Hello magical friends, especially my newest patron BB! Your support lets me do these interview episodes. I’m your hostwitch Bess and I’m getting really excited for the subject of this interview!
Two quick notes before we start:
1) Losing Lara/The Weirdos Are Out is going through a really rough time and has started a Go Fund Me. I’ll include a link in the transcript if you can help her out. [Link]
and
2) This one was supposed to be a bonus episode back in March, which is why you’ll keep hearing us reference Stellar Fest as “next month.” It was also recorded before the convention had to move hotels, so please disregard our chatter at the end about the location.
Phew, that’s a lot. Let’s get to the music before anything else comes up! Here’s Striking Down Diggory with “Wizard Rock Wrocks.”
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That was “Wizard Rock Wrocks” by Striking Down Diggory [lyrics], the Foundation of Fair Fortune and “Magic By the Lake” and The Mudbloods’ “Zombies.”
“Zombies” was a special request from my patron Geoff, who dedicated it to Eli “for bringing me back to life whenever I feel like a zombie.”
And now here’s the first part of my chat with Mr. CONjuration himself!
All right, magical friends. After many years of urging by Hawthorn and Holly, I finally made it to this incredibly cool local convention, and I wanted to share it with y’all, so I got uh one of the hosts? owners? of CONjuration to come and talk with us today. Welcome, Chris!
Chris: Thanks for having me.
So if you could, ahh, tell folks a little bit about yourself and maybe a little bit about CONjuration.
Chris: tch. Ah, let’s see, I have a degree in art education. I taught for eleven years. I stayed home with my kids – we homeschool – and, some time in the late years of homeschooling, I was encouraged by our little community to run a summer camp on Star Wars. So, I did, and it went really, really well, but all the kids there asked if I could do one of a similar nature on Harry Potter. Absolutely. And so I did.
And I did it for four, five, six years – something like that. Um, I got a divorce, met Angela, and the first summer or spring that we were together, I was encouraging people to sign their kids up for Harry Potter camp, and um I was laughing at all the adults ‘cause they kept asking, “When are you going to do a summer camp for adults?” And, you know, “hahaha,” and my now-wife looked at me as she said, “You know what they call a summer camp for adults?” I’m like, “No.” She said, “They call it a convention.” I said, “Don’t be silly; we can’t do a convention. You know, real people do conventions.” She said, “No I really think we can,” and I’m like, “Well, you’re the marketing person; if you think you can figure out how to do it, then, you know, I know the people, and I certainly have the stupid knowledge to pull off some panels here and there, so uh let’s see.”
And so, we did a little study, and we realized that uh there were a lot of people who wanted a Harry Potter-esque fan- magical fantasy-themed convention. And, sure enough, I mean, it came off really well. The first year, we had probably twice what we thought we were going to get. We were expecting, you know, maybe three hundred people; we wound up at about seven hundred and fifty folks, and uh then it just kept growing.
Um, we were probably at around fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred people each year until the pandemic set in, and that’s when, you know, we took a hit, and so we’re having to rebuild, ‘cause we definitely lost a couple of hundred people. I guess folks just got used to staying home, but, you know, everything just run so well, it’s such a great community. And we do everything, you know; it’s not just Harry Potter, it’s, it’s Lord of the Rings, it’s Narnia – if they cast a spell in the book, movie, or TV series, then we include it in CONjuration, cause we don’t play favorites. Um, as long as there’s magic involved, we add it to the show.
We do all sorts of stuff. We have roughly about three hundred programming hours through the course of the weekend, um, including roughly two hundred hours of panels that we have; game shows; we have activities; we have an arts and crafts section. It’s very interactive. Um. We do a house cup competition that- what we figured out very, very quickly was that, um, CONjuration leans towards one house, uh, it kind of plays favorites. I guess it’s just because of the nature of the convention, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs are really drawn to the- our convention, which is fine by me, I’m a Ravenclaw! But uh, it really wasn’t fair, it wasn’t much of a competition when it came to poor Gryffindor who just got waxed every year. They only had, you know, maybe twenty percent of everybody elses’ points.
