On 2 November 2025, I premiered my solo theatre show Nothing Up My Sleeves in Leipzig, Germany. It sold out at Kabarett-Theater Sanftwut. After three years of work, that night felt big in a way I still find hard to sum up.
This was more than a show date. It was a milestone. It was the first time I put so much of myself into one full theatre piece. Not just tricks. Not just skill. Not just a set list of effects. I wanted to build a real evening for adults. Something personal. Something with shape, mood, humor, and meaning.
That took longer than I expected.
How Nothing Up My Sleeves began
Three years ago, I had the idea of creating my own theatre show. At first, it looked nothing like the show that premiered in Leipzig last November. Back then, it was mostly a collection of effects I liked. Some were strong. Some were fun. But together, they did not say much. The felt somehow disconnected…
I have never liked the idea of being only a “trick performer.” At some point, that started to bother me more and more. I wanted the audience to feel something deeper than surprise. I wanted the magic to mean something.
A big shift came from studying the work of Eugene Burger. His thinking changed the way I see performance. He spoke about texture, story, and atmosphere. That stayed with me. It may sound simple, but it changed everything. I stopped asking, “What is the next trick?” and started asking, “What kind of experience am I building?” and “what kind of magician I want to be?”
That is when the show began to take shape.
Why the title took me so long
The title was one of the hardest parts.
I went back and forth on it for a long time. I knew I wanted the show to say something about the mind, because that is where magic really happens. Not in the hands. Not in the props. Not in the sleeves. In the mind.
Magic is an experience you have in your head.
Still, people always say the same thing to me: “It must be up your sleeves.” They say it even when I am wearing a T-shirt, which still makes me laugh. The funny thing is, I never used that old method. It has been exposed for well over a century. People know the idea, so they reach for it right away. They mostly rely on easy explanations such as “sleeves”, “mirrors” and “trap doors” to be able to go to sleep at night, I guess! x)
That is part of why Nothing Up My Sleeves felt right in the end.
It is playful, but it also makes a point. In the show, I produce and vanish things that could not logically be hidden there anyway. I wanted the title to nod to the old cliché while also pushing past it. Because the real secret, if there is one, is not in the clothing. It is in attention, memory, emotion, timing, and the strange way the human mind fills in gaps.
A theatre show about more than magic
At its core, Nothing Up My Sleeves is about wonder.
It is also about memory, choice, influence, fear, humor, and the parts of life we cannot fully explain. The show moves through sleight of hand, close-up, stand-up, mentalism, predictions, spooky moments, fire eating, cards, coins, vanishes, productions, and mind-to-mind communication. That mix matters to me. I did not want one flat note for an hour. I wanted movement. Tension, then laughter. Mystery, then release. A softer beat, then something bigger.
I am proud that the show is not just a magic act placed on a stage. It is built as a theatrical experience. The pacing matters. The sound matters. The lights matter. The transitions matter. I cut pieces I liked because they did not fit the mood or my character. I changed effects so they matched my voice better. Some of the music and cues were shaped very carefully, and some were even built with help from a musician friend.
That process taught me a lot. It also made me respect theatre even more.
The personal side of the show
This show also tells part of my own story.
I started magic when I was nine years old. A friend gave me a CD with 100 tricks explained using everyday objects — thanks Bechir 😉
I studied it hard. Two weeks later, I performed a mini show at my grandparents’ house for the whole family. That first feeling never really left me.
As I got older, magic grew with me. It started with simple tricks and sleight of hand. Then it opened into something wider. Mentalism changed my view quite a lot. The human mind is a fascinating thing. Memory is strange. Choice is strange. Coincidence may not be as simple as it looks. That territory pulled me in.
At the same time, I had other dreams too. I always wanted to fly, and I became a commercial airline pilot in 2018. I have never been the kind of person who does only one thing. Magic, design, music, programming, theatre, aviation… and still looking for new hobbies.
For years, I thought being pulled in many directions was a flaw. Now I think it may be one of the reasons this show exists at all.
Nothing Up My Sleeves came out of that mix.
I wanted it to say that wonder still matters. I wanted it to suggest that our path is not always fixed. There is a line in the presentation that says, “…And it all starts, the moment you decide where you would like to go.” That line stayed with me because it feels true, both on stage and off it.
What I learned while building a solo show
People often ask me how long it takes to become a magician. Or how much you need to practise to reach a certain level.
Those questions make sense, but this project gave me a wider answer.
Performing magic is about much more than methods and secrets. And I believe “why did it work?” is by far a better question that “how did it work?”.
