Hello, everyone.
Roberto Araujo director of video production at Playbill.
And today I'm at one of my favorite spots in New York City.
The Club Car at the McKittrick Hotel, home of Sleep No More.
Here to get a sneak peek into Speakeasy Magick and to help me with that.
I'm here with Mark Calabrese. Mark, how are you? Hello. How are you?
I'm doing great.
Very excited to be here.
So I'm very happy to be back.
Before we dive in,
how would you describe Speakeasy Magick?
Well, the best way I could explain it is it's one it's my favorite show
that I've ever done because I get to be myself perform the way
I want to say what I want, do what I want.
And you make you love it.
I'm a performer, but I'm kind of a how do I say a character?
So I get to express myself in an artistic way.
Here at the McKittrick.
And yeah, it's one of those shows
where you have many different kind of performers, many different kind of
kinds of magic. It's it's such a great show.
Well, I'm excited to see what you have for us today.
Well, I brought my favorite thing, a deck of cards.
Now, unlike the other performers, I'm actually not a magician.
I know what you're saying. Speakeasy Magick. What what was the deal?
Right. Well, the things that I do with a deck of cards look like magic.
You see, there's three components
to what I'm able to do that makes it look like magic.
One is dedication. The other is practice.
And the third is not having a social life.
So when you combine those together, you have what looks like
really cool stuff. Right.
So I'm going to show you. I'm going to demonstrate.
Now, what I want to do Roberto is I want you to name a card. You name one.
I find it. That's my job.
OK, my job is to find any card you name. Two of hearts.
Two of hearts. OK, so I'm going to cut to the two hearts
and hopefully I get it right. Two of hearts. Let's see.
That doesn't feel right. Two hearts.
Two hearts. Yeah, that feels that feels good.
I'm going to try to cut to that looking the two of hearts.
The two of hearts.
Roberto, the look on your face looks like you're not impressed.
So in that case, we'll just change that into our hearts.
I know you thought I sucked.
I could tell. I can tell. It's all right. Let's find the other two.
OK, let's find the two of diamonds.
The let's see this one. The clubs and spades. Let's find one more.
There's the clubs in spades.
So now that you know that I'm really lonely, it's your turn.
OK, do you have any tricks you can do?
Oh, you didn't you weren't prepared.
That's fine. I'll I'll help you. OK, so pick one of the two.
And when you want
to put it back in anywhere,
it's great. And I want you remember exactly where you put it.
You do that for me. Yeah, I should've told you that in advance.
It's OK. I'll help you out here. Even though I shuffle.
I want you just to go with your instinct, OK?
I'm going to deal cards one at a time when you feel like the cards coming
next, you just say stop, OK, you take your time.
Stop Right there.
Not here, not here.
You said what was that is the two the two diamonds.
And as to right now, what about how did you get so lucky?
You obviously didn't just you know.
You know, you don't have any ability to do that, right?
Last time I checked, I'm the magician. Right.
So I'm going to say how you were able to do this.
Watch the two diamonds.
Go to ask you where that two diamonds is the deck.
You honestly have no idea. Right, OK.
Even though I in when I shuffle more even less now. Right. Yeah.
But still, the two diamonds is on your nose.
You see, that's called control. Now, I'm going to ask you a simple question.
Where's the two right now? On top? Very good.
Where's the two right now? Right there. She's actually on top of the deck.
So that's that's called cheating, Roberto. I'm going to show you
exactly how I keep it right under your nose that you know.
Now you know the tooth on top.
But if I do it face up, it should be here.
But it's still on top.
I'll do it again.
I'll do a couple of times, because even though I'm doing it, it should be there.
It's still on top.
I'll leave a face up so you can actually follow along.
The two stays on top the entire time.
That's called a second deal.
That is a technique that you would learn if you want to cheat at cards.
All right. You play
you play blackjack or poker, something like that, like blackjack.
OK, so so you're familiar with the game blackjack. All right.
Well, I know you're saying them.
Roberto, you're saying. Well, Mark, this is impressive.
