Piff the Magic Dragon

Early life and education

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.

Career

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.

Other work during this period included a supporting role in Derek Walcott's 2008 operatic production of Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes at Shakespeare's Globe, work as a magician for cruise ships and restaurants, and corporate work including "product launches, PR stunts, tradeshows and internal presentations" for global companies.

In 2008, he created the stage persona of Piff the Magic Dragon (a spoof of Puff, the Magic Dragon), dressed in a green, red and yellow dragon costume, with self-deprecating humour and deadpan delivery. He is assisted by "Mr. Piffles", a chihuahua in a matching dragon costume. The character was created by happenstance, when van der Put was the only one to arrive in costume at a fancy dress party. "I spent the whole night getting more and more grumpy. And then my friend said, 'you should do this in your act'".

Piff the Magic Dragon has appeared regularly in solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, debuting at the 2009 Free Fringe Festival with a show that broke the record for highest takings in one night, and being nominated for the inaugural 2012 TO&ST (Time Out and Soho Theatre) Cabaret Award. His show at the 2009 Buxton Fringe won the award for Best Comedy Show the same year that Love and Other Magic Tricks won. He has had national tours of the UK and Australia, including runs at the Soho Theatre and Sydney Opera House.

In 2011, Piff appeared on the first season of Penn & Teller: Fool Us with a phased transformation of incorrect card to signed card, a performance which according to Metro saw him "steal the show" with a routine that'd "have been as welcome on a small stage at a comedy festival as it would a Vegas stage". Although his card trick segment of the performance fooled Penn and Teller initially, the pair ultimately figured it out and were therefore "not fooled" by Piff's own admission. Despite this, the duo rated the act their favourite of the season, and Piff "a stunningly good magician". The routine was subsequently voted onto Channel 5's TV's 50 Greatest Magic Tricks. The following year, his routine was plagiarised by a Ukrainian magician on the Russian TV3 show Surprise Me! (Russian: Удиви меня!).

As Piff, he was a support act for band Mumford & Sons on their 2012 Tour of Two Halves. The band first discovered him when they both appeared in the benefit concert The Secret Policeman's Ball 2012, and included him in their Galway Gentlemen of the Road Stopover and on the cover of their album Babel. Together with his other 2012 performances, these appearances made him the UK Magician seen live on stage by the most people that year.

Van der Put moved to Las Vegas to join The Cosmopolitan's Rose. Rabbit. Lie club and its 2014 Spiegelworld Vegas Nocturne show, having been headhunted while on tour in Australia. In December of that year, he opened for Human Nature's December 2014 Christmas shows at The Venetian.

In May 2015, Piff appeared on the 10th season of NBC's America's Got Talent. His audition, a repeat of his Fool Us routine with a phased transformation of incorrect card to signed card, was unanimously selected for the Judge Cuts round. In that round, a signed card reappeared in a sealed dog-food can, with special guest judge Neil Patrick Harris using his Golden Buzzer to send Piff straight to the quarterfinals. In the quarterfinals, three hanging boxes selected by judge Howie Mandel were violently destroyed, while the fourth unselected box was revealed to contain Mr. Piffles. This received sufficient votes to be sent to the Semifinals, where his revelations of three selected cards earned him standing ovations from judges Howard Stern, Heidi Klum and Howie Mandel, and sufficient votes for the Final round. That week's act, which involved firing Mr Piffles from a cannon and the reappearance of a signed bill inside a walnut, did not receive enough votes for him to win, and instead placed him in the Top 10. He returned as a guest performer on AGT's 2016 America's Got Talent Holiday Spectacular and in 2017 during Season 12.

In late 2015 he opened a stage show as Piff the Magic Dragon at The Flamingo.

Consultancy

Van der Put has been magic consultant to Penn and Teller; to Heston Blumenthal and his restaurant the Fat Duck; to immersive theatre company Punchdrunk for their productions of Faust in 2006 and The Drowned Man in 2013; and to company Theatre-Rites for their production Mojo, which played at The Barbican Theatre, the Salzburg Festival, and New York's New Victory Theatre.

Awards

Van der Put won the 2008 British Ring Close-up Magician of the Year, while The Magic Circle awarded him their 2011 Close-up Magician of the Year, 2012 Stage Magician of the Year (as Piff), and 2013 Carlton Award. In 2013, the Circle also inducted him into their Inner Ring with Gold Star.