February 26, 2017

Meet Steve Spill of Magicopolis in Santa Monica

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Steve Spill.

Steve, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’ve been a magician since forever, and the idea for Magicopolis came to me from sleeping around. I love Santa Monica and knew it would always be my home… unfortunately, I wasn’t at home often, by necessity, of course. I was on the road 300 days a year. It might be at an Indian casino, or it might be at a convention of internists in Indianapolis, but staying home felt like the right thing to do. Instead of constantly changing cities, to find new audiences, at comedy clubs, dinner theaters, corporate events, casinos… I wanted a way to stay home more and have new audiences constantly find me. That’s how Magicopolis was born, and we’ve been flourishing non-stop since 1998.

Has it been a smooth road?
We’re a mom and pop theater, and don’t have the advertising budget of corporate entertainment companies like a Disney or Universal Studios. Audiences come to us hundred percent from word-of-mouth.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Magicopolis story. Tell us more about the business.
We do magic shows, and our magic shows are designed to stimulate the intellect, stir the imagination and lift the spirit. You’ll see people dissolve in one place and reappear somewhere else and someone can read your thoughts, objects move and change guided by the power of the mind and humans float in mid-air. Again and again, you are witness to impossible happenings. Sometimes you even become a part of one.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
As people become more and more addicted to screens – phones, films, tv, computers – I think the craving for live in person experiences becomes a more rare and valuable thing – My feeling is that live theater, in general, is due for a renaissance.

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