Do you believe in magic?

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Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram. We've done plenty of shows on how COVID has derailed our lives from working remotely to education to the impacts on all aspects of the economy, rent, sports, the movies. Some of these shows have had elements of hope in them, but none of them have had much magic. Today, we're going to fix that with the story of one guy in Los Angeles who took his pandemic lemons and made lemonade so good that people think he might have figured out a way to save an entire industry. His name is Helder Guimaras.

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so my line of work is very different than what people imagine when they think about a magician because I mix stories with magic. The hardest part of a show is putting it up for me. It's always where you have to find all the pieces of the puzzle to put everything together and make it work. And when it's done, when it's finalized, the performance side of it is when I have most of the fun of it. Tell me how you put up your latest show, Helder.

Helder Guimaras: So last year, in 2019, I did the show at the Geffen Playhouse. And the goal of 2020 was actually to go with that show to New York. So now I'm like, OK, let's go to New York and have some more fun. And all of a sudden, the pandemic takes it away from me. How did that feel?

Helder Guimaras: Not good. There was a week during this period that I was like really down and I was like, I saw the news like almost 24 hours a day. I'm not the type of person that stays too long on disappointment mode. So I was just like, okay, you know, like now I need to understand what this year is going to be for me.

Sean Rameswaram: What did you come up with?

Helder Guimaras: I had this idea for years of mailing things to people so that people could experience magic in their own hands. Had anyone ever tried that before, magic by mail?

Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to probably say a wrong number, but it's 100 years ago or almost 100 years ago. There were a couple of experiments done by different people where people would mail an object, like imagine a deck of cards to someone's houses. They would ask them to do a couple of things with that object. They would do this, they would mail it back to the magician, and then the magician would send a letter saying the card you selected was the seven of spades.

Helder Guimaras: I've been developing things that fit that world long before I even had a notion that the pandemic could shut everything down, you know? So it was one of those moments where all of a sudden when I'm one week into quarantine, I was like, oh yeah, this is the perfect moment to use that idea that I've been thinking for years.

Sean Rameswaram: I know you're a secretive tribe, but like, can you reveal what the idea is?

Helder Guimaras: No, the idea is very simple. Like, imagine that now, instead of me doing the magic for you and you seeing me on screen, I am guiding you to do magic in your own hands with the objects you receive. So the magic literally happens in your own hands. But like you and I are on a Zoom call right now.

Sean Rameswaram: So when you approached the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles with this idea of magic via Zoom, where you mail people materials, were they like, isn't this just like a video conference version of a YouTube magic instructional video? How is it different?

Helder Guimaras: You don't learn how to do magic in my show. You watch magic and you witness magic. And so the magic happens in your hands, but you have no idea how that magic happens in your hands. You know, like that's a different level.

Sean Rameswaram: So what do you send people? Well, that I can tell because it part of the charm is that they receive a box that they only open at showtime so they never know what the box has until we start to show okay got it so so the materials are the mystery and you've sort of pre-designed the magic but it feels complicated there are like multiple parties involved and sort of lots of different magic shows happening at once

Helder Guimaras: That means there's lots of variables, right? Like lots could go wrong?

Sean Rameswaram: Oh, yeah. I've done things like that in the past, but always like on a one-to-one basis. I've done amazing things like that where even objects vanish from people's hands remotely. But there is a big difference between doing that to one person or being able to convey that to an audience. Because unfortunately with magic, there is always a suspicion where people think that someone might be on it. You know, like I never use Stooges. I never have plants in my shows. Everyone that is in my show seeing a performance is a spectator and they are witnessing the same magic everyone is witnessing. and even when it happens to them.

Sean Rameswaram: What did you call your show?

Helder Guimaras: So the show is called The Present. We opened it on May 7th. It's still running and it closes this Saturday where we're going to do this big blowout performance for more than 6,000 people at the same time. So it's going to...

Sean Rameswaram: How do you do that? Are you mailing 6,000 packages?

Helder Guimaras: We are, well, there are different tiers. So there are people that are just going to be watching the show. Some people that will have only an envelope. So it's just a partial part of the interaction. And then there are 25 guests that are going to be with me on Zoom with the full box interacting with me as we've done more than 250 shows at this point. So it's really cool. And it's going to be like a big closing party.

Sean Rameswaram: It sounds like it was very successful, Helder. Is that correct?