So what we did was, we went all the way back to the very beginnings of CONjuration, when it was just a summer camp. The kids in my summer camp had created their own magical school, Magehaven, and so what we did was, we have our own magical school at CONjuration, we split it into four houses, and of course the the question was, how are we going to keep it even? How, how do we prevent what happened with the regular houses from happening now? And so we did it by birthday, because that just automatically evens out.
And, what’s great is that, if you look at the astrological signs, they fall into one of the four elements, so our houses are Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. That keeps it even, and it’s been a heck of a competition for the last three years, now that we’ve swapped over to Magehaven, because people now know it’s not just a sure win like it was with Ravenclaw. Now they have to really go out there and earn their points. Um, and they earn points through making comments during the panels or winning the game shows, uh, we have quests that they do all weekend long where they’re sent on missions to find stuff or take pictures of stuff or participate in various activities.
Um, one of the things that my wife was really strong on was making sure that we did a, a lot of bands. Her father was a musician and had been in numerous bands through the years, and she wanted to make sure that music was a big part of CONjuration as well, so we have gone through almost all of the headlining wizard rockers and all of the local musicians that lean towards uh magical fantasy in some way, shape, or form, that we always have our Grand Chamber full of music all weekend long. Excuse me, our- we also run a science fiction convention called Stellar Fest, and that’s in one month, and that’s what we call the big room, is the Grand Chamber. But, uh, we tend to have usually, including the dance probably, twenty four hours of music going on all weekend long now. We have a coffee house upstairs, and we have small performances there are, so, there’s music either going on on the little stage or the big stage all weekend long.
And it’s just a wonderful community. I have to say that, we were a little apprehensive when we first started because you don’t know what to expect when you’re dealing with people that you don’t know and- we knew some of the community but, you know, knowing a hundred people is totally different from knowing fifteen hundred people. It’s like, oh no, what if there’s problems? I have to say, it’s been an absolute delight since 2014, that it’s an absolutely fantastic community. They all behave very well, um, everybody gets along, because we come into CONjuration with the understanding that we’re not there because of religion or politics, we’re there because of our love of magical fantasy, then I think that helps us all coalesce into a really great group of people.
Uh, I can confirm that the quests are brilliant. That is what SlytherSpouse spent the entire weekend doing last year.
What was that for the first year like for y’all?
Chris: The first year that we had quests?
The first year of uh CONjuration.
Chris: Okay, so, we <laughter> we didn’t realize it but, we were in over our head. Like I said, we got twice as many people as we expected, and we went in there with a staff of.. twelve, maybe? It was Angela and myself and uh three of our children. She has three; I have three; only three came that first year from the both of us. We had a, a registration team, and we had a fella that ran our game room, and then we had our tech guys and our security guys, but other than that we had maybe two people that helped us just run the convention.
I have never been so tired in all my life than I was at the end of that very first show. But the thing is is that we met the right people. The guy that I had called and asked to be in charge of our registration, Mike Hennigan, who just passed away last year, he said “I can get you people to help out.” I’m like, “Mike, whatever you could do, that’d be great.” And Mike hooked us up with three or four people who became instrumental in getting us enough volunteers and help to make things just run so smoothly.
We used to get very, very tense coming up on the convention and, the last couple years, my wife looked at me, she said, “You know, I’m not near as nervous as I usually am.” I’m like, “We don’t have to be anymore because we have the right people in the right places.” We know everything’s going to fall together just the way it’s supposed to. We have a great group of volunteers, couldn’t ask for a better group of people. We still have the same tech guys, we still have the same security guys, but we have the right people in places as far as volunteers in guest services are running the CONjuration store, and everything just, it works so smoothly.
Cultivating a family, I think, is important in any organization, and we wound up with just the best family ever. We look forward to CONjuration and Stellar Fest because, that’s our Christmas, that’s our Easter, because those are the family members that we chose.
So you said you’ve had a whole roster of wizard rockers come and perform. Were wizard rockers there from the start?
