Steve Cuifo started performing magic like most kids do. His brother played a prank. So did my older cousin. One grandfather had a routine to absolutely kill with a handkerchief and a dime. He started entertaining at his birthday parties when he was in grade school, at first $5 and then more. After studying theater at New York University and beginning to work with avant-garde theater companies like the Wooster Group, he continued his routine.
“I always had cards in my hand,” he said recently. “I still think so.” (Technically, they were in his shirt pocket the afternoon of the interview.)
For several years he kept acting and illusionism separate. However, he gradually combined them. First with the nuclear terrorism comedy “Major Bang” for Foundry Theater, and then through his work with Rain Pan 43, he premiered the ecstatic and magical satire “Elephant Room”. He has also been a magic consultant on other productions (TV shows and movies as well), such as Lucas Nass’ 2013 play Public Reading of an Unproduced Script About the Death of Walt Disney. (He and Hunath overlapped at New York University, but got along well afterward.)
One day, during Disney rehearsals, as Cuifo taught actor Larry Pine how to cough up a bloody handkerchief, Hunas told the show’s director, Sarah Benson, “You could watch it all day.” I remember talking to
And now he can. Cuiffo and Hnath created “A Simulacrum” which includes both classic tricks (ambitious cards, torn and restored newspapers) and some new tricks. Unusually for a magic show, it also incorporates some tricks that fail. Because “A Simulacrum,” which runs July 2nd at Atlantic Stage 2, is less a demonstration of magic than a deconstruction of how and why magic is made. To play it, Cuifo, 45, had to abandon most of his habits in order to remove all vestiges of his showmanship.
“The whole show is trying to answer the question, what is magic?” he says, sitting on a couch in a dressing room deep underground in Chelsea’s Atlantic Stage 2 space, dressed in all black for a magician. said Cuifo.
His off-stage personality is pretty close to his preferred on-stage personality, being rumpled, excitable, somewhat sarcastic, and casually authoritative. Maya Phillips, writing for The Times, praised his unflattering stage presence, saying, “He’s understated, well-mannered and well-spoken.” Even if there is a space between himself and the man he plays when making cards appear and disappear, he can’t quite find it.
“If I had a therapist, I could probably answer that,” he said.
A household name off-Broadway, Cuifo is unusual both in the way it blends magic and theater (few performers do), and in the seemingly spontaneity of its rigor.
“He’s a great improvisational performer deep inside,” said Cuifo, who was so moved by his close-up magic at the wedding that he launched a one-on-one performance event, “Theater for One.” Christine Jones says. “But, of course, it’s a balance of hours and hours of practice versus not improvising at all.”
Jeff Sobel, who co-wrote The Elephant Room and its sequel Elephant Room: Dust From Stars with Quifo and actor Trey Lyford, strikes a different balance between reverence and impatience for magic as an art form. I explained what I was doing.
“As much as he loves this stuff, he also wants to completely tear it down and just take it apart,” Sobel said.
After “Disney” he created the mentalist routine for Hunath’s “The Thin Place” (a ghost story about a woman with supernatural powers) and “Dana H.” )’s disappearance drama. mother. When “Dana H” premiered at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, members of the theater’s artistic staff commissioned this new magic show by Hunath and Cuifo.
The first of the three workshops that would become “A Simulacrum” was held on East 15th Street in August 2021. The collaborators set some parameters. Raised as an evangelical Christian, Hunath practiced witchcraft as a teenager, usually as a means of explaining gospel lessons. That experience made him allergic to both audience participation and Flim Flam, so he decided to adopt a format closer to an interview.
“I wanted to find a way to create a magic show that I would want to see,” Funas said in a recent interview. “I wanted to create an honest magic show.”
Hunas also decided to record the workshop, which ended up being 50 hours. Hunath then edited his recordings and taped his own voice, while Cuifo recreated his own aspects of the dialogue in each performance.
“We set it up so that we don’t have to act,” Cuifo said.
Cuifo recalled the excitement of the first workshop. He had a lot of old and new tricks to show Hunath. He thought they would choose the best and refine them. However, moving from one to the next did not impress Hunat. The routine felt too sophisticated and too slick. Hunath liked clutter.
“I like real mistakes, not fake ones,” he said. “A lot of times magic and performance feels superhuman. I was interested in a more fragile version of magic performance.”
In preparation for the second workshop, which will take place three months later, Hnaat set some impossible or near-impossible tasks. Quifo had to create tricks that fulfilled fantasies and desires, tricks that failed, tricks that changed the outcome. It was a surprise, and perhaps the most difficult of the prompts, but it was a trick that Cuifo’s wife, actress Eleanor Hutchins, would love. (Most magic makes her “uncomfortable,” as Hutchins admitted in her email.)
“I wanted to pile on top of him and still watch him wriggle away,” Funas said. “Because he’s a really great problem solver.”
As the show made clear, the second workshop didn’t go so well. Cuifo used the words “brutal” and “stressful.” A perfectionist, Cuifo struggled with prompts. These were problems he could not solve, at least not in the way Hunas demanded. Ultimately, the workshop escalated into a two-hour fight that erupted after Hunas criticized a prop that Cuifo was supposed to use in a Hutchins trick as “cheating.”
“It was awkward,” Cuifo recalls. “Can you teach me how to make a piece for my wife?”
There was one more workshop that made up the third act of the show, but to say too much about it would spoil the surprise. Quifo eventually developed a trick and Hutchins admitted that she actually liked it.
“It was unexpected, understated and personal,” she wrote in an email. “It was cute, funny, and lovely. Just like Steve.”
The show was designed to be about processes, not products, no matter how funny and awesome they were. Despite the stress and arguments, Cuifo said he enjoyed having Funas as a collaborator and supporter.
“He strategically beat them all.” [expletive] I always do,” Cuifo said.
Do you create illusions without any flashiness, showmanship, flashiness? It’s also a kind of magic, he learned.
