697: FISM Quebec 2022 - Day Two Report

Tuesday July 26th 2022

8:15-11:00 - Stage Contest
12:30 - 14:30: Close-up Contest

8:30 - 9:30: Jay Sankey

10:30 - 11:30: Banachek

8:00 - 9:00: Tobias Beckwith

10:00 - 11:00: Jim Steinmeyer

12:00 - 13:00: Dani DaOrtiz

16:30 - 17:30: Banachek Lecture about James Rand

16:30 - 17:30: Paul Gertner

18:30 - 19:30 Jeff McBride

19:00 - 20:00: Jay Sankey

19:00 - 20:00: Luis De Matos Intimate Conversation with Max Maven

22:30 - 23:30: Max Maven presents David Ben - Tribute to Dai Vernon

23:00 - 0:00: Yann Frisch

15:00 - 19:30: FISM General Assembly

22:00 - 1:00: Workshop / Dani DaOrtiz

23:30 - 0:30: Alexandra Duvivier

Time stamps for this episode:

00:00:16 - Stage competition has just started and we open with a chat with Erika Larsen fro the Academy of Magical Arts. She talks about the Magic Castle, her parents, and her upcoming talk during FISM. She also gives us an update on the Magic Castle movie.

00:05:42 - Richard Hatch just arrived and tells us his “contrarian” viewpoint of the previous evening’s show plus his stage picks from the first of five days of competitions.

00:15:17 - Charles Greene III talks a bit about his recent book, “Ionia”

00:21:59 -Mike Segal is in the dealer’s room and welcomes us to his country, Canada, who is hosting this year’s FISM.

00:24:48 - Yigal Mesika talks about his most recent dealers’ items.

00:29:50 - Bob Fitch talks a bit about the differences between coaching and teaching plus some of the points he teaches in workshops and was recounted in our podcast HERE.

00:39:30 - Marc DeSouza gives us a little “color” on the stage and close-up contests.

00:57:12 - Pit Hartling, from Canada, chats about his vacation here in Canada prior to FISM.

01:00:15 - Long time friend from Canada, Bob Farmer, and Scott get caught up after not seeing each other for over a decade.

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262: Just One Thing with Bob Fitch

Bob Fitch is well known among those who know him well. Of course that is meant to be tongue-in-cheek as of course Bob is a man of many hats...and he wears them all extremely well: actor, director, magician, singer and dancer. A show business legend himself, Bob has appeared in theatrical presentations including: "Funny Things Happened On The Way To The Forum", Will Roger's Follies, Annie, Mack & Mabel, Mame, and many more. He has worked or directed many of the famous celebrities including Liza Minnelli, Steve Martin, Carol Channing, Katherine Hepburn, Jerry Lewis, Mickey Rooney, Carol Burnette, Whoopi Goldberg, just to name a very few.

But among magicians, he is known for his series of three Topit videos and his work with the Fitch Kohler Hold-Out. But perhaps he is best known as someone who helps professionals take their game up another notch. As a director and coach in private workshops, Bob finds and focuses on one thing that will help make their performances achieve greatness. It could be something as simple as eliminating the walk between a volunteer and the performer's table by merely carrying the prop on your person, thus avoiding the lapse in time it takes to make the walk. Or it could be the opposite in which the performer adds that time by walking back and forth. Often times, whatever that "one thing" is turns out to be something that leads the performer to think about other aspects of his/her performance that could use the same kind of attention.

Bob Fitch has won many awards over the years including: Best Director - Nominated - New England Theatre Awards; Best Director & Best Actor - Nominated - Carbonelle Awards (Florida); Burns-Mantle Award (Broadway) for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Annie). And the S.A.M. Parent Assembly awarded Bob with the "Magician of the Year", and in 2009, the Academy of Magical Arts presented him with the "Lifetime Achievement Award".

Bob Fitch was one of the featured lecturers and performers at this year's T.A.O.M. convention (let me say here again that I found it to be one of the top ten best conventions I have ever attended). In this podcast, Bob talks about several of the things he taught during his lecture plus some of the same stories that he related there, too. If you saw/heard/experienced that lecture, then you will enjoy hearing it again. It's like reading a book a second time and finding a passage you overlooked the first time. If you missed the lecture, then I know you will enjoy and learn at least "one thing" from our chat.

235: FISM Italy - Day Four

It may have been a little overcast outside, but the weather and the magic was perfect in the convention center. After viewing the stage competition from 8:30 to 12:30, I got to walk around the dealers a bit more, chat with friends, and attend a couple lectures. And of course, it was Thursday which meant magic and Martinis in the evening with friends at the bar.

After watching Luke Jermay's one man show, was the evening gala featuring: Cyril Takayama and Eun Gyeol Lee as co-MC's with Mike Chao, Topas, David Kaplan, Tony Frebourg, Alberto Giorgi, Rob Zabrecky, Sos & Victoria and Samuel.