September 22, 2024 • 11 mins
World-renowned illusionist and 'International Magician of the Year', Cosentino, is bringing his spectacular new live show Decennium to Christchurch in November.
Decennium is a 90-minute stage spectacular, which was written, produced, and choreographed by Cosentino. He'll perform his most death-defying escapes that will thrill your senses, his greatest mind-boggling stage illusions and cutting-edge street magic that twists your view of reality.
He spoke to John MacDonald on Canterbury Mornings about how magic taught him to read at age 12.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Canterbury Morning's Podcast with John McDonald
from News Talk z'b so.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In November, Corzantino, who was a magician and illusionist from Australia,
is coming to christ Church for shortly. There'll be a
chance for you to win tickets to the show. But
Cosantino is is with us now morning. Do what do
I call you? Corsantina or what do I call you?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
You could call me because for short that's not a
problem at all.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I would have thought Cozy would have been more on Aussie.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
That is fine too. I'm not offended by any other name.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That's all good, all right, all right, Cozy. I've never
spoken of someone called Cozzi before. I'm intrigued about where
this all started for you, because you couldn't read when
you were age twelve? Could you?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
And my mother was a school principal and my father
is a structural engineer, so they were going absolutely mad
trying to figure out what was wrong, and I looking,
I was very shyky, very reluctant reader. My mother, as
a principal, had this bright idea that she take we
sort of local library and kind of forced me to read, which,
of course if you can't read, that's the last place
you want to be. But she was quite clever. She
(01:14):
set me down and she said, you know, choose a book.
And I basically chose a book with pictures. And the
book I chose had these old varda billion posters pictures
of very famous magicians. And we've worad the book and
we took it home and before bear my mother would
read these exciting adventures and escapades of these very famous
magicians from the late eighteen early nineteen hundreds. And in
(01:35):
the back of the book there was magic tricks. So
she said, let's learn a trick, and she read, you
first have to read the description of the trick and
then the secret of the methad. And in order to
learn the effect, you have to break down each word
and analyze it. Stop, pause, grab a pack of card cards,
re read the description again, go back. So it was
this process of really analyzing the words, and through this
(01:57):
I slowly but surely learned to read, and then gained
a very unique skill, which was the skill of magic,
which became my hobby at first and my passion and
then my career.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So was your mother blown away that you pecking up
that book achieved what she had been trying to achieve
I mentioned for a number of years.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yes, so what she did is she unlocked I wasn't
getting the kind of the attention that I needed, and
the process breaking it all down and slowing it down,
and so my learning I had to be taught in
a different way, a different manner. And my mother, being
quite cluding she should, she would always say to my teacher,
(02:39):
my son's really really clever. He can recite this and
he remembers this, and they're like, nah, it's actually not
and you know, they're like, you know, the old moms
think their kids to genius. And so she was like, no, no,
I actually think it's a little clever. And I could
remember all these lines from movies and recite the theme
word for word and acted or anyway, And so she
didn't give up on me. And to be honest, it's
(03:01):
kind of fast tracking a little bit later on, my
mother was a principal form for sixteen years, and she
actually want a scholarship the Harvard University. With a unique
approach to teaching, and in her schools she would actually
teach with believe it or not, magic Rubik's cubes, and
she would teach with just a different approaches. So anyway,
she unlocked a little secret for herself, a teaching secret,
(03:22):
and I unlocked this ability to be able to well,
gain this confidence to be able to read. And she
just knew that it was a different angle, different approach,
and it had to be slowed down.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So you can read, now, can you?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I can. I've written many many books too. If you
would have said to me, what is the one of Actually,
if you had asked my mother what is she most
proud of, if she would say, I don't know the
seven books that he's written, the best selling books. So
from a kid who couldn't read, who hated reading, to
then finding a passion and a career and then becoming
an author is very surreal for me.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
What is it that makes you a magician? Is there something?
