Interview with John Teo

While we were fishing information out of Mr John Teo, President of Singapore’s IBM, for his featured artist page, we took the chance to ask him questions pertaining to IBM, Personal Experiences, FISM 2009, and Inventing Magic. He was also the hot favourite person to interview from our survey conducted a few weeks back! Special thanks to him for taking the time to answer our questions.

We have converted it to .pdf format so that you guys can download it and read it offline for your convenience! Enjoy!

John Teo Interview Transcript PDF

Transcript of the Interview with John Teo

Thor: What are your notable magic achievements and awards?

John: I’m not a full time performer but certainly I am fascinated by magic because of the creativity involved in the thinking process. As you can see magic is not real and yet the performer makes it look as though its real and when you show someone a magic trick, they can freak out especially the ladies. So that shows that there’s something very creative about the method of magic and that is what interests me; the artistic form of magic.
When I talk about the artistic form of magic, I’m not talking about the technicality part of magic, such as sleight of hand and so on. To me its more about the performing part; the artistic part and the delivery involved. I talk about that maybe because I’m a trainer and training involves delivery. What you know and how you transfer the thinking to the audience. But in many ways I see many similarities between this and magic, in a sense that you are transmitting a magic effect across to the audience. You can transmit in a way that it is a puzzle or a miracle, and the audiences will perceive your magic differently. So I think its all in the method of presentation, the method of doing it is actually concealed. So to me the method is not that important but rather the presentation.
What is more interesting would be who can come up with a presentational idea in the first place. So it’s the creativity part that always interests me, so if you ask me for achievements, I’m always interested in the creativity part so even when I was in my secondary school, I actually subscribed to a magic magazine. Sometimes I read a trick I find that it can be presented differently so I decided to write to the publisher and submit my idea. I was surprised the publisher took my idea and published it.
I took part in a competition quite some time ago, a magic dealer by the name of Sterling Magic. They are supposed to be the best manufacturers of gimmicked coin magic. They opened up a competition to the world where anyone can submit their presentation idea to a gimmick they produced. I got 4th position and the entry I submitted was later published in a book entitled “Card Coin Wizardry” Actually it was a compilation of the winning entries submitted in the competition. You can see that most of the contributors were from Europe but I’m the only one from Asia. Nowadays ill always take part in any magic competition which involves coming up with new presentation ideas.

Vogue: How did you get your appointment as the president of IBM?

John: Long time ago, our president for the Singapore branch of IBM, was named The Great Wong. He cannot speak English very well. He specializes in stage magic and he was very good at making props. He was from China and in fact the whole world came to know him through his linking rings routine.
When he passed on, nobody wanted to take over. So they asked me to take over. No one wanted to take over because if you are the president, everybody looks upon you for guidance, what are we supposed to do, how to bring the club to greater heights. Its just like managing a company except you don’t get paid like you guys who came up with this website out of passion. You will need funds you have to keep the program alive.

Thor: Who’s your favorite magician?

John: First of all my favorite type of magic tends towards entertainment, not so much on sleight of hand. So my favorite magician would fall into that category. But I am also interested in mentalism. If you are talking about my favorite magician, I’ve been admiring this magician for long time but he’s not very famous only recently he put out a Dvd and I’ve written a review for his Dvd at Magic Boutique. I like him very much because he’s very ingenious. The methods to perform his magic are based on ingenuity rather than complicated sleight of hand. My other favorite magician is Max Maven, but other than that I like almost every other professional magician because every one of them has their own specialty.

Vogue: Would you say that magic has evolved through this time?

John: Yes. You see to me in the past when people watched magic, they would always imagine someone dressed very nice in a coat and performing magic on stage. Then the era changed when Doug Henning performed stage magic but in colorful jeans and because of him magicians started to shed away their traditional attire. So from what I know, the scene of magic changed with Doug Henning. It was unfortunate he went to meditation and retired from the scene. He was one of my favorite magicians.
David Copperfield was part of the mainstream but to me he didn’t change the history of magic. Who changed it? I think its David Blaine. My personal opinion. Why? Because all the time people always thought of magicians on stage perform grand illusions. But the trend of performing street magic was popularized by David Blaine.

John: David Copperfield used to come to Singapore quite often in the past…

Vogue: He almost came last year right? Almost?

