Outside the tent, a desert tempest rages. Inside, it smells like circus elephants. The floor is dirt, formerly the lawn just outside The Smith Center. But all around, it\u2019s Shakespeare\u2019s world.<\/p>\n Welcome to rehearsals for a very peculiar production of\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>, about five weeks before opening night. The vibe is laid-back creative chaos, with a homespun feel. The set looks like a Depression-era Coney Island carnival sideshow. Heck, the whole stage appears to have been left outside during the Dust Bowl, giving it a sort of marooned-chic appeal. It looks like a found object, a treasure that washed up onto a beach fully formed, peeking from the sand.<\/p>\n An elfin magician paces the lot, disappearing and reappearing with a small bouquet of plastic flowers. He will play the airy spirit Ariel. An actor practices twisting and tossing a fedora on his head. A dwarf who will play Trinculo the jester chats by the water cooler. Several dancers stretch and contort on a gymnastics crash pad while following along the dialogue for Act V in open notebooks. An orange cherry picker looms in the back corner of the tent.<\/p>\n The famously silent magician Teller, of\u00a0Penn & Teller<\/a>\u00a0fame, is curled up on the stairs leading up to the stage. He watches intently. From close range, he looks cuddly, like a little boy in footie pajamas observing his parents\u2019 grown-up party. But he\u2019s not as short as one would imagine from photos of him next to the 6-foot-6 Penn Jillette. Nor is Teller, at 66, any sort of child. In fact, Teller is one of the most grown-up grown-ups you will ever meet. The erudite tea-drinker is Las Vegas\u2019 most under-the-radar public intellectual. He writes book reviews for\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and makes movies about art techniques, such as the just-released\u00a0Tim\u2019s Vermeer<\/em>. And he loves Shakespeare.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people\u2019s first contact with Shakespeare is an English class, and there couldn\u2019t be a worse place to encounter Shakespeare,\u201d Teller says. \u201cTo read Shakespeare is like handing an orchestral score to a teenage kid and saying, \u2018Now imagine this symphony.\u2019 This is just the directions for the performers; this is not something you were meant to read.\u201d<\/p>\n Teller intends to right this theatrical wrong through a dream-team collaboration with director Aaran Posner, the\u00a0American Repertory Theater<\/a>, the Connecticut-based\u00a0Pilobolus dance company<\/a>, and songwriting duo Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. In addition to conjuring the concept with Posner, Teller is co-directing the play and creating the magic. This version of\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>\u00a0will be, as Teller wrote in a letter to patrons, \u201cHarry Potter exacting vigilante justice with illusions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing the play how Shakespeare would have done if he\u2019d had the technical capacity to do magic this heavily,\u201d Teller says. \u201cIn conventional productions of\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>, people just talk and walk on and off the stage. In our version, if they should appear, they appear. If they should disappear, they disappear. If they should transform from one person to another or levitate, they do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Tempest<\/em>\u00a0is Shakespeare\u2019s great play about magic. So who better in the world to think about a great magician than Teller? It\u2019s a perfect match,\u201d says Stephen Greenblatt, a Harvard Shakespeare professor and longtime friend of Teller. The professor plans to take his students to see this production when it moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, after its Las Vegas debut. \u201cOne of the odd things about Shakespeare\u2019s play is that Prospero\u2019s magic comes from a very intense engagement in books. One of the things that strikes anybody about Teller is that for a popular entertainer he\u2019s an unusually learned man, so there\u2019s that connection.\u201d<\/p>\n Teller has spent half his life contemplating\u00a0The Tempest,<\/em>\u00a0and he has no small ambitions for this play. \u201cIf we pull it off, it could be a stunningly beautiful thing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt could very well be the very best\u00a0Tempest<\/em>\u00a0ever\u2014including Shakespeare\u2019s. It could certainly be the very best\u00a0Tempest<\/em>\u00a0of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *****Next year, Penn & Teller will celebrate their 40th anniversary as collaborators. In that much time, they\u2019ve grown from magic\u2019s outsiders to elder statesmen. The duo met in the mid-1970s, cut their teeth on the Renaissance fair circuit, scored their first off-Broadway show in \u201985, debuted in Vegas in \u201993, began their residency at the Rio\u2014where they still perform five nights a week\u2014in \u201901, did Showtime\u2019s\u00a0Penn & Teller: Bullshit!