Benedita Pereira assistiu a NOTHING TO HIDE

A conhecida actriz portuguesa Benedita Pereira, que actualmente reside em Nova Iorque, aproveitou uma deslocação a Los Angeles para assistir a NOTHING TO HIDE. Este foi o testemunho deixado através do Twitter e que pode ser visto na respectiva página do Facebook:

NOTHING TO HIDE - Neirdist Podcast

Podcast sobre NOTHING TO HIDE (com Neil Patrick Harris, Derek DelGaudio e Helder Guimarães) pode ser ouvido em 

 http://www.nerdist.com/2013/02/nerdist-podcast-neil-patrick-harris-derek-delgaudio-and-helder-guimaraes/

NOTHING TO HIDE - Centésimo espectáculo!

Geffen Playhouse assinalou na respectiva página do Facebook a passagem do centésimo espectáculo de NOTHING TO HIDE com a seguinte imagem:

E o novo prolongamento da temporada até 10 de Março mereceu a seguinte referência:

NOTHING TO HIDE - A temporada em cena foi, novamente, prolongada

Apesar de não ter sido feito nenhum anúncio formal, a temporada em cena de NOTHING TO HIDE foi, de novo, prolongada. De facto, no website de GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE, pode verificar-se que já estão à venda bilhetes até 10 de Março.

NOTHING TO HIDE está prestes a atingir um marco histórico.

O facto de NOTHING TO HIDE estar prestes a realizar a centésima representação não foi esquecido pela direcção do GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE. Na respectiva página de Facebook tal marco histórico mereceu o seguinte destaque:

Entrevistas aos protagonistas de NOTHING TO HIDE

No website HOLLYWOOD SOAPBOX foram publicadas entrevistas individuais com Helder Guimarães e Derek DelGaudio.

• A entrevista a Helder Guimarães pode ser lida em http://www.hollywoodsoapbox.com/?p=10415 e, seguidamente se transcreve, com a devida vénia, o respectivo conteúdo.

From Portugal to L.A. — Helder Guimarãres is ready for some magic

The promos for the Geffen Playhouse’s hit magic show, Nothing to Hide, have stars Derek DelGaudio and Helder Guimarãres looking out from the posters like two convicts ready for a mugshot. They’re bruised and bloody, with DelGaudio holding a cigarette to his mouth and Guimarãres about to enjoy what looks like a double scotch. It’s a perfectly odd poster, and what may catch the spectator off guard are the stares of each performer. It’s almost as if they’re looking at the world, directly into the eyes of anyone glancing their way. There’s a mystery there, something beckoning from behind the red-framed glasses of Guimarãres and the sucker-punched eye of DelGaudio.

There’s a feeling of enticement, of something being hidden. In other words, they’re welcoming the audience to a different type of magic show, one that both honors the tradition of the art form and turns it on its head.

Consider yourself invited.

The evolution of Nothing to Hide was “kind of surprising and organic at the same time,” Guimarãres said recently during a phone interview. “I was moving from Portugal to L.A., and I ended up arriving in the beginning of 2012.”

The former World Champion of Magic had moved to Los Angles at a most auspicious time for magic. The famed Magic Castle, the Mecca of magic in the world, was preparing for a grand reopening after a devastating fire. DelGaudio was booked  to perform with another magician, but soon enough Guimarãres was asked to fill in after circumstances changed.

“The initial plan and the initial idea was we were going to do like our separate repertoires,” he said. “Derek was going to do his, and I was going to do mine. And then because we had just … three days to come up with something, we decided wouldn’t it be cool if we could do at least one thing together. So at least it feels different and it feels special.”

That initial conversation has blossomed into a Cinderella success story. With only a couple days before the premiere, the two magicians kept adding material to their routines. “And then we realized, we were like, oh, we should do the whole show together,” Guimarãres said. “When the day comes, we do the show together, and it was immediately a huge success at the Castle, and people talking with other people, saying you have to see this. And lines start forming.”

