’s most successful magician and escape artist – the first to have his own TV shows and the star of eight prime-time specials that have been broadcast in over 40 countries to more than 500 million people – perform mind-boggling feats that will twist your idea of reality like a knife. I was lucky enough to catch up with Cosentino, who wrote, produced, and choreographed Decennium and has spent the last 12-plus months touring it around the globe, ahead of the Wellington shows at St James Theatre on the 29^th and 30^th of November.

What gave you the magic bug?

I started when I was 12, and I was a very shy kid – very introverted, believe it or not. I had a lot of learning difficulties. I didn’t learn to read till I was 12. This was compounded by the fact that my mother was a school principal. She was kind of pulling her hair out. She’s thinking, what’s wrong with my son? I went and did all these tests. In the end, there was nothing really wrong with me, I was just very disconnected to the material. Then my mother takes me to the local library, and I stumbled across a book with all these posters of famous magicians. She saw the book open, and she thought, yeah, wow, he’s interested. We borrowed the book and took it home, and my mother would very patiently read these stories and adventures and escapades of these great magicians. I became fascinated by people like Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston and Dante the Magician. In the back of the book, there were magic tricks. To learn a magic trick, it would require reading the description of the effect, then the method, breaking it down, analysing it. Through this process of repetition, learning magic, I learned to read. And then I was quite dexterous. Now, when you’re a kid and you’ve been struggling with school and sport, let’s say, and then you discover something and you’re good at it, all of a sudden you become really passionate about it. I could do things that nobody else my age could actually do. That’s when the obsession began.

What was it about magicians like Houdini that inspired you?

When I first opened the book and I saw that poster of Houdini, his byline underneath said, ‘Nothing on Earth can hold Houdini a prisoner’. Wow, nobody can stop Houdini. That was very, very powerful to me as a kid. My mother explained it to me that he’d jump off bridges handcuffed and chained and then they’d lock him in a jail cell and he would escape. People in the early 1900s thought that he melted or dematerialised... lots of mystery. Very early on, about a year later when I was 13, [my next inspiration was] David Copperfield. The magic was so elaborate and spectacular. As I progressed, it was people like David Blaine, Siegfried & Roy. But even before that, my inspiration came from watching these old black and white movies: Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. I remember the video-store owner saying to my mother one day, ‘Why is your son always in the nostalgic section?’ Now, I dabble in photography a little bit, and I only shoot in black and white, and I only shoot on film. I don’t know what it is about these old entertainers... it’s built into people like Madonna and Prince and Michael Jackson, all these very theatrical, larger-than-life performers: that’s what I was drawn to.

Do you think those influences fed into the way you incorporated dance into your act and persona?

Absolutely. I never saw being on stage as being static, and actually, a lot of people start magic by doing little card tricks, little coin tricks, but I kind of went straight to the stage because I didn’t know any better. I watched these great performers and I just thought, that’s what you do: you dance on stage like Fred Astaire. Not that what we do is old school, not at all. It’s all these video cameras, it’s all projected onto the screen, it’s all very modern. But there’s a part of that tradition that I think is really beautiful and special.

What runs through your mind during a stunt when you’re, say, completely suspended, submerged in a tank of water?

There’s a lot of pressure to get this thing right. I definitely feel that. But when I do the stunt, I don’t let those gremlins crawl in because as soon as you start thinking that it could go wrong, you’re going to fail. I’m not trying to project that I’m superhuman and I don’t feel fear – that’s not true at all. When I’m pulling off the stunt, I’m very much focused on doing the task ahead, which would be if I’m underwater, concentrating on holding my breath, listening to my heartbeat, and methodically picking the locks. The more unnecessary movement you do underwater, the more oxygen you burn. Yes, it’s gone wrong. I mean, I’ve ruptured eardrums, I’ve been slashed by knives, 12 stitches in my chin, seven in my forehead, cracked ribs, broken ankle from hanging upside down, and it’s all been caught on camera.

What keeps you in the game, despite the risks and broken ankles?

You know, it’s interesting. There’s a couple of things: I actually don’t really know anything else. It’s so ingrained into my DNA, who I am, my makeup. I learned to read through it. I built my confidence through it. I gained my passion through it. I met my wife through it. It’s all encompassing. You have to be all in. You can’t half-ass it. The show has to be so tight. I’m gonna be on stage and I’m gonna have knives above my head. That intensity, just on its own, just how my show is, keeps me really passionate. It’s the only time that I’m really – if I’m being really honest with you – present. When I’m on stage performing, I’m aware of the lights, I’m aware of the sound, I’m aware of the volunteer in front of me, I’m aware of the audience. In our everyday lives, we’re always thinking forward or thinking back. On the stage, you have to be in the moment. That’s exciting. Then it’s that fact I have a lot of gratitude for what I do – for someone like yourself taking the time to interview me. I really mean that because I remember a time when no one cared. No one was interested in interviewing me, no one wanted to see my live show, no one would tune into my TV show if I had one. Now that I have all this, I don’t take it lightly, because it was very difficult to get there. I’m very passionate about my craft because for so many years, it has kind of been beaten down. ‘Well, it’s a magic show, he pulls rabbits out of a hat, it’s for kids.’ That’s not true at all. I feel like there’s this kind of mantle I have to carry, to have people love it as much as I do, to get the artform to be as respected as, say, an actor. I’m happy to have that responsibility.

That’s the big, meaty answer. The superficial one is that it’s fun!

What are you most looking forward to about the New Zealand tour and what do you want audiences to get out of the show?

I’m going to be traveling a lot. Seeing the country is a wonderful thing, experiencing it – even if it’s through a car window as I go from venue to venue, that’s okay. We’ve got to have gratitude. I want people to just have a really good night and enjoy the show. Maybe if we want to look a little bit deeper, just for that 90 minutes, to not have to worry about paying the bills or the troubles we all have in our lives. Just to enjoy that time, that escapism, that moment.