Because you know, I'm not going to dispel or ask
you to dispel any meths or any of that carry on,
But does it take a special something in the brain
to make you capable of being a magician and an illusionist?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yes? I think like anything, anyone could learn a magic trick,
turning anyone can do a trick, but making it look
like magic. I think it's a different skill. Anyone can
pick up a tennis record and play tennis. I don't
know if you're going to be a tennis champion. There's
you know, there's that aspect to it. So what makes
in my opinion, First off, there's dexterity involved, which requires
(04:32):
you know, slide of hand skill. There's there's a real
flair for showmanship and presentation, so you can wrap the
trick up in mystery and storytelling, and it goes from
being a trick to being an illusion. What is the difference, Well,
you know your body. You can create the illusion of
the way the way your body moves can create different illusions.
I mean, Michael Jackson did a moonwalk? Can it look
like he was walking forward to it was going backwards?
(04:53):
So there's that aspect creating the illusion of seemingly reading
somebody's mind. And so all of that requires a different
skill psychology, body language, under management of the audience and
all those and then of course in my show I
mix it with humor and dance, so it requires a
number of disciplines, not just I guess kind of learning
(05:17):
a trick. And then if you study all those aspects
and you're passionate about it and you and you're you've
got kind of a natural flare for it. Then you
can really, you know, turn it into something.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
What's an illusion that you're proud of, st Off, that
you've pulled off.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Oh wow, that's really really tough.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
In this show, there's you know, we do this beautiful
levitation in the show and you're posting, oh, you know,
magicians levitate. Yeah, that's true. We go through kind of
the fundamentals of magic, which is, you know, we've got
appears and disappears and teleports and levitates and solitude solid
and know I void to death. But whatever is this levitation?
It's mine joy and I talk about it and show
it's my interpretation of levitation. And why I like it
(05:57):
is it's very pretty, it's very romantic, it's sexy, and
it's a juxtaposition to you know, the deathifying stunts where
I'm kind of hanging upside down and it's crazy kind
of knives kind of been thrown at me. So it's
just a nice balance and I think that that part
of the show really draws people in.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So you don't cut me one in half.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
We do, but we do it in a manner unlike
anyone before, because it's really interesting, because this is my
best of tour, just sending him, you know, the greatest hits,
which is of course London. For a decade, I had
to to some degree appeal to the audience. So you're
a magician, you saw someone in half? I mean you
asked the question yourself so many For many many years,
I never did sawing in half because it felt too traditional.
(06:42):
But then there's also the aspect of the audience going
I did saw only one in half or no one
leavitated I expected, So I want to appeal to that.
But we do it a very different way. It's do
with clear boxes, perspex boxes. You can see the assisted
the entire time, from top, top to toe. There's nowhere
to hide, and believe it or not, it satisfies that appetitem.
Oh he saw someone in half, but that in a
(07:02):
very different manner, and in a very baffling manner.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Wow, is it possible?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Now?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This might be the answer to This might be the
shortest answer to any question in radio history. Right, is
it possible to do an illusion over the phone.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
It's it's challenging. It's difficult because even if you were
to try and do a mind reading effect, let's say,
without me being able to look at you or see
your body language. Makes it very, very difficult, because look,
if I could really read minds and I could predict
the future, then right now I'd be in the Bahamas.
I would have won the lottery, and I'd be sipping cocktail,
of course.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And I'll be there.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I'll there would be correct, then John, you let me
know where you want to go next to me, I'll
click my fingers and we would go. So unfortunately I
don't have that ability, but I have the ability to
create the illusion that I'm able to tell you, oh,
this is what you're thinking of, this is this is
this is what happened in your past. But I really
don't have any special magical power. So a lot of
(07:59):
it is psychology and body language. A lot of it
is what we call misdirection or attention management, tension diversion,
and all these aspects working together with this showmanship, and
of course the music and and and the way I
use my speech or help to enhance the effect and
create your overallusion that hey, I can read your mind
(08:19):
and predict the future.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So no, right, so I'm not going to ask you
to read my mind, because who knows what you'd come
up with. What I ended to do is we have
some double pass for people to be on to win,
and we're going to open the phone shortly and ask them,
you know, if they could wave a magic wand And
forgive me if that sounds like being dismissive about you know, magic,
(08:43):
But when I ask you if you could, mate, if
you could wave a magic wand to fix something, what
would that something be? What about you? If you if
you could do that, what would it be?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Oh gosh, what would it be? To what could I fix?