Their two-night stint expanded into a full weekend of shows, then more shows and more shows. Eventually, the magicians attracted the interest of the Geffen Playhouse and Neil Patrick Harris (who serves as director of the transferred show), and they’ve been playing an extended run since November. Tickets are currently on sale through March 3. Plans for a future life in another American city are possible.

Guimarãres is not new to success in the magic world. In 2006, he won the World Championship of Magic in cards. “After that I started traveling around the world and getting invitations to perform almost everywhere you could possibly imagine,” he said. “I start knowing the world and meeting people and feeling empathy with some places and not others. You know, just like growing up and living.”

He specifically came to Los Angeles to see the Magic Castle, a place he heard about when growing up around the magic world. He met some friends on these early trips to Los Angeles, including DelGaudio. “And eventually because of different circumstances, I felt that I belonged here,” he said. “And that’s just a feeling you have like a gut feeling, more than any other thing. It’s less rational and more emotional than any other thing. … I’ve always loved being here. I think my work has always been very well received here. So I said, why not? Why not just try and move to L.A. and see what happens.”

For most of his professional life, Guimarãres has performed solo, although he collaborated with magicians during the development phase of several acts.

Now, more than a year after the original shows of Nothing to Hide, Guimarãres can’t seeing doing the show without DelGaudio. “It’s one of those things that we couldn’t do it alone,” he said. “There are certain types of approaches that if you try to do it alone, it just doesn’t work. It’s not the same. That is one of the beauties of this show. … We created the show together. It makes no sense that other two magicians would do this show. It can only actually be done by both of us.”

Guimarãres said it’s been interesting to see some audience members at the Geffen transform their perceptions. They might enter the theater expecting something strictly theatrical, and they leave with a deeper appreciation of the magical. “They enter to see one thing; they see another one, and they love it,” he said. “So that’s just a very beautiful experience. And sometimes (they) even come out of the show saying, ‘I didn’t know magic was like this. You know, I thought magic was a different thing.’ So that’s a really good experience to listen to someone saying those words. As a magician, it’s just amazing.”

The magician, whose roots go back to Portugal, said he is fortunate to have found success in this artistic field. “I’m very particular about my choices of what I want to do and what I focus energy on,” he said. “I think I have a very … strong belief system about what I should do with my life and what I want to do with my life.”

One choice he made more than a year ago is still paying off, and audiences are still transforming, likely confounded and amazed by carefully calculated sleight-of-hand acts. Like the poster for Nothing to Hide, with the performers bruised and bloody, there’s that inviting, mysterious stare. It’s a promise of something different.

By John Soltes

• A entrevista a Derek DelGaudio pode ser lida em http://www.hollywoodsoapbox.com/?p=10339 e, seguidamente se transcreve, com a devida vénia, o respectivo conteúdo.

Derek DelGaudio, star of new Geffen show, has ‘Nothing to Hide’ … or does he?

It all started at The Magic Castle, the mysterious private club in Hollywood that hosts the best magicians in the world. After a damaging fire threatened to close the establishment for good, the members decided to hold a grand reopening. That’s when Derek DelGaudio, co-founder of the performance art duo A.Bandit, entered the picture.

“I was asked to work one of the showrooms as sort of like a reopening of the castle, with another magician, another friend of mine who is a great performer,” DelGaudio said recently during a phone interview. “I was reluctant, but it was a friend of mine who asked me to do it and then a friend of mine who was going to be the performer. So I thought, this will be a nice way to go back to the Castle.”

DelGaudio committed himself to the project and secured a spot in one of the intimate theaters of the legendary Magic Castle. And then problems began to occur. A few days after accepting, his friend dropped out of the show after receiving a part on a TV show.

“So I was like, uh…,” DelGaudio said. “There was really no one else I wanted to work with at the time. And it was just for a two-night show, and coincidentally my friend from Portugal, who I had known for a few years … decided to move to L.A. and be around The Magic Castle.”

That friend is Helder Guimarães, and the rest is magic history.

“So he agreed to step in, and so we threw a show together in like a week,” he said. “And it was the first time I did a show like this together or any show together, and the reaction was crazy. People really enjoyed it.”