Chris: The first year that we did CONjuration, we had Lauren Fairweather. She was our wizard rocker. We did have other musicians- we had a band called Celtic Kudzu that came and played during the Yule Ball, um, and I think they played one other time; honestly, that first year gets kind of muddied, because we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off my friend.
And my friend Louie, he was a singer-songwriter who worked for the BBC for about thirty years, and one of his jobs – and I think it’s the coolest job ever – was that he would sing people in and out of various programs. He would write songs for various interview programs and news programs or whatnot, and the camera would literally turn and face, and Louie would be sitting there on a stool just playing his little songs. And we had him come, and he played for the tea party that year. So the first year, we were down as far as musicians were concerned; we still had more than most small shows did, but the next year, that’s when we were contacted by Draco and the Malfoys, and Blibbering Humdingers, and Hawthorn and Holly, and they have become staples at CONjuration; we have them just about every year. Brian from Draco and the Malfoys has now moved to California, so it may be a little more of an effort to pull him back, but uh I don’t think it’ll be a problem; he loves us as much as we love him.
But we’ve had uh, gosh, I’m trying to think. Tonks and the Aurors have been there, um- Hold it, one moment; I made a poster one year, and I went over there to check it, out to see what it was. Yeah, I think it was our third year, we had a huge roster. Honestly, being the guy that creates the schedule, it was- it became problematic, we had so many bands that year. I’m looking, there were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen bands that year. And trying to squeeze everybody on was something else. But that was the year that we had The Whomping Willows; we had Sam Mulligan; Lauren Fairweather came back; we had another local band called Try Hard.
There is an author named CS Marks who lives in Indiana, and she signed up for an, an author table the second year that we had CONjuration, and that’s um- but when we started little conversations with her, we found out that she was also, she was a singer and songwriter and uh a very gifted filker, and she asked if she could do some filking and I’m like, “Uh, yeah, sure, okay, well, I’ll see where I can squeeze you in,” and I found a little space and it was late at night, probably ten or eleven o’clock on Friday night, and I slid her on, the room was full and everybody was on the ground laughing; it was the greatest show I have ever seen. So she became one of our standard singing people.
Because we didn’t know what to expect; we didn’t want to upset any of our guests by telling them, “No, we don’t want you to do this.” It’s like, “Well, let’s give her a shot and just see how she is.” And then she became like the star. Everybody would go to Chris Marks’ uh, performances because they were so clever. She even wrote a song for CONjuration that we sing every year at the end of the show, at the closing ceremonies, called The Thirteen Days of Hogwarts, and everybody at this point knows all the words and everybody sings along and makes all the sound effects, and she was just instrumental in making CONjuration a musical event.
Sadly, she got a strange illness and had to have a a lung transplant, so the singing now is off the table, as is the travel, because when you’ve had a transplant, you don’t take chances with catching con crud, so, she hasn’t been back. but we are in contact with her every year, and we make sure that we hook her up on Facebook live so that she can see the performances and join along from her couch in Indiana.
But we have a rotating group of people that come through every year, as far as musicians. Like I said, we have our standard: Draco and the Malfoys, Blibbering Humdingers, Hawthorn and Holly, but we also have- you know, we always make sure that we set off a little segment for other people that want to join in as well. Mark Gunn, who is a local Atlanta musician, performs a lot for us, and he is- he’s kind of like me: he’s not just a magical fantasy guy, he’s across the board, so he does a lot of songs about Firefly and Star Wars and Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. So, what he does is, he focuses on the fantasy stuff for CONjuration, and then where we see him in, in a month from now, then he’ll do his science fiction stuff. But, we like to showcase the local talent that we can, but we always make sure we leave space open for the new people who may come in.
We have another, an author joined us last year, I think it was, and he did the same thing that Chris Marks did, ask if he could perform, and I’m like, “Oh I don’t know this guy. I-I-I- he doesn’t have any recordings,” and I’m like, “Hold it. We didn’t have anything for Chris Marks either, and I let her do it, and she was really, really good,” and I’m like, “<inhales> You know what? I’m going to find a spot for David,” and I got nothing but applause from him last year. They’re like, “Wow, I didn’t expect-” You walk into the room, you look at him, and you’re like, “Yeah, well, we’ll see how he is.” And, and then everybody’s like, “And he was fantastic!” And I’m like, “Yeah, I knew that. Yeah, huh, sure, I was totally confident in his ability, yeah.”