There's so many things I could fix. My gosh, if
I'm being really honest, and I don't want to be
a bit morbid. But my my grandma, my non, who
is a big influence on me. She used to create
all my costumes and all my when I was first
starting out. She would spend hours with me helping me.
(09:16):
I used to make birds appear me you have special pockets,
and she'd just be so patient with me. She passed yesterday,
So if I could turn back time or waver one,
it would be that. Oh I don't want to val
on it too much.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
No, I'm very sorry about that, but I can I
can understand why you'd want to do that. Man, is
it daunting going on stage trying to do the stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
There's no room for error. So so for example, if
I was a singer and I hit a bad note,
I mean, obviously I could be embarrassing, but the recoveries
sometimes the audis wouldn't even hear that. I thought, what
I do if I hit a bad note, I slip up.
The audience will see how the effect is done, and
it ruins the magic or worse, if you're doing a
stunt on an escape or your heads inside a Perspex
(09:59):
box with kitchen knives hanging above it, a little mistake,
can you end up in the emergency room. And it's
happened many many times, So it's not a it's not
a dramatic kind of expression.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And obviously with those stunts, for example, there's no the
margin is very, very small, and the insurance is very high.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was going to say it sounds like a health
and safety nightmare.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It really is. And it's so funny because often people say, ah,
their arms aren't real, they're not real locks. I can
assure you they're real knives. For a locks. I'm really
holding my breath. I didn't train for it to pretend
they're not real. And more importantly, unfortunately for me, the
insurance attached to do these things and get these things
through customs and into other countries is very, very real.
Could you imagine who's having the last last ed? Like here,
(10:44):
I am on stage doing fake escapes without real chains
or locks, and I'm paying real insurance.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, well, remind me, remind me not to follow you
through through customs to get in the flat on time. Hey,
brilliant to talk to you, mate, and we'll see a
November pleasure.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Thanks for having me. Cannot wait to see everyone the show.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
For more from Canterbory Mornings with John McDonald, listen live
to news talks It'd be Christian. It's from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Canterbury Morning's Podcast with John McDonald
from News Talk z'b so.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In November, Corzantino, who was a magician and illusionist from Australia,
is coming to christ Church for shortly. There'll be a
chance for you to win tickets to the show. But
Cosantino is is with us now morning. Do what do
I call you? Corsantina or what do I call you?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
You could call me because for short that's not a
problem at all.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I would have thought Cozy would have been more on Aussie.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
That is fine too. I'm not offended by any other name.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That's all good, all right, all right, Cozy. I've never
spoken of someone called Cozzi before. I'm intrigued about where
this all started for you, because you couldn't read when
you were age twelve? Could you?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
And my mother was a school principal and my father
is a structural engineer, so they were going absolutely mad
trying to figure out what was wrong, and I looking,
I was very shyky, very reluctant reader. My mother, as
a principal, had this bright idea that she take we
sort of local library and kind of forced me to read, which,
of course if you can't read, that's the last place
you want to be. But she was quite clever. She
(01:14):
set me down and she said, you know, choose a book.
