Comedy magic duo Barry and Stuart have been making quite a splash on the circuit with their macabre shows. Emma catches up with the boys ahead of their latest Fringe run.
Your show 98% Séance sounds quite different to your normal shows - more spooky than gory. What made you decide to go down the contacting the dead route this year?
Barry: We have always been fascinated by these sorts of things. Growing up watching unusual horror movies in quite a sunlight-deprived area of Scotland has certainly influenced what we do now.
Stuart: Last year we started to find out about the violent and grotesque deaths that occurred in and around the venue we were performing in, the vaults of the Underbelly. There are hundreds of stories of ghosts and poltergeists connected with that area of Edinburgh. There probably isn’t a location on Earth more suited to contacting the dead in a late night séance.
Have you had any supernatural experiences yet, in the show or otherwise?
Barry: We have had some very odd things happen during the show. When we were watching back a recording we had made of one of the early previews there was a brief moment when a white figure appeared in a corner of the room. It was so quick and it wasn’t until we watched it frame by frame that we thought we could see a face on the figure.
Stuart: It has to be said though that we are skeptics and we don't really believe that the white shape was a ghost. We know that the shape was just a refraction of light on the camera lens, it occurred for less than a second and the brain is very good at seeing patterns in chaos, like seeing objects in clouds. But even though we don’t believe in ghosts, when something like that happens it still feels a little weird to see a white face peeking out at you from a dark corner.
We’ve heard you’ve got some exciting big stage effects planned this year, can you tell us a bit about that?
Barry: We did a lot of research into the techniques of old fraudulent mediums but thought that they wouldn’t be very entertaining or particularly convincing for a modern audience. We wanted to do something that used more elaborate, complex forms of subterfuge; trickery that fake mediums would use if they were to conduct a séance in the 21st century and knew more about deception.
Stuart: I don’t want to give too much away because we want the show to be filled with surprises for those who come but yes, we came up with some pretty crazy stuff.
When did you both become interested in magic? Did any other magicians inspire you?
Barry: We were both interested in magic from a very young age and there a few other magicians that we really respected but other magicians didn’t really inspire us much. If anything we wanted to not be like them. We saw a lot of traditional ‘coloured hankies and white bird’ stuff growing up. A lot of magicians had a “look what I can do and you can’t” attitude that we didn’t like. We wanted to create something that was the kind of magic that we would have wanted to see.
How did you both meet and what made you decide to form a magical duo?
Stuart: We both met through our mutual interest in magic but being the only young guys in a 100 mile radius doing magic we instantly hated each other. Magicians tend to be very secretive and it wasn’t until we realised that we shared similar views on what kind of magic we wanted to see that we started collaborating on ideas, also barryandstuart.com was available at the time so it seemed like a good idea.
A lot of your tricks are quite gruesome, have you ever injured yourselves practising them?
Barry: I once lost my penis.
Stuart: We hurt ourselves all the time but once whist practising a stunt where I push a needle into my eye, a yellowey mucus started to leak from my eyeball. I remember thinking I’m such a dick, I’m going to go blind in one eye because of a magic trick.
Out of all of your tricks and stunts, what’s been your favourite to perform?
Barry: We go through phases, we have done so much now that it is difficult to choose, but the last few minutes at the end of our séance this year is pretty fun to do. The intense reaction it gets is very satisfying.
What’s the weirdest Fringe performance you’ve ever seen?
Stuart: I saw a fantastically surreal show called Zeitgeist by a company called Zen Zen Zo at the 2009 festival. It was a physical theatre show that used a form of dance called Butoh, all of the cast were completely naked and powdered white. Not the sort of stuff you see on Britain's Got Talent.
Your TV shows and BBC3 clips have had amazing reviews. Is there anything else in the pipeline for TV work after the Fringe or do you prefer to concentrate on live performance?
Stuart: We have a TV project in the works at the moment that is pretty exciting and different, and are working with the BBC to expand the bbc.co.uk/barryandstuart page with lots of cutting edge technological tricks that we show people how to perform on-line themselves.
Barry: We are always working on new live material, performing live is often more satisfying for us because the interaction with real people makes each performance unique. For us it’s an adrenaline rush because if tricks go wrong, there is no second take!
Barry and Stuart: 98% Seance will be at Underbelly from August 9th-29th.
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