Zubrick Magic Theatre celebrates Year One in St. Pete

For more than a dozen years, in theaters on the on the Pacific islands of Saipan and Guam, professional illusionists Chris and Ryan Zubrick fine-tuned their magic act into a fast-paced, Vegas-caliber extravaganza of lights, smoke, music, disappearing ladies and non-stop oohs, ahhs and how-did-they-do-that’s.

Just before the world’s mandated pandemic pause, the Zubricks, Midwesterners who married in 2013, decided to return to the United States and set up their own venue, location unknown. So they bought an RV and drove around the country, looking into one city after another. The pre-requisites were warm weather (no more of those Michigan winters for them), a thriving arts community, no competition to speak of, an LGBTQ-friendly population and – perhaps most importantly – a healthy, year-round tourism industry.

St. Petersburg, even though they’d never heard of it before the Sunshine Skyway Bridge deposited them here on their way back north from the Keys, “checked all the boxes,” according to Chris Zubrick. “Once the sun went down on the beaches, other than going back to your resort, your Air B&B, your hotel, there wasn’t a lot for families to do. So we saw that there was the need for that.”

This Friday, July 29, will mark the one-year anniversary of the Zubrick Magic Theatre, at 1211 1st Avenue N.

They leased the space, a former AAA location next to a liquor store, and upended it, adding walls, building a stage, importing state-of-the-art lights and effects systems. A risky endeavor, to be sure.

“This was in the middle of a pandemic, building out an intimate theater,” Zubrick marveled. “This is when nobody was doing anything in public spaces. But we knew that there would come a time when people needed magic in their lives. As cliché as that sounds. We do need to escape reality and experience magic and wonder.”

If they built it, would anybody come?

Leading up to opening night, Zubrick related, “as we started to see the ticket sales coming in, we weren’t sure if this was going to take off or not. We were confident in our product, we knew that we could put on a good show, but we didn’t know necessarily if owning and operating our own theater – in a city that we’ve never lived in before – would be a winning combination.”

The first week of shows sold out. And then the second week. And now, 12 months and nearly 200 performances in, the 90-seat Zubrick Magic Theatre is filled to capacity nearly every time. That’s what word of mouth, and good marketing, will do.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the 70-minute, family-friendly show – four per week – is a first-class affair, with no balloon animals, clowns or rabbits-in-tophats in sight.

It’s on a different level, as if it were beamed into St. Pete from another entertainment universe.

This first year, Zubrick said, has succeeded “tremendously, beyond our wildest dreams.”

Part of the charm – well, OK, part of the magic – is the fact that the theater is so small. He and Ryan feel the energy give-and-take from the audience. They know when there’s awe, and when there’s astonishment, in the air.

“We can hear and see everything,” he said, “so it is really like we’re doing a personal magic show for you in your living room.”

Zubrick Magic Theatre website.