And I basically chose a book with pictures. And the
book I chose had these old varda billion posters pictures
of very famous magicians. And we've worad the book and
we took it home and before bear my mother would
read these exciting adventures and escapades of these very famous
magicians from the late eighteen early nineteen hundreds. And in
(01:35):
the back of the book there was magic tricks. So
she said, let's learn a trick, and she read, you
first have to read the description of the trick and
then the secret of the methad. And in order to
learn the effect, you have to break down each word
and analyze it. Stop, pause, grab a pack of card cards,
re read the description again, go back. So it was
this process of really analyzing the words, and through this
(01:57):
I slowly but surely learned to read, and then gained
a very unique skill, which was the skill of magic,
which became my hobby at first and my passion and
then my career.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So was your mother blown away that you pecking up
that book achieved what she had been trying to achieve
I mentioned for a number of years.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yes, so what she did is she unlocked I wasn't
getting the kind of the attention that I needed, and
the process breaking it all down and slowing it down,
and so my learning I had to be taught in
a different way, a different manner. And my mother, being
quite cluding she should, she would always say to my teacher,
(02:39):
my son's really really clever. He can recite this and
he remembers this, and they're like, nah, it's actually not
and you know, they're like, you know, the old moms
think their kids to genius. And so she was like, no, no,
I actually think it's a little clever. And I could
remember all these lines from movies and recite the theme
word for word and acted or anyway, And so she
didn't give up on me. And to be honest, it's
(03:01):
kind of fast tracking a little bit later on, my
mother was a principal form for sixteen years, and she
actually want a scholarship the Harvard University. With a unique
approach to teaching, and in her schools she would actually
teach with believe it or not, magic Rubik's cubes, and
she would teach with just a different approaches. So anyway,
she unlocked a little secret for herself, a teaching secret,
(03:22):
and I unlocked this ability to be able to well,
gain this confidence to be able to read. And she
just knew that it was a different angle, different approach,
and it had to be slowed down.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So you can read, now, can you?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I can. I've written many many books too. If you
would have said to me, what is the one of Actually,
if you had asked my mother what is she most
proud of, if she would say, I don't know the
seven books that he's written, the best selling books. So
from a kid who couldn't read, who hated reading, to
then finding a passion and a career and then becoming
an author is very surreal for me.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
What is it that makes you a magician? Is there something?
Because you know, I'm not going to dispel or ask
you to dispel any meths or any of that carry on,
But does it take a special something in the brain
to make you capable of being a magician and an illusionist?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yes? I think like anything, anyone could learn a magic trick,
turning anyone can do a trick, but making it look
like magic. I think it's a different skill. Anyone can
pick up a tennis record and play tennis. I don't
know if you're going to be a tennis champion. There's
you know, there's that aspect to it. So what makes
in my opinion, First off, there's dexterity involved, which requires
(04:32):
you know, slide of hand skill. There's there's a real
flair for showmanship and presentation, so you can wrap the
trick up in mystery and storytelling, and it goes from
being a trick to being an illusion. What is the difference, Well,
you know your body. You can create the illusion of
the way the way your body moves can create different illusions.
I mean, Michael Jackson did a moonwalk? Can it look
like he was walking forward to it was going backwards?
(04:53):
So there's that aspect creating the illusion of seemingly reading
somebody's mind. And so all of that requires a different
skill psychology, body language, under management of the audience and
all those and then of course in my show I
mix it with humor and dance, so it requires a
number of disciplines, not just I guess kind of learning
(05:17):
a trick. And then if you study all those aspects
and you're passionate about it and you and you're you've
got kind of a natural flare for it. Then you
can really, you know, turn it into something.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
What's an illusion that you're proud of, st Off, that
you've pulled off.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Oh wow, that's really really tough.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
In this show, there's you know, we do this beautiful
levitation in the show and you're posting, oh, you know,
magicians levitate. Yeah, that's true. We go through kind of
the fundamentals of magic, which is, you know, we've got
appears and disappears and teleports and levitates and solitude solid
and know I void to death. But whatever is this levitation?
It's mine joy and I talk about it and show
it's my interpretation of levitation. And why I like it
(05:57):
is it's very pretty, it's very romantic, it's sexy, and
it's a juxtaposition to you know, the deathifying stunts where
I'm kind of hanging upside down and it's crazy kind
of knives kind of been thrown at me. So it's
just a nice balance and I think that that part
of the show really draws people in.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So you don't cut me one in half.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
We do, but we do it in a manner unlike
anyone before, because it's really interesting, because this is my
best of tour, just sending him, you know, the greatest hits,
which is of course London. For a decade, I had
to to some degree appeal to the audience. So you're
a magician, you saw someone in half? I mean you
asked the question yourself so many For many many years,
I never did sawing in half because it felt too traditional.
