Darius Ziatabari delivers traditional and contemporary magic in his own unique and expressive style – one of the reasons he’s been a member of the Magic Circle since the age of 18.
This year he performs in Glastonbury Festival’s Theatre & Circus fields (find his acts on the line-up under Darius Magic). We caught up with him to find out more about his plans for the shows.
Q&A with Darius Ziatabari aka Darius Magic
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
A. I live right next to Brockwell Park in Brixton, London with my wife Antje and 4-year-old daughter, Lilly. I’ve been performing magic since my uncle gave me a magic box aged 6. Invitations to perform have allowed me to meet some of the most weird and wonderful artists over the years. I’ve been a member of the Magic Circle since 18 and am now 44.
Q. How did you get into live performance?
A. I’ve been performing magic at musical festivals since I was 13 and typically do 4 musical festivals a year. I’ve had inspiration through some of the big-name guys whom I got to know personally over the years including David Blaine, Teller and Uri Geller. Invitations to perform magic have got me into the most weird and wonderful people’s lives.
For me, magic is all about the person-to-person connection. Back in the day I was a frequenter of Reading Festival and got to know the founders Vincent & Morris Powers (Mean Fiddler). The Glade Festival was one of the wildest dance festivals in the UK and Anselm Guise one of the founders remains a friend. Secret Garden Party was an annual performance ground for me and the festival live performance environment allowed me to bustle around like a ferret, which I do best.
Hypnosis and its ability to alter someone’s reality so rapidly still blows my mind when I perform it. It’s an absolute head fuck to get someone to forget their name, and stand glued to the floor like a human statue, especially whilst in the middle of a busy festival.
What’s it like to be performing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival?
My first Glastonbury was 19 years ago. It was instant love at first site and I’ve been coming back and performing ever since. The Circus Area makes Glastonbury unique from any other festival. Many of the performers are world-class acts. Haggis McLeod is such a brilliant man. He organises the Theatre and Circus areas and does such a fantastic job of it every year.
It’s not an easy task to balance acts, running orders and making sure the quality is continually high. I genuinely think that Haggis and his team add that special extra that makes Glastonbury so special. It’s amazing to see both adult’s and children’s faces light up as puppeteers, method actors and dressed-up lunatics add something special to the Theatre & Circus areas over the weekend.
I will be performing both strolling close-up magic, mind reading and hypnosis as well as doing an all-audience participation, mind-reading stage show on the Sunday at the. I’m also performing at the Wishing Well Stage and have a little private magic birthday performance for Ben Eavis’ crew.
What can you tell us about your plans for the shows?
The close-up magic and hypnosis is very personal and I’ve got a load of fresh new material for this year. I’m currently loving the concept of telling someone the date when they were born without having met them before and will be interweaving this within my performance. Experiencing hypnosis is also a really interesting phenomena and I will be exploring some interesting demonstrations, including loss of name, inability to count and if I’m lucky complete memory loss of where or who someone is.
How do you approach performing at a festival like this?
With my magic, my philosophy is quite simple. If I utterly blow someone’s mind and shift their emotional state to one of complete amazement, then I’ve done a good job. The goal is to make them positively remember the powerful moment for the rest of their lives.
With hypnosis, for me, it’s really important that the person who has trusted me has an interesting and positive experience that at the end of the demonstrations, they feel good and happy about themselves. I resent it when hypnotists have people laugh at the subjects for doing silly things, such as clucking like a chicken.
The stage show will be fun and interactive and involves a mind-reading challenge. It involves all the audience and will also have some hypnosis mixed in. The audience winner will leave with a prize.
Will you be checking out any other acts across the weekend?
Funnily enough, I saw Neil Young on the Pyramid 16 years ago and everyone back then thought it would be his last time performing at Glastonbury. The guy is a legend. I love the Libertines. I can’t wait to see The Brian Jonestown Massacre as well as a load of other acts. Whilst many get stuck into the music, there are some incredible shows going on in the Circus Area and me and my wife Antje often sneak into some of the late-night shows.
