By Christina Radish

Criss Angel at the "Criss Angel: Believe," for Cirque du Soleil, opening night gala held at the Luxor Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 31, 2008.

Criss Angel, born Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos, became a household name with his A&E television series, Mindfreak, during which he performs potentially life-threatening acts for the public to witness, all over the streets of Las Vegas. A fan and admirer of Harry Houdini, the 40-year-old New York native, who is also a two-time Merlin Magician of the Year award winner, originally came up with the concept for “Criss Angel: Believe” 15 years ago, and has spent the last two years re-imagining the concept with Cirque du Soleil. With 18 shows, including fixed and touring productions, currently running, simultaneously, all over the world, Cirque has been attended by 80 million individuals, since its inception.

Criss Angel recently spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about taking what he has become famous for on his successful television series, Mindfreak, to the stage, in a custom-built theater at Luxor Las Vegas, which will likely be the home of the show for many years to come.

MediaBlvd Magazine> What made you want to team up with Cirque du Soleil for your live show?

Criss Angel> Many, many years ago, I had the opportunity to watch Cirque, in one of their first television productions, and I was in awe of the artistry, the poetry and the emotion that was evoked. Cirque du Soleil is the best at the magic of emotion, without even doing illusion. My dream was to do what Cirque did for the circus, and try to really bend the perception of how you want the public to think about magic. When I made my first pilgrimage here, to Las Vegas, I remember staying at a hotel that was $49, and I had about $300 in my pocket. I remember being in the Luxor Theatre, watching a show by the Blue Man Group, and going out on the Strip and seeing billboards for Siegfried & Roy, and watching “O,”16 times, or so. That was my favorite Cirque show, until mine.

MediaBlvd> When and how did you know that you wanted to have your own show?

Criss> I just had a big dream, and I always believed, as my father told me, that there’s nothing in life that you can’t achieve, if you work for it. And, that’s exactly what I did. I pretty much sacrificed my childhood, for this dream. Fifteen years ago, I dreamt it, and today, I’m living the dream. It just goes to show you that anybody can live their dream, if you believe. That’s not a line. That’s really what I believe. I’m just very, very grateful to Guy Laliberte (Cirque du Soleil founder and guide) for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime because, honestly, this is even beyond my dreams -- to work with the people of an incredible organization, like Cirque du Soleil, who are at the pinnacle of entertainment, and who have redefined entertainment, and to work with such incredible artists, from Wade Robson (choreographer) to Meredith Caron (costume designer) to Eric Serra (composer, musical director and arranger), and the list goes on and on and on. And, Serge Denoncourt has been an amazing director. Cirque could not have picked a better person to do this show with me. He really understood the vision and worked together with me, harmoniously. We tried things that one of us thought would work, and the other one thought didn’t work, but at the end of the day, we were a team, along with Cirque du Soleil and our incredible partner Felix Rappaport, CEO at the Luxor. It’s just been an amazing whirlwind for me, and I’m just so thankful, from my heart, for Guy and Felix believing in me and giving me the opportunity that so many artists will never have. Hopefully, together we will redefine magic, as we know it. I’m very proud of what we have accomplished in this show.

MediaBlvd> What were the biggest challenges with designing this show?

Criss Angel & Holly Madison at the "Criss Angel: Believe," for Cirque du Soleil, opening night gala held at the Luxor Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 31, 2008.

Criss> Speaking from my perspective, the biggest challenge was that there’s only X amount of things you can do in magic. You can make something appear, you can make something vanish, you can make something levitate, you can cut something, you can put it back together. Those are the physics of nature. That’s what you can do. And, what I wanted to do was present those concepts in a way that has never been presented on a stage before. I wanted to get rid of the boxes, and get rid of the typical presentation that would be associated with those things, and present the most sophisticated versions of things, like cutting a human being in half without any boxes or props, and give people a presentation that has the illusions woven into the fabric. So, the greatest challenge was, how do you do that? How do you take something that, typically, would be performed in a self-contained box and have it in the open? Well, you have to involve other art forms, like the costuming, the lighting and the special effects. There are so many other things that have to seamlessly work together, in order to pull that off. Because it’s never been done before, there was a long period of time that we had to do a lot of due-diligence, prototypes, trial-and-error and garbage bag tests, in order to figure out if it was even possible. So, that was incredibly challenging, and we’re very happy to have gotten through that process.