The response to the duo act was tremendous, so much so that scoring a coveted seat at The Magic Castle for the original run was nearly impossible. That’s when plans were set in motion to take the show to the Geffen Playhouse’s intimate Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, where Nothing to Hide has been playing to sold-out crowds for a couple of months. Ticket sales have been so brisk that the Geffen has extended the play through Feb. 24.

Details on the show are best kept hidden, but the Geffen promises “engaging vignettes brought to life solely from the words and hands of two masterful magicians.”

“I’ve always thought magic and mystery and wonder is an amazing thing, and the only thing that stands in the way of people appreciating it are the people that are presenting it,” DelGaudio said. “So I’m not surprised that when you work hard, put a lot of love and effort into presenting a good project, put a good show together, I’m not surprised that people respond to it positively. But I’m surprised at how positive it has been.”

Throughout the show’s evolution, the performance piece has expanded and added a famous director: Neil Patrick Harris, star of How I Met Your Mother and president of the Academy of Magical Arts. “Neil has always been a believer in magic in the best sense,” DelGaudio said of his director. “He’s able to see the world through a child’s eyes and present that. … He’s been shepherding this onto this larger platform, and he’s just super supportive. He gets me, he gets us, he gets our show. And he also is super seasoned, where I tend to think more abstractedly or conceptually about the ideas and what I want to say and do, and maybe not thinking about the practicality of the situation, Neil is always the first to kind of let me know the reality of the situation.”

The transition of the sleight-of-hand show from The Magic Castle to the Geffen took some time and hard work. “We had a real punk rock vibe at the Castle and it was an educated crowd, and even the people who weren’t educated, they were in an environment where they were informed by the people around them,” he said. “I mean when we did this at the Castle, we had people waiting in line for four hours or more to see us. It was like when Space Mountain opened at Disneyland. So we didn’t really need to do much other than go out and do a great job. But at the Geffen, people see some of the best performers, best directors, best writers in the world work on that stage. So we were playing against Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and directors … It’s a different level, and we’re graded on a different curve. But I’m very proud that our show can stand on a stage that has those types of credits and those types of talents working on it. It’s pretty amazing.”

DelGaudio admitted that his love for the craft came much later in life, although he appreciated the “romance” of magic as a child. Today, he’s grown into a diverse performance artist, one that tries to redefine the definition of magic in 2013. “I’m always trying to not let what the word magician means necessarily apply to me,” he said. “I’m trying to create it for myself.”

Now, several months after he was first pitched the idea of working again at The Magic Castle, DelGaudio finds himself attached to Guimarães as a performer. He can’t think of doing the show without his colleague by his side. “There’s no one else I could replace Helder with that I would trust on all of those levels and vice versa,” he said.

In the future, Nothing to Hide might jump across the country and set up its magic shop in New York City. “But after that, who is to say,” DelGaudio said. “We have different goals in a long-term sense. So it’ll also come from working apart. I think we’re taking it (on a) project-by-project basis. I don’t think we’re forming a duo, not like Penn & Teller or anything like that. But if another idea for a show came along, we would jump on the opportunity to work together, because we do work well together.”

For both magic enthusiasts and those on the fence about the craft, DelGaudio recommends giving Nothing to Hide a chance. “I believe that mystery really is a universal experience,” he said. “It’s something, if presented properly, is an inherent property that we are all drawn to and think is beautiful.”

By John Soltes 

NOTHING TO HIDE - Mais uma apreciação

Em http://centurycity.patch.com/blog_posts/blog-the-magic-of-theater-in-nothing-to-hide-at-the-geffen-playhouse pode ler-se a apreciação de Victoria Ordin ao espectáculo que Helder Guimarães e Derek DelGaudio protagonizam em Los Angeles.

Seguidamente reproduzo com a devida vénia a parte do post que se refere a NOTHING TO HIDE.

