Rollercoaster by Wes Peden Review

Hi my name is Steve Faulkner, welcome to Real Magic Review and today I shall be reviewing the show Rollercoaster by Wes Peetham. Before I do this, you know the drill. If you like it, press like. If you want to subscribe to it, subscribe to it. If you don't, don't do any of those things. If you really like it, share it with friends, with your mouth. You don't have to do it online if you don't want to and put it on your social media, we know that'd be lovely. Tell people about this channel, say that was good and then they can have a look at it too and everybody will be happy, including me. Do look at onlinemagic.co, that's my online magic course. I've just uploaded a 40-odd video coin magic course, I've just filmed and edited a course on rope magic and more to come. I'm going to do one on Spongebob magic soon because Spongebob magic is very good fun. We have live sessions every week and David Williamson coming up soon, how exciting. If you're watching this in the future, don't worry, they're all uploaded onto the course and you can watch them anytime. That's that. Talking about good fun, I've just been to a juggling convention which I'm going to do a separate video about because I've just got back into juggling. I'm still a magician, you can be both, it's allowed. It was a very joyous experience, very, very different to a magic convention so I'm going to talk about that as a whole different thing but I think important and interesting because for a while I did think it was one or the other. It was a kind of, I was so obsessed with magic and juggling was like a thing I did in my show and wouldn't do it for fun and then I've just discovered this whole world of joy and rediscovered the joy in magic as well. It's really a kind of renaissance, is that the word? Yes, I don't know, for me. I was trying to sound clever and ended up sounding pretentious and silly but that's fine. Right, so here's the part I'm going to talk about. I'm not going to talk about the convention, I'm going to talk about the show. Now the good thing about going back into a world you were once in is you're unfamiliar with the people in it and I did catch up with a lot of people that are still in it after 30 years or 26 years or whatever but the last show I went to see was West Peden. Now West Peden was everybody's talking about, it's going to be great. It's embarrassing, I didn't know because again I'm kind of new old so I thought okay it's going to be a great juggling show. Juggling to me is like magic. At its best it is the most beautiful, wonderful thing to watch and at its worst it can be really dull and I thought even if he's a brilliant juggler I just knew nothing and I made sure I knew nothing. I didn't google anything that day. I just kind of went and someone did say to me I think it's the best juggling show I've ever seen because he did a show earlier and I went okay but that still might just be a skilled juggler and I sat. I'm very tired. It was the last day as you are on the last day of any convention and the show started and I saw the set which was these inflatable kind of structures, very colourful and he came on and within three minutes I was just, I had that feeling I don't get that often in any kind of magical juggling or show of the allied arts, circus, whatever. I do sometimes get in theatre and film but I didn't feel like I was watching a juggling show. I felt like I was watching, as I said, like I feel with a really good film. I'm just in. I'm in it but that's only in the first few minutes so I'm going okay and it just it did something that I hadn't seen for a very very long time and maybe never seen is it showed me something like some incredibly high skill level which we see in magic and we see in everything but with imagination but also an incredible energy that builds and an immense amount of entertainment and inspiration. So briefly the show is about lots of things really but the theme of the show is roller coasters. There's a voiceover, his voiceover, talking about roller coasters, giving you information about roller coasters and then the voiceover stops. It's his voice. It's almost like he's talking but it's just all done with voiceover as he's looking at the and he's got an incredible connection even without using his voice because he's a performer. He clearly knows his theatrical chops and he's very very comfortable on stage but that's kind of what he's known for and a lot of people watching this will be magicians and you won't know that. So he talks about the roller coasters and he talks about the tension and I've actually read this between sort of security and risk, this idea of doing things which I really relate to. I'm so scared a lot of the time to perform certain things, to try certain things that may fail and it seemed that it was about that kind of thing of something feeling dangerous but not feeling dangerous. You know on a roller coaster you know you're safe but you don't feel safe and he's got this wonderful bit where he tries these mind but I mean every bit of juggling in this is mind-bendingly difficult but there's one moment where he's doing things that I've never seen didn't think were possible because I haven't been in that world but weren't possible when I was last juggling you know 26 years ago. You never saw some of these tricks but obviously that could go wrong but he had this wonderful thing in place that would happen every time he tried something that would inevitably because he would just do it until he