General News
12 April, 2025
Seeing double: one artist, two shows
One illusionist but two “completely different” shows: the curtain hasn’t even been raised yet but the magic has already begun.
Luke Blaze performed his first illusion at the age of eight and hasn’t looked back.
“I was in my brother’s room and I came across a very thick purple book, 1001 Pranks, Jokes and Magic Tricks,” Blaze said.
“I was telling some jokes and he wasn’t having a bar of it so I thought I’d step it up a little.
“I clicked to the magic tricks section and I found a card trick, and destiny had it that on that same bookshelf there was a deck of cards.
“The next time my grandparents came over I showed them the trick.”
Nan and Pop were suitably impressed.
“The reaction I got from them was amazing – the smiles on their faces,” Blaze said.
“I said to myself ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life’.”
After 16 years as an illusionist, Blaze is heading to the Wimmera at steampunk time.
And when he says “two shows”, he doesn’t mean a single routine repeated: each performance will have its own unique content.
“I’ve pretty much split my 90-minute show in half so that act one will be the first show and act two will be the second,” he said.
“The first-show finale will be walking on broken glass and the second will be my upside-down straightjacket escape.”
His appearance at the festival will also come with a special touch.
“I’m very excited to be heading to Dimboola,” Blaze said.
“When the idea was presented to me I had so many things pop into my head: ideas I could do.
“I’ve had a seamstress make costumes for me and my dancer, Estelle, and the crew members.
“I’m really excited to take it from the corporate events I do, where men and women are in suits and ties and I’m in proper costuming, to now being a little bit all over the place with steampunk and making it a little bit crazy.
“It sounds like a really good event and I think my performance style suits the vibe and the energy that’s created there.”
Blaze currently spends about half his professional time in regional areas.
“My last regional tour was in 2023, predominantly the west side of Victoria,” he said.
“I started in Shepparton and then went to Warrnambool, Bendigo, Ballarat.”
Mildura and Echuca are on the cards for the foreseeable future.
“I think people have something to look forward to,” he said of his upcoming visit to the Wimmera.
“There’s something to suit everyone in my illusions, whether it be fire twirling, fire eating or fire breathing, or my escape from the upside-down straightjacket, or the daredevil glass walking.
“At the bare minimum I have a very electrifying soundtrack, so people who just like music in general can close their eyes and listen to the soundtrack of the show,” he said, tongue firmly in cheek.
Life isn’t always smooth sailing for an illusionist who’s committed to evolving.
“With my water-tank escape, which unfortunately I won’t be performing at the festival this time, I blacked out once in a live show and the crew had to open up the tank and pull me out.
“That was very confronting.
“I didn’t even look at the tank for another year.”
However, Blaze was determined to reinstate it into his show when the time was right.
“Exactly a year later I thought ‘Okay, I need to face this head-on’,” he said.
“There was a lot of PTSD, a lot of shaking when I got into the water again, but I overcame that for a seven-week tour around Victoria.”
It might seem to be a remarkable career choice for a man whose two big childhood fears were claustrophobia and drowning.
“To be put inside a water tank was my two fears in one,” he said.
“For me, fire’s never been a fear.
“It was scary when I first started eating fire but it wasn’t like ‘Oh, this could kill me’ – it was ‘This is scary but it’s cool’.”
That said, the trajectory hasn’t always been smooth.
“I’ve had second-degree burns where I’ve had to go to hospital,” he said.
“There’s an element of danger with everything I do: I’ve cut my foot open with the glass walking.
“But I guess there’s just that real saying of ‘If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger’.
“With the mistakes I’ve made, I’ve learned.”
Blaze said the evolution of his craft was fuelled by audience feedback.
“I just ask people what they want to see.
“For example, I put the call out on my social media ‘What do you guys want to see at the next show?’ and there was an overwhelming response of ‘a water-tank escape’.
“The fire-twirling just came from people wanting a little bit less magic but something different.”
The act that causes the most disbelief is “either walking on broken glass or the upside-down straightjacket escape”, according to Blaze, who says he feels “very, very blessed” to be working in a field that he genuinely loves.
“I go back to when I was eight years old, little Luke wanting to perform in front of large audiences, and now I’m pretty much living that dream out.
“Even when I’m not performing, at home I’ll go into the backyard and twirl fire.
“I think you find a really beautiful piece of your soul when you’re twirling fire or LEDs or you’re in a water tank.
“Everything I do I find relaxing.
“It’s a weird thing to say, because I’m putting myself in danger, but I think people respond best to danger when they’re relaxed.”
Blaze said that despite that illusion of danger while he was on stage, audience members were able to tune out of reality and focus solely on the show.
“As I got older I realised there was a recurring pattern,” he said.
“Whether I’m showing someone a one-minute card trick or giving a 90-minute show in a theatre, no-one’s thinking about the problems they’re facing in the outside world.
“For me, that’s what the true magic is: it’s not the tricks that I do but the power to take people’s problems away momentarily.”
Short term, Blaze is aiming “to perform at every single fringe (festival) in Australia, whether that’s next year or in 2027”.
“I’m currently writing a brand-new show, which takes quite a while – I started writing in August last year,” he said.
“I want to take that show to start off at the Perth Fringe in January and make my way around.
“As for long-term goals, I’d love to end up in Las Vegas one day and have a theatre named after me: ‘Blaze Theatre’ or ‘LB Theatre’ or something.
“It’s simple: conquer Australia, then Asia and then the world.”