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© 2026 the Way of the Showman
Description
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
178 Episodes
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A dragon suit doesn’t make you memorable. The work does. I’m sitting down with Piff the Magic Dragon in the Flamingo’s basement studio to get brutally honest about what it actually takes to build a successful comedy magic career and keep a Las Vegas residency alive in a town packed with legendary competition. We talk about the leap from a tight 10 to 20 minutes to a real 72 to 90-minute show, and why “we had to do it” often means the first version is rough. Piff breaks down how material is b...
What happens when you have a clear artistic vision for a new circus school show, but the funding catalog expires, the gatekeepers want something “easy to book,” and the words you use accidentally make it sound like a museum? Captain Frodo sits down with Jay Gilligan to unpack the very real behind-the-scenes story of making Artifact, a contemporary circus and juggling performance built around historical objects, natural history vibes, and the strange power of letting kids experience “real art”...
Free tickets should fill a theater, right? Then why do so many “sold out” charity nights play to rows of empty seats, and why do artists keep returning to ticket price as a stand-in for value? Jay Gilligan and I pick up our Malmö hotel-room conversation and follow a single thought experiment, money is no object, until it forces us to talk about the real engine of live performance: commitment. We dig into audience psychology and show business mechanics, from the notorious “scam show” model th...
You can feel the difference between a performer who “does tricks” and a performer who builds a world. We sit down with Malin Nilsson to get inside that world building process: how stagecraft, mentors, and sharp editing turn variety magic into something that feels inevitable, alive, and deeply personal. We talk about the practical psychology of live audiences and why context changes everything. When people buy tickets and come to your theater, you earn a rare kind of freedom: you can be poeti...
When the world feels like it’s burning, making a show can start to feel absurd and even selfish. We sit with that discomfort and ask the question out loud: what is the purpose of magic, theater, and live performance when war headlines and daily suffering are only a scroll away? The honest answer is messy, but it leads to something solid: art, culture, sport, and shared stories are part of what makes life worth defending in the first place. I’m joined by Swedish magician and folk-circus...
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