In 2022 I designed the set and environments for AMYSTIKA – The Secret Revealed at the Criss Angel Theater inside Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. Previews started 11 March 2022, the show opened that April, and we ran until 15 October 2022. Billed as "the Mindfreak Prequel," it brought Criss Angel together with Franco Dragone.
A prequel told as a dream
Most magic shows are a sequence of tricks. Amystika was built around a story — a dream-like origin tale of how Christopher Sarantakos became Criss Angel. That changes the brief. The set isn't a backdrop for illusions. It has to carry a narrative that deliberately bends reality, and keep the audience oriented inside the dream.
Weather, indoors
The show staged full environmental effects in the theatre — a tornado, a blizzard, a firestorm. That's as much an engineering brief as an artistic one. The room has to handle wind, snow and fire safely, every show, every reset, and the machinery that makes them happen has to disappear into the design.
Designing around the secret
A magic-driven show is one of the hardest briefs I take on. Every surface has to look right and never give the trick away. Sightlines, reveals, trap mechanisms, reset speed — those things dictate what I can and can't do. The pretty parts always have to serve the secret, or at least not betray it.
A Dragone production
Amystika is widely described as Franco Dragone's final directorial production. Working in his language — big, image-driven, emotional staging — is something I've done across resident shows from China to Saudi Arabia, and this one sits squarely in that lineage.
What it was
Amystika drew mixed reviews and eventually closed, like a lot of Vegas residencies do. For me it stays a useful one: a story-driven magic show with real environmental effects, designed around the unforgiving demands of illusion, for a director whose work has shaped how I think about scale.
