For venues and presenters
The Astonify ShowDean Carnegie
Victorian parlour magic and a seance, written for adults and built for a room rather than a theatre. Fifty people, close enough to see everything.
Booking the evening
I am looking for a room in Nashville to host an intimate evening through October 2026. Ten to twelve nights across the month suits me best, one or two shows a night, but some rooms would rather start with a single evening. Both work.
You hire the show. A flat fee for the night. You keep every ticket you sell and you keep the bar, and there is nothing to negotiate afterward. This is how the Fauquier History Museum booked it, twice.
The bar is entirely yours. I take no part of it. People come to a seance for the atmosphere, so they arrive early and they stay afterward. That is two bar visits a head on a night your room would otherwise be quiet.
What I ask for is your audience. An evening only fills when both of us point our people at it. I supply the artwork, the posters and the copy, sized and written and ready to go. Your part is your own channels.
I am not guessing at what a fifty seat room needs. I have run one, and I have been hired into someone else's.
My own fifty seat theatre outside Washington, which I co-ran as well as performed in. Thousands of people came through, and I rebuilt the show every year so returning audiences had a reason to come back.
Hired to bring this show in, then hired again. A room built for exactly this format. It closed during the pandemic.
The Astonify Show brought into a history museum, and brought back a second time. Their Executive Director is quoted below.
Including a full evening at the National Theatre in Washington, thirty years as a working performer, and thirty years researching magic history alongside it.
Fun, Mystifying, Attention Grabbing! Our group thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dean Carnegie's Astonify Show, and could not stop talking the various tricks he did. Dean was a pleasure to work with and easy to coordinate with. We look forward to seeing the show again!
Erin Clark, Executive Director, Fauquier History Museum at the Old Jail, Warrenton, Virginia
One hundred years since Houdini died
Houdini died on the thirty first of October, 1926. This October opens the centennial year, and I have built a version of the show about Houdini.
The centennial runs a full year, to the thirty first of October 2027. October is where I want to open. If October does not work for your room, the anniversary does not close when Halloween does.
This is the premium version of the evening. It is built for the centennial, it costs me more to stage, and it will carry a higher ticket than my usual parlour night.
What makes it more than atmosphere is that it is true. Houdini spent the last years of his life exposing fraudulent mediums, so a seance performed in his centennial year is not a novelty. It is the subject. Your audience will have grown up hearing his name. Very few of them will know what he was actually doing at the end.
It is a real news story, which is not something an October evening usually has, and I am already working the local press on it.
I spent my career duplicating Houdini's feats and more. But when I need historical information, I always rely upon Carnegie.
Steve "Mr. Escape" Baker
Astonify: The Ghosts of Christmas Past
The same evening, moved to December. A nineteenth century Dickens inspired magic show, in Victorian dress, built around the ghost stories that belonged to Christmas long before anyone filed them under children’s reading.
Charles Dickens was an amateur magician. He performed for his family and friends, and he was good at it. I recreate some of his wonders in this show and tie them to the stories everyone already knows. The magic of 1850 was nothing like the magic an audience sees now, and most of it has not been performed in a hundred and seventy five years.
This is the small room version. Same fifty people, same close range. If what you need is a large holiday show for a ballroom or a company night, that is a different show of mine and I would rather talk it through than send you the wrong one.
Booked the same way, on the same terms.
A flat fee, and that is that
You hire the show for the night. You keep every ticket and you keep the bar. Nothing to negotiate afterward.
The bar, entirely
I take no part of it. An audience that arrives early and stays late is worth more than the door.
Your nights
Weekends are your most valuable slots and I do not expect them. Early shows and quieter nights work just as well.
I bring the campaign
My own list, a centennial press campaign, the artwork and the ticketing. You are not being asked to build it, only to put your name behind it.
Your channels
Socials, email list, website calendar. I supply everything finished, so it is a post rather than a project.
Posters up
I print them and deliver them.
Your listings
Whatever local calendars and press you already feed each month.
One named contact
Someone who runs the room on show nights.
Performed for three U.S. Presidents at the White House, and on a TEDx stage. Hosted the French television documentary on Houdini for Arte. Presented Houdini programmes for Atlas Obscura in Washington, D.C. Writes The Magic Detective, more than seven hundred articles on magic history since 2011, and hosts the Magic Detective Podcast. Corporate work including NBC, Bank of America, PepsiCo, Shell and Hallmark.