Article Steve Axtell Coming to England

Here is a newspaper article about my coming to the S. Tyneside Magic Convention in England.



All the tricks in the book

10:39am Monday 9th March 2009


Steve Axtell, puppet master and maker of magic items, talks to Steve Pratt ahead of South Shield’s magic festival.

THIRTY years ago, Steve Axtell was a boy with hopes of becoming a performer. He made his own puppets and did shows at his local church. Then, after he was featured in a story in the local newspaper, his proud mother sent a cutting to Muppet Show supremo Jim Henson.

The reaction wasn’t quite what 14- year-old Steve was hoping for. “When he received my picture he saw I was making copies of his characters. He wrote back and said ‘please don’t make my characters, find your own look’,” recalls Axtell.

Maybe it was a harsh thing to say to a boy, but it was good advice. Today, from its base in California, Axtell Expressions provides puppets all over the world, from big stage shows on Broadway and theme parks to churches and schools.

The company’s puppets and magic items have appeared in movies such as Planet Of The Apes and the show starring America’s Got Talent winner Terry Fator, at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Several Axtell puppets will feature in the next series of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent. Ventriloquist Jay Johnson recently won a Tony award for a Broadway show featuring Axtell’s bird arm illusion.

Axtell makes his performing debut in this country in South Shields as part of the sixth International Magic Festival.

The week-long convention in South Tyneside, which features public and schools performances, boasts UK names like Paul Daniels and comedy compere Tim Vine, as well as US stars including Banachek and Bob Sheets.

Axtell gave up his dream of performing full-time when he married and had children because it would have taken him away from home too much.

Instead, he concentrated on designing and manufacturing puppets and magic items. What started out in a garage in Ohio is now a world leader in puppet and magic development.

“The uniqueness of what we do can’t be copied, although others have tried.

Our look is really unique and being used by the top people in the field,” he says. He also goes into areas you might not expect, providing missionaries and Sunday school teachers with puppets for use in their work presenting the gospels.

“It’s a good thing to have in a Sunday school classroom. Take a puppet character, say a duck, and maybe use in the Noah’s Ark story. Or to tell an Old Testament story or just teach how to pray,”

he says. “That’s how I began. We were using them in church before we started in the other areas. We have professional speakers, motivational speakers using them.”

ONE of the trickiest jobs was for a top variety act in Japan. He created the idea for an alien mother who carried two alien babies in a box and one in a backpack. He flew to California to design it with Axtell’s team. The result was a man in a body suit, including fake arms and body parts, that looked and moved like an alien. It didn’t come cheap, costing about $30,000.

He’s now developing a hands-free puppet. New technology is making this possible. “This will allow for the puppets and characters to be just like Disneyland,”

he says. “Technology develops fast. There is the ability for a performer to think and have that thought translated into the speech of the puppet character. But it’s unaffordable at the moment.”

For the past few years, he’s been working with an engineer on animatronic puppets. “The challenge is how to do it and how expensive it will be,”

he says.

The South Tyneside visit marks Axtell’s first time lecturing and performing in Europe. It’s quite a coup for the magic festival, organised by magician Martin Duffy.

The event began after South Tyneside Council looked for a way of attracting people to the region. Duffy had done some work with the council and the idea for a magic convention was born. The first year some 70 people attended, now it’s nearing 200. Its size is dictated by the space at the Customs House, South Shields.

Along with lectures and shows for delegates, there’s a programme of public shows and a children’s programme that has teams of magicians visiting schools in the region.

southtyneside.info/magicfestival