Blog: The Magic of Theater in "Nothing to Hide" at the Geffen Playhouse

Posted on February 8, 2013 at 11:36 am

When a play is extended four times, a theater lover in LA (if only part-time) almost has to buy a ticket. In my case, I bought a midseason subscription to the Geffen Playhouse and the ticket to Nothing to Hide and Coney Island Christmas--the funny, heartwarming Donald Marguiles play I saw twice--came with the subscription.

A rare January traffic jam in Santa Barbara kept me from the play directed by Neil Patrick Harris and compelled me to buy a ticket at the subscriber discount (62 rather than the unusually high 125). This past weekend, I had the great pleasure of seeing the show which has become the A-List ticket in LA for good reason. Nothing to Hide plays in the small theater where I saw Buildin November, but since then, they have put in stadium seating so it doesn't feel quite as small as it did.

[...]

Nothing to Hide is a mere 65 minutes which leaves you wishing the evening would continue at Napa Grille (where I always go after the show) with the equally charming Derek Delgaudio, an artist and magician who founded the experimental performance art duo, A. Bandit, and the Portuguese Helder Guimares, the youngest ever World Champion of Card Magic in 2006 at the age of just 23.

Delguadio reminds me a little of a young, thin Vincent D'Onofrio, striking a perfect balance between cockiness and self-deprecation. He's the guy you want your daughter to bring home to the Palisades from college instead of the robotic , cold premed student or the underachieving, dull gamer who listens to death metal all day long in spite (or perhaps because!) of his high IQ and good family.

Derek and Helder, as they call themselves, did schmooze briefly afterward but I became lost in reverie browsing the old Geffen theater posters by the restrooms and reminiscing about the Linda Lavin show in 1998 which was last the performance I saw before Build. By the time I wrenched myself back to 2013, everyone was gone. 

As a child, I attended a show or two at the Magic Castle with now TV writer/producer Chris Levinson (Charmed, Law and Order)—a classmate and friend from St. Augustine (an industry school in Santa Monica now known as Crossroads Elementary)--and her parents, writer/producer Richard Levinson (Columbo, Murder She Wrote) and stage actress Roseanna Huffman.

Some ten years later, my mother took me to a fundraiser at that strange, private and exclusive venue. I had therefore not been to a magic show, not even a cheesy, terrible one, as Derek quips this show is not in one of his sarcastic asides. Both have appeared at the Magic Castle where Neil Patrick Harris is President of the Academy of Magical Arts and “Nothing to Hide” made me long for an invitation to Hollywood's mecca of magic.

Derek and Helder have the kind of chemistry you expect from a classic comic duo together for decades. As I walked to my car, I had a big, dopey smile on my face because while their sleight of hand does indeed boggle the mind, I was genuinely touched by the only "message" moment of the play: Magic is all gone in a world with iPhones, iPads and 3D (paradoxically because these devices make the magical commonplace). That, as Derek put it, a bunch of people got “dolled up” and braved LA traffic on a Saturday night to sit in a small theater with complete strangers in the collective hope of witnessing something inexplicable and mysterious is a kind of magic in itself.

There were gestures in the direction of a message with the early mention of the distinction between the supernatural and the supernatural and the exhortation to look at things from a different and perhaps uncomfortable perspective, but these were not much pursued. As a literary critic by training (a Ph.D. Candidate in English at UCSB by way of Yale), I marveled at the subtlety with which the vignettes are woven together. The show is loosely structured with plenty of margin for error--ad libbing and riffing off the audience even at the Geffen with a heavy industry crowd is chancy--and yet inexorably comes together as a unity by the end.

Nothing to Hide is a kind of meta-play in that the conventional structure of a play with even a highly diffuse plot is immediately renounced in the opening scene : an entirely silent card cutting contest which contains more emotional content and character development than whole episodes of many TV shows (and certainly, the worthless reality shows littering cum defacing the television landscape).

Like much good art in which content and form are in dialogue, the play operates on two levelsNothing to Hide is about magic but it also asks how a play about magic can work at all. J.L Austin'sHow to Do Things with Words defined a performative utterance as one in which the language performed the action it described. The quintessential example was the “I do” in a marriage ceremony.