So, it’s cool just to take chances on people; I think that’s important in life is to give people a shot, let’s see what they could, do ‘cause sometimes they just blow you away. I can’t wait for the next author who says, “Hey, I don’t only write; I also sing.” I’m not even going to hesitate; it’s like, “You’re on the schedule, my guy. I have faith in you.”
So uh, yeah, like I said, music has become very, very important; we couldn’t do CONjuration without music. Music has to fill the hallways. Though, you’re going to hear it, either from people just randomly singing, or you’re going to hear it coming out of one of the various rooms at, at the convention. Singalongs have become a huge part of CONjuration. We did have one pretty early on, and it was a Disney singalong, and I knew it would be popular, I had no idea how big it would be. I put it in the large room late in the evening, and the large room filled up all the way, and it was standing room only. And now- that first year, I think I gave them an hour, and now they’re up to two hours, and they’re one of probably five or six singalongs that we have throughout the course of the weekend, and, man, people just love it. Having been a choir kid, the chorus kid, it-it-it’s really cool to walk into a room and just seeing everybody just have their souls and, you know, heightened with the sounds of music, so- it’s great.
So what I’m hearing is that some of our newer wizard rockers should consider reaching out, seeing if you’ve got space for them this coming year.
Chris: Absolutely. Um, and the, the contact us form is at www.CONjurationCon.com, and just let us know that you’re out there and you’re interested, because I’m sure that we can find a space for you. We have multiple places where we let people perform. So if it’s not in the, the main area, then, then definitely the coffee shop; we’ll find a place for you.
That room up by the uh, the coffee room – which also had tea, magical friends – very important to your Hostwitch–
Chris: That’s right.
–was my favorite place to be all weekend. You got all the intimate performances and even some brilliant band mashups because they just happened to be there at the same time.
Chris: That’s always cool is when you a as where if you put two or three musicians into a room you’re going to start a jam session. So coming up with that was it really was a great idea and I honestly I don’t remember if it was my idea or Angela’s idea. I want to take credit for it because I’m a beatnik from way back when. Um, I was obsessed with jack Kerouac and the rest of the beat generation back when I was in college, and so coffee houses have always they held a nicer place in my heart and I think it may have been my idea to to use that area but it’s possible that she did. And she probably is the one that came up with the idea of putting the musicians up there and I wasn’t sure how it would work because when you have a coffee house there’s not a whole lot of space, so anybody that you put up there needs to either be an individual or it needs to be a band that’s really compact. But I tell you what musicians are really good at making use of whatever space you give them. We have had, you know, individuals up there and we have had little groups of three and four that brought in a drum and an acoustic guitar and a banjo or you know whatever it is that they have and they’ve managed to make it work. And you do get a- I think a much better performance in a space like that. Brian Ross from Draco and the Malfoys said that the CONjuration coffee house is just his absolute favorite thing to do. As a matter of fact one year he said “you don’t have to put me on the on the main stage,” he said “I’ll do all my performances up in the coffee house.” I’m like, well, I get it I absolutely do because I think there’s a better connection people when you’re in a small room like that.
I’m working on the schedule for Stellar Fest right now and trying to figure out where we’re going to put our musicians and we have a couple of big bands, they’re definitely main stage, and then I’m looking and I’m like “now we have three to do individual stuff and all of them can play acoustic as well” so I’m thinking they’re going to go to the Cosmic Coffee House–we decided to duplicate some of the same things that worked for CONjuration with Stellar Fest. You know, you find something that works well with people you make sure that you, you use it over and over again and the lil coffee house is…
That was a great idea that either my wife or I came up with I’m not sure which. Like I’m not going to, not going to take sole credit for it but it worked really really well. It still works really well.
It’s music break time! Why not do a couple stretches while we play Muggle Snuggle’s “Hermione’s Lament” and we’ll be right back.
