America’s Got Talent is in the middle of its seventeenth season, and Piff the Magic Dragon’s performance as a guest on the show is making waves on the Internet.
One of the most talked about America’s Talent finalists is Piff. He was on season 10 of the show, and since he was kicked off, his career has been going up and up. The magician came in fifth-last out of the top ten. He went on America’s Got Talent: The Champions for a second time and lost in the first round.
Even though this man didn’t win the reality show, he has won several awards for his work outside of the TV set. Most of the time, British Magician societies give him awards.
How Much Is Piff the Magic Dragon Worth in 2022?
Piff Since his first appearance on America’s Got Talent, The Magic Dragon’s career has gone in a good direction. Not all of it is due to luck, but this man has worked very hard and stayed consistent over the years.
Reports say that, before 2008, his work never really paid off, even though he liked making people laugh and showing off his magic. He tried everything as a human magician until one day he went to a costume party.
He made the character of Piff the Magic Dragon for the stage, complete with a green, red, and yellow dragon costume, a deadpan delivery, and humor that pokes fun at himself. He gets help from Mr. Piffles, a chihuahua dressed as a dragon.
He got the idea for the Magic Dragon name by accident when he went to a costume party dressed as a dragon and no one else did. He was the only one there, and a friend who knew he was a magician told him that he should include that in his show.
The name Puff the Magic Dragon was suggested, but he changed it a little and came up with Piff the Magic Dragon. The rest, as they say, is history. This powerhouse of talent will never look back.
In the year 2022, Piff the Magic Dragon is worth $3 million. He works at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel & Casino right now. The owners have taken good care of him by giving him his own stage. A lot of people go there just to see him.
Former AGT magician Piff the Magic Dragon’s earnings and details about his show
Late in 2015, Piff became a regular performer at The Flamingo. The hotel renamed its “Bugsy’s Cabaret” stage “Piff the Magic Dragon Theater” to honor him. Jade Simone, a showgirl who is also his wife in real life, helps him out.
In October 2020, his concert moved to the Flamingo Showroom, which is much bigger with 700 seats and a 3-year contract. This shows the value he’s been bringing to his job as a performer. But we can’t ignore how hard he works to make his shows come to life.
The Flamingo pays its workers based on a percentile scale, which is how much he makes. According to the pay scale, the highest salary is $45,534, and the average salary is around $27,000. We think Piff’s pay is in the higher range because he is a well-known artist.
Besides that, he also makes money from his own stage shows, events, and guest appearances. These kinds of shows give away a lot of money based on how much the audience likes a particular performer.
His next show will be at the Hanover theater in Worcester, MA, on September 28 at 7:30 PM. His website is where you can buy the tickets. Information is also given about his other shows.
Early years and work
South East London is where Van der Put grew up. When he was a teenager, he saw Jerry Sadowitz on the BBC2 show Stuff the White Rabbit. This made him want to become a magician. At age 18, he joined The Magic Circle, where he was one of the youngest members to ever give a lecture.
His parents told him he should have a backup career, so he got a degree in computer science and started working in IT. After two years, he got acute pancreatitis, which made him change his mind about what he wanted to do with his life. He quit IT to become a drama student at the Central School of Speech and Drama and learn how to act.
He started the theater cabaret company standnotamazed with Alexis Terry, Maya Politaki, and Lucy Cullingford, all of whom were also graduates of the CSSD. He is the artistic director of standnotamazed. Love and Other Magic Tricks, which starred Politaki and van der Put and was called “a show of subtlety and magic rather than drama and showmanship” by WhatsOnStage, won the Time Out Critic’s Choice award and the Best Production award at the 2009 Buxton Festival Fringe. It was also nominated for the Festival’s Best New Writing award. Van der Put also played a supporting part in Derek Walcott’s opera of Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes, which was performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2008.
Van der Put says that Fay Presto made it possible for him to become a full-time magician. Some of her jobs were close-up performances in restaurants for tables of diners, work on cruise ships, and corporate work for global companies, such as “product launches, PR stunts, tradeshows, and internal presentations.”
Laughs vs. tricks
When asked if his magic act before Piff was also a comedy act, van der Put talked about his magic career before Piff “It wasn’t on purpose. I was the one doing magic. People would then say silly things like, “Can you make my wife disappear?” Could you do it? Can you do it?’ And I would say something that I thought was funny, and a few people would think it was funny too, but most people would just get upset. So, the dragon costume helped me fit in with other people.”
Van der Put said this about the people who made him laugh: “People who are a little less serious did it. People like The Amazing Jonathan, Penn and Teller, Harry Anderson,… And if you look at some of Copperfield’s acts, like the one with the singing tie, you’ll see that he also does some very funny things. But it’s clear that Copperfield’s other work is very straight-forward and serious. And that’s why I acted the way I did.”
When asked which is harder, doing magic or making people laugh, van der Put replied: “Without a doubt, it is making the magic tricks work. That’s the toughest part. Because you can rewrite a joke pretty quickly for comedy, but it usually takes at least a month or two of R&D prototyping to make a magic trick work. And if it doesn’t work, you have to go back to the drawing board and try again. Because now you’ve spent all this time on something that nobody cares about. That means you have to start over.”
In 2008, van der Put made his stage character Piff the Magic Dragon. He wore a green, red, and yellow dragon costume and told jokes about himself while speaking in a deadpan tone. “Mr. Piffles,” a chihuahua dressed up as a dragon, helps him. The Magic Dragon character came about by accident, when he went to a costume party dressed as a dragon and no one else did. “I was the only one. One of my friends who knew I was a magician told me, “You should do this in your act.” You might be Puff the Magic Dragon. I said, “Wait, I could be Piff the Magic Dragon.” You might have heard of Steve, who is my older brother. This is where it came from.”
In an interview, van der Put was asked why he is a dragon and not some other mythical creature.
“Am I even a dragon?” is the first question. I can’t fly because I don’t have wings… I can’t do anything. So, I’m not sure. What happened was that I was just a normal human magician for a long time. And I never really got anywhere with it… I had a very grumpy face, and everyone kept letting me go. Then I had to go to a costume party, but I didn’t have anything to wear. I asked my sister, “Do you have anything to wear?” “Yes, I have a dragon costume under my bed,” she said. So, the only reason it looks like a dragon is because of how my sister interpreted the facts. And I did ask her recently, ten years later, “Was it definitely a dragon costume?” She couldn’t say for sure. So, it was definitely a lizard-like or reptile-like creature that I like to think of as a dragon.
Piff the Magic Dragon has been in many shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. His first show, a solo act at the 2009 Free Fringe Festival, broke the record for the most money made in one night, and he was nominated for the first-ever Time Out and Soho Theatre Cabaret Award in 2012. Love and Other Magic Tricks won the award for Best Comedy Show at the Buxton Fringe Festival in the same year that his show did. He has done national tours of the UK and Australia, including runs at the Soho Theatre and the Sydney Opera House.
Van der Put said this about where Mr. Piffles came from:
When I was in Edinburgh in 2009, I saw a Chihuahua, and I used that dog in my show. It was so funny that the next day I went out and bought Mr. Piffles. I didn’t really think about it, so I didn’t. And then, you know, I started seeing dogs dressed up as dinosaurs. So, we put him in a dinosaur costume. Then, when people said, “So you’re a real magic dragon?” I thought it was really funny. I would answer “yes.” Then they would ask, “So, is the dog also a dragon?” I would say, “No, it’s just a dog dressed up as a dragon.” I thought it was funny to see that kind of play.