Penn & Teller share secrets to 50-year partnership before return to Renaissance Festival

Penn & Teller’s performances at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on Saturday are being billed as the duo’s return to the site that launched their act, a celebration of what two buddies can accomplish when they have each other’s back.

But as in their magic, the truth is more fascinating than the illusion.

“We never really aspired to be friends,“ said Penn Jillette, who came up with the idea of returning to Shakopee for the 50th anniversary. ”Consequently, what you hear about every other team never happens with us. There’s never screaming, or quitting, because it’s a different relationship. We don’t care about each other. We care about the show.”

Their contrasting personalities were on display during separate Zoom interviews earlier this month from their homes in Las Vegas.

Jillette, 70, who does all the talking on stage, sat in front of a French movie poster of Bob Dylan’s “Renaldo and Clara” and dropped names of obscure entertainers, almost daring you to pick up the references. Teller, 77, who never speaks on stage, stayed on his feet, constantly bouncing off camera to retrieve props, like the original “Silent Wonder Show” sign he used to promote himself a half-century ago.

One thing the two do have in common is uncertainty over whether or not they actually performed together their first year at the festival.

Teller believes they may have shared the stage during an impromptu late-night show, illuminated by car headlights. But he can’t be sure.

Jeffrey Siegel, an associate director for the festival at the time, had met the teenager at Florida’s Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown College and quickly learned that his classmate was one of the best street jugglers in Philadelphia. Siegel’s invite letter was addressed to Penn Gillette and used the sign-off, “your honey.”

“Penn’s street pitch was key to my willingness to break past the idea of strict living history and to add broader popular entertainments and funny anachronistic references into the festival,” said Siegel, who would become the festival’s chief director in 1981.

Jillette, who was 17 at the time, had met Teller through a mutual friend, Weir Chrisemer, and they had all performed together in a troupe that parodied classical music. While Teller was much greener — and seven years older — the juggling maestro saw something special in his new acquaintance.

“I had never met anyone who could do a simple geek carnival act and have the beats in it that would be a Greek tragedy,” Jillette said.

Teller, who was teaching Latin at a New Jersey high school, took a leave of absence, abandoning a class that would have included future comedian Jon Stewart.

“I wish we had a chance to do that again,” Teller said. “There’s nothing like moving forward in a car with the constant changes in scenery and food and where you’re sleeping. It moves your mind forward.”

The drive in the Datsun station wagon sped by quickly, with each tapping into the other’s deep intellect and sense of curiosity.

“We were always, and to this day, both tremendously pretentious,” Jillette said. “If you listen to our conversations, they would make you blush. We could break down a three-minute vaudeville act and talk about it for four hours. I had never really met anyone who could take that kind of conversation all the way.”

They filled in each other’s gaps. Jillette gave Teller a tutorial on rock ‘n’ roll, with an emphasis on Lou Reed. Teller knew all about William Shakespeare.

“Teller was more sophisticated in terms of theater,” Jillette said. “I knew what it was like to be in a biker gang and jail.”

“What I remember about that first festival is that bagpipers can ruin your pitch,” he said. “If any bagpipers come near us this year, they will be shot.”

Penn and Teller would return to the festival off and on over the next seven years, sometimes performing under the name “The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society” with Chrisemer. They also became semi-regulars at Dudley Riggs Theatre.

But by the mid-80s, they were too big to deal with mud and mosquitoes.

There would be Broadway runs, late-night TV, music videos, bestselling books. Since 2001, they have been performing at the Rio and hold the record for the longest-running Las Vegas headliner at a single venue.

“Today I see them as the same deeply smart, comedy clever and highly disciplined artists they were 50 years ago,“ Siegel said. ”Now they have much greater resources to continue and expand their unique place in showbiz culture.”

But they know they are better together, as long as they stick to their tried-and-true formula.

“Teller and I can be tremendously annoyed with each other and neither one of us cares. We really don’t. He’s first my business partner,” said Jillette, who hasn’t even been to Teller’s house this year. “That being said, it’s been 50 years. There’s no doubt he’s my best friend. There’s no one I trust more, no one I respect more. Yet the relationship is essentially cold. That’s what’s so wonderful about it.”

There are only two scheduled shows for Saturday, although Jillette teased that he might run around the grounds and do some tricks on the side. Those matinee performances will be less elaborate than their show later this month at Radio City Music Hall in New York and the one they’ll do for 11 nights at the London Palladium in September.

In fact, it’ll be such a throwback that the pair plans to pass the hat.

“The chance to collect untraceable cash? Of course we will,” Teller said. “Omigod, we haven’t had that luxury in decades.”

When: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Sat.-Sept. 28.

Where: 12364 Chestnut Blvd., Shakopee

Tickets: $22.13-$31.29. renaissancefest.com