In this episode I get to have a conversation with an absolute legend of magic. He has had his own show in Las Vegas for more than 20 years! Just try and picture that. He reached out expressing his appreciation for the podcast and I hopped on the opportunity to ask him to join me for a stroll along the Way and this is part one of that. As you'll hear, he's the real deal. I really hope you'll enjoy this, I certainly did.

topics we touch on:
-Max Maven
-Nick Difatte introduced Mac to the Way when they were driving to LA. And there were tears...
-The beginning of the podcast and what was going on under the Pandemic
-It was a dark time.
-About changing the Show as we get older/change as people.
-About being a Belgian viking when starting out.
-Andy Kaufmann
-Entertainment by unease
-Taking the Audience on a journey. Thinking of the Show as a whole.
-The very beginning of Mac's act
-The arc of tricks vs the arc of the Show. Transitioning from one trick to the next.
-the quirk of "blowing your funky minds"
-Stealing like an artist. So that the originator loves it, and maybe doesnt even recognice it.
-Watching stand up comedians for structural inspiration.
-Mac says he's only "doing what magic books says..."
-Being awkward yet authentic.
-Me sharing early nudges from other magician to develop tricks into acts.
-Making it better one beat at the time. 
-And getting into a headspace where you are LOOKING for ways for the Show to tie together. Callbacks.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

This is the second part of my conversation with juggle, inventor and thinker Erik Åberg. We talk about a whole range of interesting topics and I marvel at the depth of thought Erik shares with me.
we talk about:
Archiving as artistic practice.
Paul Cinquevalli.
Juggling history is the past, juggling today can be observed, the possible future explored by Erik is his kinetic sculptures.
How to ask existential questions through juggling.
Why should juggling exist?
Erik sketches out two possible answers based on his 20.000 archval clippings about Paul Cinquevalli. Following the descriptions by critics and reviewers Erik finds two main lines of answers
1 - Paul Cinquevalli is the greatest juggler in the world and is comparable to Shakespeare and Ninjinski.
2 - He is a manifest example of wasting ones life away on purposeless activities.
In this way Erik demonstrates the interlinking and usefullness of the archival part of his practice. As a show only exist as experience the reviews and quotes become like fossilized represantations of the experience of the shows. The fact that Cinquevalli was so famous that it generated 1000's of quotes gives us a pretty strong representation of what these Show experiences were like.
Why is skill so captivating to us humans?
Michael Moschen's idea of the kill. How our paleolithic ancestors deeply valued the kill with a spear or sling of an animal.
Ivar Hacksher - life is difficult an endless dynamically unstable situation and when we successfully surf through it we get a deep sense of completion.
Creating a microscoping focus of Attention. The performer focuses the Attention of the many, creating a collective experience.
Enriching the Audience.
Current evidence points to early juggling as being only cascade patterns and not sequences of tricks.
Eriks wonderful theory of Transportational Activities.

Links:
Erik Åberg's Ghost Cubes
Erik and Jay Gilligan's juggling show Bevis
Erik and Jay's juggling show Blick
A more biographical interview with Erik for those who want to get to know him a little more.
A short podcast about Paul Cinquevalli from Smithsonian Magazine

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

In this episode we bring you the first part of a conversation with Erik Åberg who at the time of recoring is writing his Ph.D about juggling. He is an extraorinary juggler with a wonderful way of thinking and finding real deep questions about juggling, writing, researching, archiving, and answering them in illuminating ways.

We start out talking about how it is to write a ph.d about juggling.
He is seeking to grasp his process and to describe an actual practice which could then reliably be used to create work.
How ideas pop up AFTER you have worked hard on them, whilst doing something else.
How to break down what you're doing into components and then make them geometrical.
Ghost cubes. Moveable sculture which allows sculptures happen in time.
His work on Headrolls.
Making archiving and intellectual work into part of your artistic process.
His epiphany that the reality of anything we create be it a book a show or a sculpture resides in the spectators experience.
The importance of asking what this experience is.
How the experience of a sculpture and a performance relate and differ.
Who owns time in the experience of art?
Three dimensions of time and participation in the artistic experience.

Links:
Erik Åberg's Ghost Cubes
Erik and Jay Gilligan's juggling show Bevis
Erik and Jay's juggling show Blick
A more biographical interview with Erik for those who want to get to know him a little more.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

In this episode Mario and I talk about his upcoming season in Edinburgh, he's ordered 10.000 clown noses. We talk about play and bringing up kids on the road. We talk quite a bit about family. I try to pry secrets from his process of creating emotionally engaging and unusually deep acts by getting him to tell me about his Pixar looking lamp robot act. We talk about teachers, artist like Alexander Caulder, Andy Warhol and others. Art that hits you in the heart like a hammer. About how to speak your heart, the why, we do it, not just how. Which of course is so close to my heart. The whole second season of the Way is about the why I do what I do. We talk alittle bit about AI. and about making sure the audience leaves taking something to heart.
AND ROBOTS. We talk about Mario's wonderful robots.
Find a way to put your passion into your show. Great art comes from the ground up. Style and aestethics. Defining your character. Believing in something greater than yourself. How to stay more at home as kids gets older. There is so much good stuff here. I hope you enjoy it.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo

In this second part of the conversation with Gareth Bjaaland we talk about the spirit of circus. He sugests wonderfully that it might be
the show must go on
you can put anything in the ring
and
everyone is welcome.
I loved this!
we then talk about games, finite and infinite, we talk about serious play and serious games. This was a really fun conversation for me. Real deep and real organic and alive.

Support the show

...

Now you can get t-shirts and hoodies with our wonderful logo. This is the best new way to suport the podcast project. Become a proud parader of your passion for Showmanship and our glorious Craft whilst simultanously helping to gather more followers for the Way.
You'll find the store here: https://thewayoftheshowman.printdrop.com.au

If you want to help support this podcast it would be tremendous if you wrote a glowing review on iTunes or Spotify.
If you want to contact me about anything, including wanting me to collaborate on one of your projects you can reach me on [email protected]
or find out more on the Way of the Showman website.
you can follow the Way of Instagram where it is, not surprisingly thewayoftheshowman.
If you find it in you and you have the means to do so, you can suport the podcast financially at:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/captainfrodo