(06:42):
But then there's also the aspect of the audience going
I did saw only one in half or no one
leavitated I expected, So I want to appeal to that.
But we do it a very different way. It's do
with clear boxes, perspex boxes. You can see the assisted
the entire time, from top, top to toe. There's nowhere
to hide, and believe it or not, it satisfies that appetitem.
Oh he saw someone in half, but that in a
(07:02):
very different manner, and in a very baffling manner.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Wow, is it possible?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Now?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This might be the answer to This might be the
shortest answer to any question in radio history. Right, is
it possible to do an illusion over the phone.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
It's it's challenging. It's difficult because even if you were
to try and do a mind reading effect, let's say,
without me being able to look at you or see
your body language. Makes it very, very difficult, because look,
if I could really read minds and I could predict
the future, then right now I'd be in the Bahamas.
I would have won the lottery, and I'd be sipping cocktail,
of course.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And I'll be there.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I'll there would be correct, then John, you let me
know where you want to go next to me, I'll
click my fingers and we would go. So unfortunately I
don't have that ability, but I have the ability to
create the illusion that I'm able to tell you, oh,
this is what you're thinking of, this is this is
this is what happened in your past. But I really
don't have any special magical power. So a lot of
(07:59):
it is psychology and body language. A lot of it
is what we call misdirection or attention management, tension diversion,
and all these aspects working together with this showmanship, and
of course the music and and and the way I
use my speech or help to enhance the effect and
create your overallusion that hey, I can read your mind
(08:19):
and predict the future.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So no, right, so I'm not going to ask you
to read my mind, because who knows what you'd come
up with. What I ended to do is we have
some double pass for people to be on to win,
and we're going to open the phone shortly and ask them,
you know, if they could wave a magic wand And
forgive me if that sounds like being dismissive about you know, magic,
(08:43):
But when I ask you if you could, mate, if
you could wave a magic wand to fix something, what
would that something be? What about you? If you if
you could do that, what would it be?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Oh gosh, what would it be? To what could I fix?
There's so many things I could fix. My gosh, if
I'm being really honest, and I don't want to be
a bit morbid. But my my grandma, my non, who
is a big influence on me. She used to create
all my costumes and all my when I was first
starting out. She would spend hours with me helping me.
(09:16):
I used to make birds appear me you have special pockets,
and she'd just be so patient with me. She passed yesterday,
So if I could turn back time or waver one,
it would be that. Oh I don't want to val
on it too much.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
No, I'm very sorry about that, but I can I
can understand why you'd want to do that. Man, is
it daunting going on stage trying to do the stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
There's no room for error. So so for example, if
I was a singer and I hit a bad note,
I mean, obviously I could be embarrassing, but the recoveries
sometimes the audis wouldn't even hear that. I thought, what
I do if I hit a bad note, I slip up.
The audience will see how the effect is done, and
it ruins the magic or worse, if you're doing a
stunt on an escape or your heads inside a Perspex
(09:59):
box with kitchen knives hanging above it, a little mistake,
can you end up in the emergency room. And it's
happened many many times, So it's not a it's not
a dramatic kind of expression.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And obviously with those stunts, for example, there's no the
margin is very, very small, and the insurance is very high.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was going to say it sounds like a health
and safety nightmare.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It really is. And it's so funny because often people say, ah,
their arms aren't real, they're not real locks. I can
assure you they're real knives. For a locks. I'm really
holding my breath. I didn't train for it to pretend
they're not real. And more importantly, unfortunately for me, the
insurance attached to do these things and get these things
through customs and into other countries is very, very real.
Could you imagine who's having the last last ed? Like here,
(10:44):
I am on stage doing fake escapes without real chains
or locks, and I'm paying real insurance.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, well, remind me, remind me not to follow you
through through customs to get in the flat on time. Hey,
brilliant to talk to you, mate, and we'll see a
November pleasure.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Thanks for having me. Cannot wait to see everyone the show.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
For more from Canterbory Mornings with John McDonald, listen live
to news talks It'd be Christian. It's from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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