Kind of sad because, you know, you really need to get out more.
But you're also saying to yourself, Mark, of course you can do this because,
you know, you're handling the cards.
This is your this is what you do for a living.
I've been more impressed if maybe I touch the cards
and maybe you shuffle if you shuffled and then I was still able to find the card
or do something amazing. That'd be pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. OK.
So what I'm to ask you to do, Roberto, I'm going to ask you to shuffle the cards,
but you've got to shuffle really well, like almost like at the casinos.
So what you need to do is you need to shuffle
to replace what's on the table, followed by three strip cuts . OK.
And then followed by exact twenty two and twenty.
Twenty six and twenty six and followed by riffle shuffle. OK.
And if you can't do that, you can just watch the cards.
Right. So watch this. Yeah.
Lots of cards and shuffle and best you can.
This is riveting.
You should really be part of the show if you want to take my spot.
If there's a spot.... Yeah.
I mean, sometimes I'm tired and I don't want to work. So, you know.
Yeah, you can basically, you know, we I think we all have the same style.
Yeah. OK, now we don't put them all together.
Put them all up.
This is fun for me.
This is real fun.
No pressure or no pressure at all. Yeah, it's OK.
Look at you go. Very good.
There's a reason why your work.
You work a playbill or not. Yeah. Yeah.
We'll be here all night!
This is great. This is so sort of fun that I'll help you.
Thank you. I just want to touch the cards. I don't want to.
I'm going to do something sneaky. Sit right
there. We'll get there.
Are you doing great or doing great? This is fun.
That's what I should have done the last 15 months. Yeah.
Hey, listen, we all spend our time differently.
I did not learn the languages. I just shuffle cards.
You know, you got real good at it.
Now, one of the thing
you need to do for better besides shuffle is have to cut the deck. OK.
There's a saying where I come from.
Trust your friends, but always cut the cards.
OK, so make sure you give the cards one good cut, one fair cut.
Look at you go Roberto. Here's the deal.
My job now is do something amazing with the cards. All right.
Even though you shuffled
and you cut, I'm going to memorize the order of the deck. OK. So
I'm going to memorize all the cards
and then I'm going to recite back to every single card.
OK. This usually takes about 45 minutes.
We don't have enough time. So I'll do this in forty three.
I'm just kidding. Give you 10 seconds.
One, two, three, four, 10. OK. Got it.
Now I'm going to recite back to you.
All the cards. You ready?
Ace two, three, four, five, six, seven and 10.
Jack, Queen, King of spades.
Ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven and 10. Jack, Queen, King of Clubs.
Ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven and 10.
Jack, Queen, King of diamonds.
You look confused you thought that I was going to recite the order.
No, no, no. I'm not that good. Is it?
But what if I told you I actually did recite the cards back in order.
Now, remember, you shuffled, you cut, you did everything.
So obviously that's not the order.
But what if I told you that I was able to just by spreading the deck,
put the cards back in order?
And that is 20 years of my life.
So if you didn't like that, I don't know what to tell you.
20 years well spent. That was incredible.
No, no. My mother my mother would rather be a doctor or a lawyer or something, but
I wanted face tattoos and card tricks, you know.
So, Mark, that was amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Nice to meet you. Thank you.
And now I have right here Rachel Wax.
How are you, Rachel? I am so great. How are you? I'm doing great.
I'm doing great. Excited to meet you and to see what you have for us.
It's really it's a pleasure.
Or we're just here enjoying our cocktails, the wonderful McKittrick Hotel.
So I don't know about you.
I don't know if you travel a lot or have traveled since pre
pandemic Pre pandemic, yes. Sure.
I don't know if you've traveled since then, but I recently took my first flight.
How was that? Terrifying, I'm still having nightmares, but
I forgot that my favorite airport activity is buying trashy magazines. Right.
I mean, because it's the only place where like nobody judges you for
like really caring about the whole Ben and Jen thing.
But I realize that there's three distinct types of magazines out there.
I don't know if you knew that or not. It's scientific fact.
