Svengali 2012 – Manchester and Southampton

Some dates for the 2012 Svengali tour are starting to appear. We are happy to confirm that the following dates are on sale now:

Manchester – The Lowry:
5, 6, 7, 8 9, 10 March 2012
Click HERE for tickets

Southampton – The Mayflower:
12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 March 2012
Click HERE for tickets

The performance is not suitable for children under 12 years of age.

PLEASE NOTE: We cannot confirm or deny ANY other dates or venues at this point. A lot of fans are emailing to find out if Derren will be coming to a certain town and we’re sorry we can’t confirm anything until it is officially announced. We also can’t confirm when tickets go on sale, this is decided by the venue.


Derren Brown: Miracles for Sale – Tonight 9pm

With the cameras in hot pursuit, Derren faces his toughest project yet, going in search of an unsuspecting member of the British public prepared to adopt the guise of a pastor and miracle worker.

His chosen one then has six months to learn the trade and flourish across the pond as a convincing pastor.

The final phase of the volunteer’s extraordinary challenge sees them attempt to perform faith healing miracles live in Texas, but will Derren’s new recruit be accepted as a faith healer or cast away as fake healer?

The show will air tonight at 9pm on Ch4, 10pm on Ch4+1 and will be available on 4oD here.

Feel free to leave comments below.


Week in oxford

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I’ve just come to the end of a wonderful week working on changes to the show. This is something which we always do with the tours: the joy is to keep improving and changing and getting it as good as possible. Andrew O’Connor, one of the producers of the tour came over from LA to work on it with me, and Polly and Stephen came up too. We’ve spent each day rehearsing and talking and trying out new things each night. Some of the changes are quite small, others are large: it’s been like being back in previews in Brighton.

The last couple of nights we’ve made big shifts with the very end, which has been hugely exciting. The changes seem to have worked: the audience reactions do appear to be getting better and better. We’ve been doing notes after the shows until 2 or 3am, then up again for breakfast work, all-day rehearsals and then of course the shows in the evening. All that work has ended today and tomorrow we’re off to Sunderland for some relative peace and rest. Sadly this work has not left me any time to explore Oxford: such a beautiful city and somewhere I would happily come to live. But the audiences have been bright and gorgeous and the theatre an absolute dream. After the show, a lovely chat with Nicholas Hoult and his lady Jenny, who had graced the auditorium along with Doug Hodge and his wife Tessa Peake-Jones: my first celeb visits of the tour. Very exciting. Though I wasn’t entirely happy with the show as a stupid technical problem with the new ending upset the rhythm of things at a vital moment… but hey, whaddyagonnado.

Before Oxford we all had a great week in Norwich. The highlight was most likely us all heading to Adam Buxton’s farmhouse for lunch with him and his wife Sarah: you’ll be delighted to know that the afternoon began with Sarah’s exquisite food and finished with Adam showing us silly movies on YouTube. They are a glorious, generous, bright and brilliant couple.

You may also be interested to know that my friend Patrick Hughes has a new book for sale, entitled Paradoxymoron – click here to view. It was at the launch for this book that Alexei Sayle came over to speak to me. I’ve always been a fan of the great man, who was wearing a black suit and shirt: I plucked a white hair from the front of said shirt as we spoke to find that it was joined to his chest. Great one, Derren.

My Highland Park has run dry and I must get to bed. We’ve been staying at the Old Bank Hotel in Oxford and I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such astonishingly brilliant staff. It’s a terrific hotel, and we’re all hugely grateful to the entire team for making this stay such a pleasure. Thank you.

Right, nighty-night. Can’t wait for the new changes to bed in and feel second-nature. And I hope you like them too. Sleep well. I have just a few hours to try to do the same.

X

PS the picture of me was taken in Cromer by Dennis Grasse, a member of our team who is a great photographer. If you ever find yourself in the greenroom of the National Theatre, those are his on the wall.


Derren Brown Interview – Radio Times

Radio Times
23 April 2011

Interviewing a man who mystifies and manipulates for a living, you are, naturally, primed for a challenge, prepared for the tricks and techniques of evasion and suggestion that have made Derren Brown a household name. From his first TV outings over a decade ago, in which he demonstrated his skills for slight-of-hand magic and psychological manipulation, to more elaborate productions such as those in which he played Russian roulette live on TV and predicated winning lottery numbers, Brown has entertainingly demonstrated how people can be read and influenced, persuaded to believe in ghosts and conditioned to do anything from choosing a desired card to committing armed robbery. So I’m ready for any sneaky strategy.

“I waffle massively, by the way, and I apologise”, he says politely, pouring peppermint tea. Oh, he’s good. But he’s going to have to do better than that sweetness-and-light act to get around me.

The nice guy stuff, however, turns out to be no act. Brown totally confounds expectation. There isn’t a sign of the uber-assertive performer who commands thousand-strong audiences at his live shows and bends individuals to his will on TV.

“I’m that guy while I’m performing, and I wouldn’t necessarily want to know him,” Brown says. “It’s a controlling thing on stage – you’re directing the action, getting people to play their role. In real life, I take being kind and nice seriously, so the last thing I’d ever want to be is that weird, controlling, manipulative character.”

So he doesn’t employ his techniques to win arguments, to get his own way and generally make people do what he wants?
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New Derren Brown TV Special

On Easter Monday, April 25th at 9pm, my new special DERREN BROWN: MIRACLES FOR SALE will air on C4. This is hot off the press, so I have no artwork to show you as yet.

This is the special about faith-healing that some of you will have heard about. It has been the most intensely difficult project that I have attempted: to train an ordinary member of the public as a faith healer, then take him out to Texas, the heart of the Bible Belt, and try to pass him off as the real deal. We filmed this at the end of last year amidst concerns that we had bitten off far more than we could chew.

The film we made is driven by a desire to expose what I consider to be a foul and dangerous fraud at the expense of the sick, the needy and the faithful all over the world. It is not a comment on the church, or belief, or even, before some people get upset, the idea that God can or can’t heal. It is about a specific fraud, a greedy trick that has nothing to do with God whatsoever, beyond the fact that his name gets shouted around a lot. We made the show with the involvement of Christians and pastors who had been involved in that particular scene.

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