Salem magician appears on The CW’s ‘Penn and Teller: Fool Us’

The CW show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” features magicians from around the world putting their best magic on display in an attempt to fool the master magicians and win the coveted Fool Us Trophy, aka the “F U Trophy.” This year’s Halloween episode featured Evan Northrup, an innovative magician from Salem, Massachusetts. In addition to performing classic sleight of hand and mentalism, he makes magic through multiple media and venues, including interactive museum exhibits.

Arun Rath: First, we’ve got to talk about “Fool Us.” Now this just aired, but you taped the episode when? Back in April?

Evan Northrup: Almost a year and a half ago — last summer. It was it was quite the waiting game. They fly magicians out to their beautiful theater in Las Vegas, and there’s a fun time period where you get there, and it’s supposed to be two, three days of slowly shooting everything you need: your interview, your bio package. But my particular date, or all of us, because it’s done over a few weeks, was right around those solar flares and the hacking incidents where all the flights were down. So what was supposed to be what was a five-day trip turned into a two-and-a-half-day, frantic trip of trying to get everything done. But the team is so incredible that it was a thrill.

Rath: We’ll talk about the trick and the performance, but that was almost a year-and-a-half ago now, and you have been legally barred from talking about it until it aired, right?

Northrup: Yes, their contracts are incredibly clear that all we are allowed to say until the airing is that we were on Penn and Teller’s show, and nothing else.

Rath: So tell us about the process: how you pitched the show, and how you came up with your routine for Penn and Teller.

Northrup: I had submitted a couple of different routines. This piece started as an outgrowth of a project I did called “Mind of a Magician.” It was a monthly show where the show was new every single month, and the themes of the shows were given to me by audience members. One theme was an art heist show, and that gave birth to this particular trick, which is the finale of that show that I now do regularly.

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So it was a fun process — a little frantic to try and create it in a month. But it has, since that time, over the last several years, had time to grow and develop into something I wanted to share on a larger platform.

Rath: It’s a really cool piece. It was fun to watch. Now, you know this piece up and down, but how was it performing it in that venue for the taping?

Northrup: It was a little overwhelming, if I’m being honest, in the best possible way. I perform a lot, I’m a full-time magician, and this was an unusual situation because it’s my first time being on a large-scale TV [program], and the scale of the cameras and the production team is intense. But there’s also a live audience. So that’s my wheelhouse, and you’re simultaneously playing to a theater full of hundreds of people and narrow-casting to this camera and to the two people on stage with you. So you’re sort of playing in multiple worlds all at the same time.

Rath: It’s the same place in Las Vegas where they do their Vegas show, right?

Northrup: It is. They shut their show down for a few weeks every year and film the entire season.

Rath: So in the end, you did not fool Penn and Teller. It’s really hard to fool Penn and Teller, I should say. When Penn delivers his verdict, he speaks in a kind of magician’s code, so he doesn’t reveal anything to non-magicians. Let’s hear a little of that.

Rath: So I’m a magician, I understood that. But it’s made no sense to my producers or any non-magicians who saw that.

Northrup: I’ve heard a lot of that from people. And if I’m being completely honest, I when he first started talking about Sade, I was slightly familiar, but I was worried I was going to miss the code. But luckily, he brought it together at the end. So even though I didn’t fool them, it was fun to get to perform for two people who I’ve admired in the magic field for so long.

Rath: Well, and they also love the routine.

Northrop: Yeah, I tried to bring a bit of my own style, which is inspired by storytelling and very theatrical resources. So there’s smoke, and there’s maps, and there’s lots of props that I love to make myself, construct myself — and I think it represented me well, which I was happy with at the end of the day.

Rath: You mentioned on the show about being from Salem, and I love hearing this about Salem 'cause we always hear about people from like, you know, New York or Las Vegas, but being inspired by the street performers in Salem.

Northrup: These were formative years for me, truly formative experiences. I grew up in Salem, and every year the street performers would come out in force from all over the world, and they would do these fire shows and unicycling and magic and balancing, and everything. It felt so pure to me as a budding magician because there was nothing keeping people there. At any point, your entire audience could get up and walk away, whether it was for something more interesting or appointments, or weather concerns. So you really had to learn how to connect to people and hold their attention. So I wanted to learn how to do that. And when I was in college and studying abroad, I actually had a month or so left on my visa. So I left all of my possessions, all my money, and just brought my bag of tricks and a change of clothes and sought out to see how far I could make it and survive just off of what I was earning performing every day.

Rath: I was just talking about this with our mutual friend, magician Felice Ling, about street magic, how it has that power. 

Northrup: It is a direct connection to people, and it is incredibly difficult to learn how to perform. There is such a steep learning curve, but if you stick with it and you learn how to make those connections in cold, unfamiliar circumstances, it is so rewarding. It’s a worthwhile place for a magician — and I assume any performing artist — to cut their teeth.

Rath: Moving back from the street to the stage, talk about what you have going on right now. There’s a show called “Alchemy” in Beverly. I gotta catch this. Tell us about it.

Northrup: Yes, we’ve been at Off Cabot for a few years now, which has a beautiful, deep, rich magic history. “Le Grand David,” the longest-running stage magic show in the world, that was one of their buildings. So we’re trying to keep magic alive there in that space. We do it monthly at the moment. It’s a show with myself and a few friends, with a rotating set of tricks and a rotating cast at times. And it’s all about how different styles of magic can come together into one show. So that’s something that’s keeping me busy, but I’m in a time of flux and change, and I’m excited to take on some new projects with magic in the coming years.