Helder Guimaras: It was extremely successful. It was a great, a great, you know what, we can measure it in many ways. How many people saw it, how many people engaged with that, how many emails we got after the show, you know, like we can measure it in so many ways. It was so special. But the part that I like the most was that during this crazy time in our lives, I could be able, with what I do, bring some peace, some closure, some happiness to people in their houses. And for me, that's how I measure it. It's like the smiles. It's a little cliche, I know. But it's like it's literally at the end of the day what matters the most is how you see people leaving the Zoom call after the show. You know, like that's what at the end of the day I measure the success of the show in. And I'm very happy to say that I would put a percentage of 99% of people come out of the show like with a huge smile.

Sean Rameswaram: Some people, you know, they have a cathartic moment sometimes where they cry, you know, like we've had like, yeah, it's crazy. It's insane. But I think the fact that people are more vulnerable at this point emotionally, and all of a sudden they are in front of a computer, but they feel they are connecting with other people. You know, that's where I think the beauty of the show lies on. The magic is one of the vehicles of achieving that. The storytelling, it's another one. But at the end of the show, the fact that we can create this feeling that we've all been together, that's where, for me, the real magic of the show lies in.

Sean Rameswaram: It sounds like in this era where so many theaters are shut down, you not only found a way to still connect with people on Zoom, a medium that people are coming to resent because so much of their lives are now on Zoom. But you also found a way to help a theater make money during the pandemic.

Helder Guimaras: Yeah, you know, like I like to think it that there was this LA Times article that said, this is how you save theater, you know, like, and it was like this big headline about the show. But I don't like to feel very presumptuous that we've saved theater or we've done theater. But I think the fact that we kept going, it's a big inspiration, not only for other artists and other people and other theaters, that when faced in front of a problem, you need to kind of overcome it. You need to find solutions. You need to keep going, you know? And I think the willingness to do something like that is what is always going to save theater.

Sean Rameswaram: Well, Helder congratulations on the show and on all the success and I'm like Brad Pitt in seven levels of wanting to know what's in the box so I guess I'll see you Saturday for the finale see you Saturday thank you so much Helder Guimara's magic show is called The Present and if you curious to see what all the fuss is about its grand finale is open to anyone anywhere this Saturday You can find more information at the Geffen Playhouse website It is geffenplayhouse.org.

Sean Rameswaram: After a quick break, whether the rest of the theater world can take anything away from this one innovative magic show. It's Today Explained.

[Break]

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Sean Rameswaram: Okay, we heard about one very popular magic show, but to get a sense of what the rest of the American theatrical world is up to, we turn to someone who has experience with many sides of it. Okay, my name is David Cody, and I'm a New York-based theater critic, playwright, and opera librettist.

David Cody: So you're not just a critic, but someone who himself makes theater. Yes, I'm that foolish. What's one of your operas? We'll play some of it while we talk about why the theater is very important.

Sean Rameswaram: I have one opera called Three Way, which is basically three one-act operas about power, desire, identity. I know how it works. Let's talk about how live theater is working right now or not working. What's happening to theater in the United States?

David Cody: Well, you know, theater is really, you know, it's in a coma. The body is still alive, but there's not a lot happening. I mean, some organizations have had to furlough employees. Thousands and thousands of people, actors, writers, directors, designers, stagehands. There's nothing running on Broadway or off-Broadway or off-off. It's like their theaters are empty. People are broken machines.

Sean Rameswaram: I just talked to Helder about the present, which brought in a bunch of revenue for the Geffen, but what other sorts of coping mechanisms have worked out for theaters?

David Cody: Well, I mean, with the understanding that none of this stuff is actually a revenue generator or sustainable as a long-term plan, theaters have put on, they put on readings. Hi, everybody. This is Annette O'Toole. You know, there's a company called Play Purview, which you can do a donation of 15 bucks and see a reading with actors. I'm going to be doing a reading of Michael Lawrence's play Hamlet in Bed.

Sean Rameswaram: Amphar, which is a charity about researching AIDS, put on a Zoom presentation of scenes from Angels in America. Great prophet! The great work begins! The messenger has arrived!

David Cody: I think I saw something like that on YouTube, too. And my former colleagues at WNYC did a radio version of Shakespeare in the Park, though I guess that was free. I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world.

Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely, yeah. The public theater co-produced that. Thoughts tending to ambition. They do plot unlikely wonders. Those are one-offs, though. They're not, like, really... Like, it's not easy for theaters to transition into media companies overnight.