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That was “Hermione’s Lament” from Muggle Snuggle, [lyrics], The Galleon Guy’s “Make the Wrock,” and “Seeker” from the prolific Slytherin Soundtrack [lyrics].
Let’s learn a bit more about CONjuration with Chris!
So what are some of your favorite parts of Conjuration? You said the people, but are there events or annual scheduled things?
Chris: My favorite part of Conjuration is sitting on panels. And I, I catch a lot of grief from my wife because I’ll sit on 18 to 22 panels every year, which means that if a problem comes up, that she has to handle it because I’m on a panel <laugh> and she claims I do that on purpose, but that’s not it. When I sit on a panel, I get to interact with the audience. I don’t do lectures. Like I said, I was a teacher for 11 years. I’m lectured out. I don’t need to give a lecture. I would much rather have an interactive conversation with the attendees who come to the show. And so sitting up there gives me that chance to talk to all of the people that, you know, I only get to see once a year, a lot of these people. And like I said, it’s one big giant family.
So it’s like getting to see all my cousins and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and that connection that you get to make with people when you sit on panels is definitely my favorite thing. I like it all. Uh, we don’t include anything in Conjuration that we wouldn’t wanna participate in, but it, for me, sitting on the panels is definitely the, the highlight of, of Convention.
You know, I though you were gonna say the Choose Your Own Adventure.
Chris: <laugh> Boy, that, that started out so simply. It really, really did. We did CONjuration, I think it was a- after the second year, in between the second and the third year, we were at a bookstore and I saw a book that was, uh, I can’t think of the actor’s name right now, who had written a, a biography, and it was in the Choose Your Own Adventure style. And I’m going, “Oh my god, I loved those books as a kid.” Angela said, “Oh, I wish you could do something like that for CONjuration.” I’m like, “Oh, I could do that.” I said, “I, I, I think I can. I, we have enough rooms. We could have the people go from room to room.” She said, “Well, see what you can come up with.” And I wrote one. My first one was called “The Hunt for the Horcrux.”
And I think we’ve done it three different times, and every time we’ve done it, I have changed aspects of the story. So those that have played the game before always have a different experience. But once I wrote that one, then I knew, well, I had to write a new one for the next year, and then another new one, and then another new one. And now I think I’m up to nine different ones. It may only be eight, because in 2020, we had to cancel the in-person show. We did it on the internet. I mean, we did a full three-day convention online, but, um, I don’t think I wrote a new one because it was, it was a little hard to figure out how to do that with the technology that we were gonna be able to use. But yeah, I’m up to eight or nine, maybe ten.
Yeah, it could be ten. Uh, everybody keeps telling me I need to compile all the Choose Your Own Adventures into one big book and just get it printed so they can buy it from the CONjuration store. But, uh, I try to keep it different every year. The first year I did Harry Potter, but the next year, I think it was Narnia. I have done, uh, Wizard of Oz one. I’ve done Buffy and Supernatural. I’ve done one that was, uh, a combination of every magical world that, whose book, you know, the authors of books that I have upstairs. And people really get a kick out of it. I do two every year. I do one on Friday, which is, uh, one of the ones that we’ve done in previous years. And then I do the brand new one on Sundays. And we usually get 100 or 120 people or so that show up to play, and we all meet in the Great Hall, and I read off the first introduction to the story, and then I give everybody a chance to pick which room they’re gonna go to.
And then they split off, and I have other people that read other parts of the story and give them choices as to where to go. And usually there’s six or seven rounds, and then we’re left with whoever didn’t die in the course of the adventure, and then they win the prize. So, and usually we wind up at about between two and six people that make it all the way to the very end. And then we’ll have stragglers. You’ll have the ones that are actually playing. Then you have ones that come in that just sit in the back of the room and just wanna hear the story, so, which I always find fun.
Yeah, the Galleon Guy and I made it maybe two rooms last year.