When you build a full solo theatre show, you are not only the performer. You are also the writer, the actor, the director, the designer, the sound person, the lighting person, the marketer, and the storyteller. Unless you work with a full team, you carry all of that at once. And not only you have to practice and rehearse the magic, but you have to imaging the audience reaction, the misdirection, timing, backup plans when things go wrong, etc.
That is hard.
One of the biggest challenges was making the whole show feel coherent. It is easy to build single strong moments. It is much harder to make those moments belong together. I had to remove anything that felt false, even when it worked on its own. I cut a comedy routine that had good reactions because it no longer matched the voice of the show. That was the right choice, but not an easy one.
I also had rough patches with ticket sales (at the beginning, I was worried), writer’s block, and perfectionism. At times, it felt like the show would never be ready. But maybe that is normal. A theatre show like this is shaped through doubt as much as through confidence.
Laurence J. Peter once said: “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
So I fixed a date and went all in.
Premiere night in Leipzig
Then came 2 November 2025.
The show premiered in Leipzig at Kabarett-Theater Sanftwut, and the theatre was sold out (last tickets sold on the same day at the counter). Even now, that feels a bit unreal. After three years of building, changing, cutting, rewriting, rehearsing, and second-guessing, it was finally happening.
And like most live shows, it was not perfect.
There were sound hiccups before and at the beginning the show. A candle refused to light when it was magically supposed to. There was a drunk spectator. The light engineer disappeared from his station right at the moment when I needed him to turn on the room lights, … 🤦🏻♂️ (Now I laugh about it… 😂)
Live theatre has a way of reminding you that control is never complete. But that is also part of what makes it alive. The audience is there with you. The room breathes. Things shift. Small problems appear, and you learn to keep going.
I document all of that in my Grimoire, a tool I created a while back to help magicians be more organized. Every show teaches me something. Every mistake becomes material for the next version. And every feedback is valuable, no matter how small.
Because the truth is simple: Nothing Up My Sleeves is not finished. Not even close.
This premiere was the first stone. The base layer. The foundation. I want to keep shaping this show, improving it, and performing it in Leipzig and beyond. Magic is a lifelong practice. I do not think you ever really arrive.
The kind of magic show I wanted to make
I also knew clearly what I did NOT want this to be.
This is not a children’s magic show. It is not built on cheesy props or cheap audience humiliation. It is an intimate evening of magic, mentalism, mystery, and humor for adults. A theatre show where people are not talked down to. A show where the audience matters. A show where the impossible is not shouted at them, but offered to them.
That difference matters to me.
I want people to leave feeling amazed, but not only amazed. I want them to feel that something in them has been stirred. Curiosity, wonder, maybe even the urge to chase something bigger in their own life. That may sound ambitious, but I think live magic can do that. It can bring people together. It can make strangers laugh at the same moment. It can fill a room with silence, tension, and joy in a way screens never quite can.
That still matters.
Thank you to the people who helped make it real
I could not have made this show alone.
Thank you to Mireia my fiancé and stage assistant, without whom I may never have returned to magic. Thank you to to mom who believed in me all along. Thank you to Alfonso Rituerto, who gave me the chance to perform at his theatre Das Geheime Theater to try the show, and promoted the show online and offline. Thank you to Yann Yuro for his feedback and for helping shape effects and staging. Thank you to Thomas Zerck for acting input. Thank you to Miles for feedback, and for the fog machine 💨 😁. Thank you to Armin who gave me valuable advice and suggestions for the show and the poster design. Thank you to Pierre Féodor for the many hours of shaping ideas and brainstorming. Thank you to Attila Karoly for being the person I could rely on on the day of the show. Thank you to Markus Teubert and Ari Fiedler for valuable feedback from the Preview Show. Thank you to my good friend Kareem who gifted me a professional photographer for the show ♥️
And thank you to everyone else who supported me, watched rehearsals, gave notes, encouraged me, or helped in ways big or small. It all counted. I also want to thank the magicians and mentalists who inspired me over the years. Many of them shaped the way I think about magic, theatre, and mystery.
What comes next
The premiere of Nothing Up My Sleeves in Leipzig was a major step for me, but it was still only the start.
I plan to keep performing the show in Leipzig and in other places as it grows. I will keep refining it. I will keep learning from each audience. I will keep pushing it closer to what I know it can become.
So if you were there that night, thank you. You helped make it real.
And if you were not, I hope to see you at a future performance of Nothing Up My Sleeves. 🤗
You can follow updates and new dates on Instagram: @allanimagic
