Derek DelGaudio and Helder Guimarães Created the Most Popular Show at the Magic Castle in Years. But They're Not Finished

They can get pretty far into the discussion without picking up a deck of cards. Sometimes, in the middle of brainstorming a solution, they'll sit for an hour and think in silence. Or they take walks around Hollywood until 4 or 5 in the morning.

Penn Jillette started off as more of a juggling specialist before teaming with a magician named Teller. Siegfried was originally the illusionist — Roy befriended the exotic animals. But one reason DelGaudio and Guimarães think they're so successful as a pair is that they don't need to be one. They'd each be fine going solo and will continue to work individually after the Geffen run ends.

PHOTO BY KEVIN SCANLON

TRUTH IN DECEPTION

Kevin Scanlon

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More About

• Helder Guimaraes
• Neil Patrick Harris
• Glenn Kaino
• Magic and Illusions
• Card Games

Yet each insists the show wouldn't work without the other. During a couple performances, the chess routine started to go wrong — though the audience didn't know it. Both magicians had to realize what had happened and help each other bring the routine back on track. "We started having an invisible dialogue and we started fixing invisible problems," DelGaudio says.

"I couldn't do that with anyone else," Guimarães adds. "I know exactly what you are thinking."

And then there's the box, which they ask a volunteer from the audience to hide. Some magicians thought it was insane to entrust the trick so completely to a stranger. (During one performance, a volunteer got lost and didn't come back for 10 minutes.)

But DelGaudio and Guimarães feel they have no choice but to push the envelope, pressing back against a world that's already conspiring against their chosen field.

"That's no joke when we say magic is irrelevant," DelGaudio says. Traditionally, magic audiences "wanted to be removed from this world and reminded that we live in a world beyond what we know. And now we go to movies for that. And now we have iPads for that. ... I think that makes it even more beautiful when it is made relevant again."