Limerick magician Steve Spade will make a return appearance at this weekend’s Electric Picnic festival as part of Jerry Fish’s Electric Sideshow.
Skilled in a wide variety of magic including illusion, hypnosis, escapology, and mind-reading, Spade told the Limerick Post that he is “delighted to be asked back” to Electric Picnic this year, after wowing 10,000 stage-goers with his illusions last year.
The Coonagh native has been doing magic since he was four year old, taking inspiration from his uncle, who was also a magician, and the likes of Harry Houdini and David Copperfield.
He honed his skills on the Limerick entertainment scene, developing a solid repertoire of card and coin skills, performing at every opportunity on the streets, in pubs, clubs and kids’ parties.
These days you can find him at festivals, corporate and wedding events, as well as being a firm favourite on the celebrity scene where he’s impressed everyone from Mike Tyson and Russell Brand to Rihanna and Calvin Harris.
His goal is to become a “master magician” – someone who is a master in every form of magic, and it’s safe to say, he isn’t too far off achieving that ambition.
He does everything from sleight of hand tricks to strait-jacket escapes, including wriggling out of 100 feet of rope and padlocks in just over 40 seconds to avoid being burned at the stake in front of King John’s Castle to escaping from a wooden crate that had been dropped into the River Shannon in front of over 2,000 people.
“I am always trying to push the envelope!” he said.
Returning for the sixth year promoting “unity through diversity” Jerry Fish’s majestic Electric Sideshow promises everything from circus, cabaret, burlesque and sideshow performers from the US, the UK and Ireland.
Some of the sideshow theatre performers who join Spade on the line-up for this year’s Electric Sideshow include drag icon Veda (Queen of Ireland); Jelly Boy the Clown; pole-dancing extraordinaire and fire queen Terri Fierce; burlesque performers The Pony Girls; Sideshow Sweetheart Foxy P Cox; Cabaret King Desmond O’Connor; The Dirty Circus and the Grim Squeaker’s Rogue Gallery.
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