<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for eight years in the aughts, earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in \u201913, and in general have what\u00a0Variety<\/em>describes as a \u201cPenn & Teller Empire,\u201d with beachheads in theater, film, books and TV.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Monkey Room backstage at the Rio is a visual timeline of the duo\u2019s success. The elaborate green room is both intimate and public, like a model home if it were built by a circus. There\u2019s zebra-print furniture and surrealist touches: a table with mannequin lady legs and a gilded mirror sprouting feminine arms. Today there is also a cake from the casino on the coffee table (a glass slab supported by reclining monkey statues) because it is Penn\u2019s 59th\u00a0birthday.<\/p>\n The simian theme seems to be both a reference to the duo\u2019s belief in atheism and evolution as well as an acknowledgement that we\u2019re all performing monkeys\u2014not just the two magicians, but all of us, the celebrities, the journalists, the lady who delivers pre-show sandwiches on a rolling cart, the unseen audience that will fill the 1,450-seat showroom in the Penn & Teller Theater.<\/p>\n The red walls of the green room are adorned with memorabilia from their epic career. Photos show Penn & Teller with David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Liberace, Run-DMC (smirking on the set of the rappers\u2019 1986 music video \u201cIt\u2019s Tricky,\u201d in which the magicians starred). TV stills reveal their pop cultural reach: dumping 500 live cockroaches on David Letterman\u2019s desk; performing a trick with Madonna on\u00a0Saturday Night Live<\/em>; Teller playing a pet cat in an episode of the sitcom\u00a0Dharma & Greg<\/em>.<\/p>\n In the middle of the celebrity display is a large abstract painting by Teller\u2019s artist father, Joe Teller. \u201cNot his best work,\u201d Teller says, \u201cbut it matched the colors of the room.\u201d<\/p>\n On another wall hang the\u00a0Playbills<\/em>\u00a0and fliers from the early days\u2014before their 20 years in Vegas, back when they had no solidified logo, when it was just their names and the phrase \u201cbad boys of magic.\u201d Going back even further is the framed memorabilia from the \u201970s, when it was Penn, Teller and Wier Chrisemer as the\u00a0Asparagus Valley Cultural Society<\/a>, offering \u201cmagic, music, juggling & comedy\u201d with the tagline: \u201cThree deeply troubled young men who think it\u2019s funny\u201d and advertising \u201c100 needles swallowed, Bach on xylophone, knives juggled.\u201d Chrisemer had top billing.<\/p>\n \u201cTeller is certainty one of the top five magical minds alive,\u201d Penn says. \u201cBy the way, I am not on that list.\u201d Penn is famous for saying that he has no affection for Teller. In his typical style, he repeats a bombastic discounting of their personal relationship while complimenting Teller\u2019s talent, professionalism and work ethic. \u201c[It\u2019s] strictly cold, cerebral, intellectual, calculated on both our parts,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, after a lifetime of working together, he is my closest friend, I suppose. We don\u2019t slide into that very often\u2014our parents\u2019 death, my children\u2019s births, that might be about it. \u2026 I would say one night a week, after the show we\u2019re both eating our supper, no one is around, we might chat a little bit. \u2026 The Penn & Teller story really does lack romance. There\u2019s no Martin and Lewis, no Lennon and McCartney ups and downs. No Jagger and Richards hating each other and coming back. It\u2019s just two guys plodding along. We\u2019re not geniuses, we\u2019re just worker bees. We\u2019re a partnership for one simple reason: We believe we do better stuff together than we do separately.\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>\u00a0is an exception to that. Let\u2019s say that\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0do better stuff with Teller than I do alone.\u201d<\/p>\n (Teller generally shares Penn\u2019s views on their alliance: \u201cI\u2019ve worked with Penn for nearly 40 years, and we disagree about everything all the time. And I think that\u2019s wonderful, because if you get two people who agree all the time you\u2019re not going to get something better than either of them can achieve.