David Cody: Unlikely wonders. I mean, the Magic Show, what's fascinating about the Magic Show is that it's essentially an off-off-Broadway show. Meaning, it's like playing to like, what, 25 or 30 people at a time?

Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. I mean, if you did that in a theater, that's off-off-Broadway, which is like a hole-in-the-wall theater. Yeah.

David Cody: But he's able to do it like however many times a week, and they charge tickets, and it's been running for, you know, X amount of months, and it's super cheap to produce, so they make money. And in that way, it's sort of exceptional because since it's a one-man show, it doesn't really necessitate all the testing and safety precautions that putting on an actual stage production would, huh?

Sean Rameswaram: Right. And it's a guy in a room at a table with some cards. So what does it actually look like when real theaters try to come back with real productions Is it like what we currently seeing with the movies where theaters are kind of playing it by ear but promising you know limited seating and more safety precautions

David Cody: I think right now it's really all or nothing as far as a lot of Broadway shows, because until you can get like 800 to 1800 people in a room eight times a week, you know, to see a show, it's just not going to be profitable to open up a Broadway show again.

Sean Rameswaram: Do we know if theater can come back from this? I mean, it's one thing for Hollywood studios to sort of take huge losses this year and plan for the future and make revenue off of their existing titles and movies that are streaming in every which place. But theater's just not making money right now, right?

David Cody: How many Broadway companies are going to fold or even more so theaters all across the country that don't even have the allure of Broadway? Well, first of all, there are like 41 Broadway theaters, and they're all like owned by these corporations, like the Schubert's or the Nederlanders or the big, the mega landlords of Broadway. So, you know, they own the buildings. And of course, they get subsidies from the state and, you know, in the city.

Sean Rameswaram: Until we start hearing about organizations like the Public Theater or Second Stage Theater or, you know, all the sort of the middle tier of theaters in New York, until we hear about them closing, you know, the theater is hibernating, but it's not dying. So it's really off-off, which is most vulnerable. Small theaters that are just sort of hopefully have arrangements with their landlords not to be evicted. But it's the question, what are they going to put on? Is the audience going to come back? And the audience is mostly older and white. So what kind of theater are they going to put on? Are they going to put on more diverse stuff? Are they going to attract a younger, more diverse audience? Because that's something that I think everybody wants to happen.

David Cody: Have you seen anything like that? has there been some silver lining to theaters going dark this year?

Sean Rameswaram: Well, I mean, in the middle of this whole pandemic, there was a big sort of manifesto that was published online by a group called We See You, White American Theater. So I think what that letter does is it challenges Broadway, which is a white institution. Calling out American theater. It is a white, it's called the Great White Way, not just for jokes, but... For its history of being dominated by white artists. Those people who are at the top who are the house owners, who are the main producers. What playwrights get produced and how many actors get hired every year. In our union heads, they're all white. So this document was calling for everybody, including media companies in terms of who they hire for critics and reporters to boards of theaters to who they produce in the seasons. You know, asking them to be or demanding that they be more balanced. We demand them to see the truth and also make room for us at the top.

Sean Rameswaram: But I think that everybody's paying attention, and when theater does reopen, if it's just business as usual, then people are going to freak out, because things do have to change. Because if there's not a new generation of theatergoers that's more diverse and younger, then yeah, theater is definitely dying.

David Cody: Hmm. So this pandemic itself may not kill theater, but it shed light on an issue that could eventually kill theater. Yeah, it showed the disease in the body, for sure. Yeah.

Sean Rameswaram: I imagine because you're not only a playwright, but also a critic, that your fellow playwrights, artists, come to you sometimes for hope, for some light in all this. What do you tell them?

David Cody: I tell them that theater has survived worse than this. It survived worse plagues, worse wars. It survived Stalin. It survived McCarthy. It survived Cats, the musical. We'll survive this.

Sean Rameswaram: Well, I'm sorry to deliver the news to you, but we're going to go out on Cats now. No! Theater is just a memory. Meaning of what happiness is, then a new life will begin.

David Cody: David Cody is a theater critic and a playwright based in New York City.

Sean Rameswaram: The cats behind Today Explained include Halima Shah, Amina al-Sadi, Muj Zaidie, Will Reed, and Noam Hassenfeld, who makes music too. Big helps from Burt Pinkerton, Cecilia Lay, and Paul Mounsey this week. Big beats from the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Golda Arthur is our supervising producer. Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. And Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Sean Rameswaram: Let the memory live again Burned out ends of smoky days Stale holds man of mourning