Piff The Magic Dragon
| Piff the Magic Dragon | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
John van der Put 9 June 1980 London, England |
| Residence | Las Vegas, Nevada |
| Occupation | Magician, comedian |
| Website | www |
John van der Put (born 9 June 1980) is a magician and comedian from the United Kingdom who performs under the stage name Piff the Magic Dragon. A winner of multiple awards from British magic societies, he toured as a supporting act for band Mumford and Sons, and appeared on television shows Fool Us and America's Got Talent. He lives in Las Vegas and appears in a solo show at The Flamingo.
Van der Put was born in London in 1980, and grew up in its southeast. As a teenager, he was inspired to become a magician after seeing Jerry Sadowitz on the BBC2 show Stuff the White Rabbit. At the age of eighteen, he became a member of The Magic Circle, and was one of the youngest members to have lectured there.
His parents persuaded him to have a back-up career, so he completed a Computer Science degree, and began a career in IT. After two years, however, a bout of acute pancreatitis caused him to rethink his life goals, and he quit IT to learn performance methods as a drama student at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
With fellow alumni of the CSSD Alexis Terry, Maya Politaki, and Lucy Cullingford, he co-founded theatrical cabaret company standnotamazed, becoming their artistic director. The company's Love and Other Magic Tricks — starring Politaki and van der Put, and described in What's on Stage as "a show of subtlety and magic rather than drama and showmanship" — won the Time Out Critic's Choice award as well as the 2009 Buxton Festival Fringe's award for Best Production, and was nominated for the Festival's Best New Writing award.
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