\u201d)<\/p>\n Behind Penn\u2019s grandstanding hides a true admiration for his partner: \u201cSo much of what makes Penn & Teller\u00a0 Penn & Teller is Teller. The visual aspect and the taste is so much Teller. If we didn\u2019t have each other, Teller might still be a Latin teacher doing wonderful magic on the side. I would probably be a morning DJ.\u201d<\/p>\n Since, according to Penn, Teller is the \u201cvisual one,\u201d it seems logical that he designed this Monkey Room. But with magicians, deceit is commonplace.<\/p>\n \u201cEven this room is a lie,\u201d Teller says. \u201cIt was designed by a reality show.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *****Teller likes to say he\u2019s been dreaming about\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>\u00a0for 30 years and working on the play for five. In this case, he\u2019s referring to an actual dream, not some vague aspiration. In 1977, not long after \u201cPenn and Wier pried me out of [teaching] and had me doing street performing for cash,\u201d Teller dreamed that he was the deposed wizard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI dreamed I was Prospero, and I dreamed that the way I controlled my enemies was by changing the world around them with my shows. I dreamed I could make you behave differently by making you see something other than this room around you. I wasn\u2019t acting directly on you; I was changing the world as you perceive it. That\u2019s all I remember of it. I don\u2019t remember any plot, just that one strange element. That\u2019s always been in the back of my mind as one of the interpretations of this play.\u201d<\/p>\n In high school, Teller memorized and performed Prospero\u2019s \u201cYe Elves of Hills\u201d monologue for a drama competition. \u201cWhen [the actor who plays] Prospero is going over that speech and misses a word, I\u2019m the one instantly cueing him,\u201d Teller says, \u201cbecause I\u2019ve known it since I was 15.\u201d<\/p>\n The monologue comes toward the end of\u00a0The Tempest;<\/em>\u00a0in it, the wizard considers his magical accomplishments (\u201cGraves at my command have waked their sleepers \u2026 by my so potent art\u201d) and then decides to forfeit his powers in order to take care of his daughter, Miranda (\u201cBut this rough magic I here abjure \u2026 I\u2019ll break my staff \u2026 I\u2019ll drown my book.\u201d).<\/p>\n A pre-silent Teller won the drama competition and went on to remember the wizard\u2019s heartbreak forever. \u201cThat\u2019s where this play tugs at me\u2014to think about what it would take for me to give up magic,\u201d Teller says. \u201cYou can see how much I love doing this. What would it take for me to give that up and say this other thing is more important? I don\u2019t have children, and I don\u2019t intend to because I don\u2019t think I could do this with this much gusto if I had to consider real life.\u201d<\/p>\n So you chose magic over Miranda?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes, but I chose magic over\u00a0having<\/em>\u00a0Miranda,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I\u2019d had Miranda, my decision may have been very different.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *****At the dinner break during\u00a0The Tempest<\/em>\u00a0rehearsal\u2014the rain has ceased; the elephant smell has dissipated\u2014Posner, Pilobolus choreographer Matt Kent and Teller speak about\u00a0The Tempest:<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Posner: \u201cIt\u2019s been a series of concentric circles opening out. It took us well over a year to cast this show in a variety of cities. We have a constant guide and beacon, which is Shakespeare. Even the coolest magic trick, most brilliant movement piece, even the best song might go away if it doesn\u2019t get to the center of the story we\u2019re telling.\u201d<\/p>\n Teller: \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of productions of this play that are awful. It\u2019s not an awful play, but it\u2019s a play that\u2019s confusing if you don\u2019t take a lot of trouble. When an audience comes in, they shouldn\u2019t have to work. We should do all the work for them. We should make it easy for them to know who is whom, what\u2019s going on, what people\u2019s purpose is. And they should laugh a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Posner: \u201cI would disagree, as we do a lot, in the best possible way. I disagree that we want to do all the work for the audience. I want to make sure that the audience has a clear way in and that we are taking care of them. But I want to make sure that we are enlisting their imaginations in a really unique and effective way.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Teller\"](\"http:\/\/steampunkopera.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/03\/t110.jpg?w=645&resize=640%2C423\")
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