John: Yes. And in one of the trips, one of the reporters from one of the newspaper called me up and say “can I offer you something interesting?” I said, “Yes” “I’ll buy you the first class seat, right in the front in the show and you will seat beside me and then you will have to provide me with a running commentary of what David Copperfield is performing.

John: So I said no problem. But he said you also must tell me how he does the trick. I said “No way”. He asked me why and I replied “Because we have a kind of oath, not oath la, but if I show you this you will understand.”

Shows us his IBM membership card…

John: There is a kind of pledge when we join the IBM and hence I told the reporter that “look I cannot reveal any of the secrets to you” The reporter went silent. Hence I knew the first class seats were gone. But anyways she wanted to write an article on David Copperfield and she asked me what do you think is the most impressive feat that David Copperfield have done?

John: So I told her “from whose point of view? “From the audience or from the magician’s point of view?” She said from a magician’s point of view. So I told her “actually, every TV special of David Copperfield there will be one major illusion, like he makes the statue of liberty disappear or he walks through the great wall, BUT that does not excite me as a magician. I’m more interested in the stage magic he does in front of a live audience. That is the one where audiences usually see magic perform and there is where you can see the difference between a David Copperfield performance against an ordinary stage magic performance. You can see how professional he is, but not many local magicians or international magicians have got the financial strength to do grand illusions because you need a lot of money to do that, to build the props and to accomplish such a feat. So in that sense, David Copperfield has little competition in that area. However, in the stage magic performances, he is actually competing against all the other magicians and that is where you can see how professionalism is being done as far as magic is being concerned. Big illusions may impress the audience but not for me as a magician. I think you know where I am coming from now.

Thor: So you hold monthly meetings in IBM and you get to see a lot of magicians. So would you like to name an up and coming magician?

John: Is JC Sum considered?

Thor: Well… He’s already a professional magician. Up already. Haha.

John: What about Jeremy Pei?

Vogue: Up already… But he is quite young, 24 only.

John: Do you guys know Nique? The secretary of IBM? Have you seen his magic?

Vogue: Nope…

John: You should start seeing his magic. He started as a close-up magician. He is very very good in sleight of hand. But because he turned full time into magic he knows that he must do children’s magic and all those and hence he went into general magic but he is very very good in sleight of hand and mentalism. He has been around for some time and he is in his early 20s.

Vogue: So anyways is IBM sending anyone for FISM this year?

John: We are not sending people as such but..

Vogue: Jeremy Pei?

John: Yes Jeremy Pei is competing, I don’t know if you should put it there. Yes, I have to approve of him because now FISM says that they don’t want to accept any Tom, Dick, or Harry magician because some of the magicians’ standard is very terrible so now all those who want to perform in FISM must go through the president of IBM of that country. So Jeremy approached me and of course I supported and endorsed him. But he will be competing in the…

Thor: Close-up category?

John: Yeah. Definitely. Cause the Stage category is way too hard.

Thor: (nods heads) anyways, so tell us something that will freak us all out!

John: I don’t have anything lar..

Vogue: Just anything that will surprise us, like you are BATMAN! Hahaha.

John: I like to create things, That’s all I can say.

Thor: So how are your ideas born?

John: Usually, my ideas are born through another idea. Somebody thought of something which sparked something in me “Hey it can be done in another way!” and it becomes totally different. So maybe I’m not that impressive to be able to think of something out of nothing but if i can get an idea from something, it may give birth to some other ideas. The ideas may be quite original in the sense that you would never have thought that I got it from another idea, like it would not be linked! So maybe that’s my specialty.

Vogue: OK last question, so what do you think about the magic scene in Singapore now?

John: I’m not the best person to ask this question as I’m not into magic full-time but I shall give you my 2-cents worth. I think it’s getting better now! Other than JC, you have Lawrence Khong and his daughter. With the help of these few people, magic is being promoted in Singapore, especially J C, because he is very…

Thor: Made magic really mainstream…

John: Yea, that’s the word, and I really salute them because they help put Singapore, which is so small, into the world map of Magic. Magic shows like the one on “Zhong Yi Da Ge Da” also help promote interest in magic. Also people like you! Come out with a blog and something…

Thor: Hopefully it will grow! Ok. Thanks for your time!

John: No problem.

Tags: Freelance Trainer, IBM, Inventor, John Teo, magician, Part-time, singapore