dropped. I mean it was just such a preposterously difficult thing. The wasn't like I'm gonna finish this nice I'm gonna finish this till I drop and then he used this kind of mechanism which was so joyful to justify the drop and actually you've been glad that the drop happened and made it better and it's something that we can learn so much from. It's that thing of okay as magicians or performers or jugglers or anything we have always got that thing of going do I try that will it go wrong will I look stupid and actually we can turn it around not I don't mean in the way that we create a nice gag like oh I've dropped it oh that's where that goes or better put that there etc which I do all that that's great but in a way that actually enhances it and makes it so much better and I suppose it is a kind of gag but it's a mechanism to this kind of feel cleverer than a gag anyway I'm kind of waffling but the point of the matter is I was seeing things that made me reassess my own way of thinking about my approach to magic performance juggling anything and that's what true inspiration is and I got that not from a magic show and I think for us magicians that are watching this and hopefully there'll be some jugglers too to take from that not just the oh we can do really good difficult things on stage but to to see that it can be framed in a way that is that is different to what we've seen before and and for me I kind of came out of that show feeling as if as if certain things were possible not the those tricks aren't possible for me because I don't have that level of commitment to be able to do that or skill and it isn't my goal but what my goal is to do is to go on to stage with a different mindset and a different way of looking at things and maybe refocusing what a show could be and it and it really I really did find it that life affirming it was like I can actually see things differently maybe not just with juggling and magic but with different things because I've seen this show and I came out of that show I couldn't say that was a good show because it was so much more than that and I think that's what good theater does it it gives you something that isn't just I've seen a good musical I had nice songs I've seen good magic had great tricks I've seen there's something else that um that goes on there and I I've had similar things with magic shows I didn't go and see it in and of itself but but that's what people came out of that show I've seen it the video of it which is a totally different thing of course but people came out of that show feeling the same way they were saying you know you've got to make the effort and I would say that about this show I would say if you're a juggler a magician or none of those things if you're none of those things if you're watching this what you're doing but uh welcome to this uh this slightly twisted world of mine but um or ours but I would really recommend you try and see this wherever you are in the world google it now he is touring he's in Salisbury in a couple of weeks uh the show's called Rollercoaster West Peden uh as is the Gandini company um and touring around Europe do google it try do what you can to see this show and I would love to know what you think because for me it was the best juggling show I've ever seen in my life but it was so much more than that it was the best show the way he interacted with props the way he interacted with the audience the way that every single another inspiration every single movement was had a had a kind of thought had gone behind it there's a bit where he comes out he does a routine amazingly a routine to kind of mourn the loss of old roller coasters um with two spinning plates and not like proper you know difficult spinning plates the kids spinning plates but it's the most beautiful routine but he folds up a piece of material just before or after that and just the way he sits down and folds it up is every single move is choreographed and for someone like me it's completely all over the place on stage I'm losing props all over the place stage is full of crap afterwards not intentionally I've got things in different places I don't know where they are it you know inspired me and I've got almost like a practical sense of you know get your stuff together Steve and be a bit more thoughtful about these things and uh I'm not saying that I came out of this show going I'm better folding the props up uh properly I'm not saying that at all but it it was something under the thing that underlines that anyway what a waffle this is what I'm trying to say is go and see that show tell me what you think and do anything you can to go see it if it's not going on near you um put it on I was tempted like I did with Luke Jemay I kind of put put Luke on it uh in Sheffield I was thinking I wonder how much it'd be to fly him over and put him on but there you go that's a different thing so uh thanks very much that was roller coaster by West Peden do look at the links below check out his stuff check out this stuff on YouTube you know if you think you're not into juggling check out the imagination again be inspired by that it's an amazing YouTube video which I think it's lovely best juggler in the world for me um uh best show one of the best shows I've ever seen it feels at the moment like the best show I've seen ever because I'm still reading from it um but just a beautiful wonderful inspiring piece of work go see uh thanks very much also go and see if you want to learn magic from a pro onlinemagic.co have a great one