Now You Read Now You See Me

Longtime readers will be only too familiar with my longstanding affection for the 2013 close-up magic movie Now You See Me (“it’s got the heart of a heist movie and the brains of a heist movie trailer as described by a child”), and my repeated threat to write a no-props adaptation of the script:

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

I would give anything to see a no-budget prop-free stage version of this movie. Same blocking and dialogue but no props

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

there should be as many Now You See Me movies as there are Fast and Furious movies https://t.co/nxOC5oVYu1

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

I will make this happen this year

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

Tonight I have written the first scene of this abridged adaptation. I make my own dreams (a no-props table-read version of the 2013 closeup magic hit Now You See Me where a single narrator laboriously describes each magic trick) reality.

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

I will make this happen this year

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

scenes 2-4 are now complete. The only thing I have ever been afraid of is my own magnificence.

Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery

halfway done with the no-props Now You See Me script. DM me if you want to be in it

Last week, to celebrate my thirty-sixth birthday, I rented out an old church in Brooklyn and invented fifteen of my nearest and dearest to take part in a table read of the finished script. I invited another twenty or thirty friends, new acquaintances, and general well-wishers to fill the first row of pews. My friend Niko recorded the proceedings, although the church’s steam radiator makes an occasional background appearance. Please enjoy, through the magic of sound engineering, as if you yourself were there last Friday, the Now You Read Now You See Me table read.

Major players included:

NARRATOR ONE (Alex Dumont)

NARRATOR TWO (Christian Brown)

NARRATOR THREE (Meredith Martin)

NARRATOR FOUR (Cecilia Corrigan)

J. DANIEL ATLAS (Ben Gullard, last directed by me in our high-school production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

MERRITT MCKINNEY (Helen Rosner)

HENLEY REEVES (Flan Joel)

JACK WILDER (Jaya Saxena)

ARTHUR TRESSLER (Grace Lavery)

DYLAN RHODES (Daniel Lavery)

INTERPOL AGENT ALMA DRAY (Mattie Lubchansky)

THADDEUS BRADLEY (Chris Randle)

With additional voices by Nick Douglas, Kyle Turner, Lola Pellegrino, Ellen Zemlin, Crispin Long, Kat Kinsman, Lauren O’Neal, and others.

I will post the script tomorrow for anyone who cannot make use of the audio files; watch this space. This is also the form my birthday will likely take every year for the rest of my life; plan accordingly.