Years after Austin (via John Searle's theory of speech acts), performativity became hot in literary and critical theory. Ever so gently, the show conjures up the performative for an audience member like me with a literary critical background. Without being heavy-handed or ponderous, the show questions the categories of truth and falsehood and perhaps more important, the source of our attachment to the certitude those categories purportedly provide. 

Nothing to Hide continues through Feburary 24^th and even at 125 dollars per ticket for non-subscribers (substantially higher than most Geffen shows), it's money well spent.

Luís de Matos é candidato a astronauta

Luís de Matos candidatou-se a uma viagem ao espaço. É isso que se pode ver no post que colocou no Facebook e que, com a devida vénia, seguidamente se reproduz.

Quem pretender contribuir para a concretização deste sonho poderá votar em https://www2.axeapollo.com/en_PH/20735/luis-de-matos?image=0

NOTHING TO HIDE - Apreciação de Sasha Bronner

Em http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sasha-bronner/i-dont-like-magic_b_2594438.html pode ler-se mais uma apreciação ao espectáculo NOTHING TO HIDE.

Se já é curioso o título da crónica ("I Don't Like Magic"), mais curioso ainda é ler na mesma a seguinte afirmação: "My personal relationship with magic went from nonexistent to we're-in-love-his-and-her-sinks giddiness." (sic)

Com a devida vénia, transcrevo, seguidamente, o texto de tal crónica.

"I DON'T LIKE MAGIC"

I'm the first to admit it -- magic is not really my thing. Even though I grew up in Los Angeles, I have only been to the famed Magic Castle once in my life and it wasn't until I was 23 years old. The closest I get to enjoying magic comes in the form of watching Will Arnett's character on Arrested Development perform his atrocious "illusions."

And yet, two weeks ago, I caught wind of a show that has swept across L.A. called Nothing To Hide at the Geffen Theater in Westwood. The New York Times has called it "Brilliant!" "Ingenious!" "A roller coaster!" and Variety has exclaimed, "Marvelous!" "Amazing!" "Gasp again and again!"

I knew nothing more about it than what our senior editor, Willow Bay, had told me one day in the office which was something along the lines of, "It's a magic show. And it's amazing." Figuring at the very least I'd get a HuffPost L.A. story out of it, I secured tickets to (skeptically) see what the buzz was all about.

The show opened in November at the intimate Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen. Sold out night after night, Nothing To Hide has been extended for seven extra weeks. The who's-who of magicians have been spotted in the crowds, including Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) and Siegfried Fischbacher (from Siegfried & Roy), but it's the ever-jaded L.A. crowd that's been left with their jaws dropping.

Walking into the theater on a rainy January night, my guard was already up. Magic schmagic. I arrogantly flipped through the playbill and read about the two men we were about to see perform. Turns out Derek DelGaudio and Helder Guimarães are two of the world's most gifted sleight-of-hand artists.

They have sold out shows at the Magic Castle consistently and have performed all over the world. Neil Patrick Harris saw them perform together at the Magic Castle and immediately jumped at the opportunity to direct them in a joint show at the Geffen Theater. And so here we are. The lights dim, classic moody rock music plays and the two men come onto the stage. The 110-seat room patiently waits.

The show is nothing short of astonishing. In a 65-minute performance consisting of nine vignettes (and no intermission), DelGaudio and Guimarães have their way with the audience like only two masters can. My personal relationship with magic went from nonexistent to we're-in-love-his-and-her-sinks giddiness. Their confidence, their bravado, their cockiness is palpable. They are young, they are funny and they are charming. I went from whispering in my mother's ear, "I'm not even trying to figure out how they are doing that" to sitting on the front edge of my seat with both hands clasping my cheeks Home Alone-style. There is no explanation for a quarter of what they show you on stage. At one point in the show they leveled with the audience: "We know it's difficult to applaud when you're having your brain blown out of your ass."

So I'm just going to say it now: DelGaudio and Guimarães, will you marry me?