So there's like business and smart people magazines.
I don't know what's in here.
Something about the economy or something, I don't know.
And then there's men's magazines.
There's like GQ and like Men's Health.
And they're really
I had never opened one before, but they're really all about pumping men up.
I don't know if you've read it, but they're like,
you know why bods are in this summer and like bald is the new black
and how to talk to your dad after 16 years because like guy stuff.
And then there's the women's magazines.
I don't know if you've ever read one of these.
They make you feel like really good about yourself.
If they could talk, I feel like they would look you in the eye and say, hey, fatty,
your roots are showing and your skin looks dry.
Are you still single? Looks bad.
And they're I mean, they're just trying to sell you stuff.
And the articles are a bummer.
A day in the life of Jason Momoa's scrunchy, riveting. Oh, no.
And then there is why women are turned on after fighting with their partners.
We're not. We're not.
I don't know. But we're not.
So I don't know what kind of magazine that you would pick
if you were at the airport.
But I don't want you to let what you like get in the way here.
I want you to pick one at random.
So I'm going to have you take these
and stick them under the table so that you don't know what you're picking.
You can mix them around. You don't know what's on top.
You don't know what's on bottom.
And then whenever you feel comfortable, take out the top magazine,
whatever you've got to go.
Oh, my God, your heart wanted the Cosmo inside.
You're a 16 year old girl.
I'm so excited for you, I wanted to do that quiz.
You wanted to do that quiz! What kind of bread am I?
It's the best. OK, so we can get rid of the other two.
We'll just set those aside now.
I don't know if you've ever read a Cosmo, but buckle up.
And what I'm going to have you do is I want you to open to any page.
Don't show me what page.
You're welcome to show the camera, though, and pick a page
that has a lot of text on it, like preferably not an ad,
preferably an article, if that's what we call what's in those magazines.
I don't know how
hard it is to find a page like a lot of text, but
I haven't read one since many moons ago.
So you start at the back of the magazine.
I've never known anybody to start the back of the magazine.
I'm thinking I'm overthinking this.
You really overthinking it?
I'm not going to look into that. OK, great.
Great. All right.
So hold that page.
What I'd like you to do is you're going to quickly glance at it.
And I want you to pick a word that jumps out at you,
but I want you to pick like
a good, meaty word, something along with a lot of syllables and letters,
because the people at home are going to be so bored, if I guess.
And so just pick something like a little more interesting.
I know it might be hard to find something with more letters in Cosmo,
but do your best.
I mean, it doesn't have to be like an exact amount.
OK, you got one. Yeah. You have it in your mind?
Yes. OK, here's what we're going to do.
I want you to picture that.
You're the only person who knows what what word you chose.
I want you to picture that word in your mind.
I want you to picture it in front of you written out.
And I'm going to try to read your mind, but I'm not going to be able
to do it all at once, because I assume you chose a big word.
We're going to break it down.
We're going to go letter by letter.
And I want to start with the first letter here, and I want you to think of it.
Really, really think of it,
OK? OK. All right.
Let's move on to the second well, what was the first letter H.
H. OK, fantastic.
Now let's move on to the second letter,
OK, the second letter.
It's a vowel and it's like a round.
No, it's not that.
What was the second letter you saw?
Oh, my goodness,
I am so good at this.
OK, great. All right.
So we're doing good. So let's let's move on.
I want you to I want you to imagine the last letter, the very last letter.
Keep it in your mind.
And now imagine the whole word.
What was the word?
Heartbreakingly.
We did it! Together as a family.
We did it get out of my head. Never.
Never. I'll be in your dreams.
Rachel, that was incredible.
Thank you. And this is for you.
Do I get to keep it? You do!
Frame it. Hold it in your heart forever.
I'll sign that for you. You can just see. Perfect.
Oh, my gosh. It's going to be worth a lot of money. Never.
You can catch Rachel Wax, Mark Calabrese here at Speakeasy
Magic at the McKittrick Hotel every Thursday and Friday.
You can't miss it. Thank you so much. Thank you.