MediaBlvd> How hard was it to move your illusions from television to a live stage show?

Criss> To transfer from television to live performance was very easy for me because that’s where I come from. I’m a creature of live performances, more than television. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. I actually did about 600 performances on Broadway and 43^rd Street in New York.

MediaBlvd> Do your past successes hinder your ability to be creative?

Criss> Quite to the contrary. It’s actually helped me because doing nearly 100 episodes of the television show has really honed in on my chops and allowed me to explore a lot of very diverse illusions and things, and also develop my presentation. But, there’s a whole other side to me, as I’m sure many artists have, and I really wanted to go there. The success of the television show, and the incredible fans, worldwide, have really given me the platform to do the show, and to try some things. It’s very easy to stay inside the box and do what works. But, I try to do what hasn’t been done, and push my own envelope as an artist, to be the best that I can be. Until the day I die, I want to learn and grow, and Cirque has given me that opportunity to do that. This show is about expecting the unexpected. The title is not “Criss Angel: Mindfreak Circus.” It’s “Criss Angel: Believe,” for Cirque du Soleil. For me, it’s about showing people that there’s much more to me than just the Mindfreak thing. And, the people that know me, that are around me, know that I have a lot of areas that I really want to explore as an artist, so that I can be diverse. Doing the same things can get a little boring and you become a caricature of yourself, and I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in being the best I can be as an artist.

MediaBlvd> How did you become a magician?

Criss> I was taught my first magic trick when I was 7 years old, by my Aunt Stella. When I was probably 11 or 12 years old, I started performing my first shows. I started at birthday parties, and moved on to Sweet 16’s and corporate events. Then, when I was 14, I was performing in bars and clubs, riding my bicycle to work.

MediaBlvd> Did you let the Cirque du Soleil creators in on any of your magic secrets?

Criss> They could get it very easily because Guy and Felix bought the show. If they really wanted to know, they could go look at it. But, Guy really wants to be a child, like a lot of people. There’s an inner child in all of us. Some of us choose to let it out, and some of us choose not to show that, but it’s a wonderful feeling when you have that wonderment and feel like a child again.

MediaBlvd> How long did it take you to write the show, and how many revisions did it take to get it where you wanted it?

Criss> Fifteen years ago, I initially wrote this show and the illusions, but when I heard that Cirque du Soleil was getting involved, I was like, “Okay, we’re going to rewrite the whole thing,” because now we had the opportunity for the poetry. Cirque could take it to a whole other level. Serge and I went through that grueling process together and we were still evolving and developing the show, even the day before it opened, and probably will until the day we die, or at least until the last day of performing it, which will be for some years. It continues to grow. It’s a never-ending process, and I’m just very fortunate that I have Serge to take what I did many years ago and redo it. He brought a lot to the table that wasn’t there, and we worked together very harmoniously. The crazy thing is that some stuff was said about us having a difficult process, and it was the easiest process. It was a difficult process for us to go through, creatively, but as far as our relationship and how we got through it, we were always together. I don’t think we had one disagreement, honestly.

MediaBlvd> Were the illusions already done and was the story fit around them, or was the story done and then you put in the illusions?

Criss> I would say probably 85% of the illusions, I originally had in my first treatment. But, working with Serge, we took that same illusions and created a different incarnation of them, to fit them in the Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz world. So, the base was there. One of the things with these illusions is that it’s not something you’ll see in any other magic show in the world. I’ve spent many, many years evolving and developing and trying to figure out, with John Farrell (director of illusions) and Michael Curry (props and puppets designer), how to bring these things to life, before I was involved with Cirque, so there was a lot of research and development that was done. And, we wanted to take advantage of that because the time period that we had at the Luxor was a specific window, and we wanted to make sure that we could present the most sophisticated versions of these illusions, so we stayed on course with that. But, when we were on stage, before we even got into the theater, there were other things where Guy would say, “Criss, it would be really cool if you could do this,” or I’d say, “You know, it would be good if we could do this.” We fast-tracked a few things that weren’t in the original treatment. There were accommodations made, but I would say that the majority of it, even though it was unfinished, was in the first treatment.