Chris: <laugh> Don’t you love Harrison? He contacted us. He actually had submitted that he wanted to perform, and I’m like, “Okay, you know, that’s great. I’ll find him a spot. I think he, since he’s an individual performer, he’ll fit perfect in the coffee house, and based on popularity, we can expand how many times, and because he only wanted to do it once this year.” And I’m like, “Well, you know, I can convince him to do more if, if people really love him.” And then in the course of our conversations, and I, I, multiple emails, probably after about six or seven emails, it came out that he needed a little assistance? That he needed me to put the schedule in as a PDF, I think it was, because his visual reader on his phone wasn’t able to pick up the program that we had it running on, and he was blind.
I’m like, “Hey, you type better than most sighted people I’ve ever known, Harrison. I had no idea that you were blind.” And he showed up Thursday of last year and really just became friends with the entire convention. And at the end of the show, he spent probably two or three weeks posting every day and on the CONjuration Facebook page about how much he missed people because, uh, like I said, we’re one big giant family and when people saw that Harrison was trying to get from one room to the other, they were right there on his elbow helping him along. We take care of folks. We take care of, uh, all of our magical beings that show up, and Harrison definitely brought that magic to the show this year. I’m glad you got to participate with him. Uh, I though, I thought he would have been hanging out with Robin, but good, I’m glad he found somebody else too. <laugh>
So we’ve talked a little bit about what CONjuration’s done in the past, and I know you’re deep in Stellar Fest planning right now. But do you have any hints about what people should be looking forward to this year? Anything that’ll get some, some wizard rock fans excited for CONjuration 2026?
Chris: So what we do is we spend the entire year looking at a variety of activities that we can include. We take a long look at various vendors and artists that we think would fit perfectly with CONjuration. There are a number of people that get a little annoyed with us because we take so long before we showcase what we’re going to have, uh, and it’s because we wanna make sure that we get it all right. The vendors and artists really, it drives them nuts because we take so long to approve them. It’s like, yeah, but we gotta make sure that we have the right mix. You don’t need six T-shirt guys. You don’t need six wand guys. You don’t need six comic book guys. You need one good one for every single thing. So as far as the activities, what we found is that we have a pretty good mix of game shows to panels, to activities, to performances, so that same aspect ratio will remain the same.
Now, as far as what’s going to be offered, I don’t even open up our panel submissions until probably about a month before they’re done, just to make sure that we’re getting enough of them, um, so I can be surprised just like everybody else. What I try to do is, I don’t approve everything. I don’t approve ones that have been done year after year after year after year. I try to make sure that what I’ve approved is brand new to the show. It’s something that we haven’t done before. It’s a group of books or TV shows or movies that we haven’t focused on. That way we keep things fresh, we keep things new. And like I said, as As far as the musicians are concerned, we always have two or three that are always there because people love them. But then we always mix in another three or four that people don’t know.
My Choose Your Own Adventure game will be brand new. The game shows we shuffle up. Now, we’re gonna have game shows every year, but they’re not always gonna be the same thing. Just because we did 1 versus 100 last year doesn’t mean that this year it’s not gonna be the match game. We swap it up to keep that kind of thing fresh as well. As far as other new things are concerned when it comes to, um, designs and whatnot for the show, because we do change up the, the T-shirts and the pins and, and other aspects, I, I start working on those probably in June or July. And then I let my wife tell me, “I don’t like that one. You gotta redo it.” And so I do another one and she say, “I’m still not happy with that.” So I redo it. So I do start a few months early on that kind of stuff.
The Choose Your Own Adventure game, sometimes I have written a Choose Your Own Adventure game six months before CONjuration starts. And I have written a Choose Your Own Adventure game that I didn’t have the last page finished for until the day before CONjuration, because I wanted to make sure that I got the story just right and I got the characters just right and I made the right choice as to what we were gonna do that year. The, the last minute thing was probably the Wizard of Oz because every single part of the story you were choosing, you were going into a totally different book. And so I had to make sure I read all the books. And there are a lot of Oz books. I think there’s like 67 or something like that and 24 of them are pure canon–and also public domain I might add–which is always helpful when you’re, when you’re, uh, lifting stuff for your own work.
It’s good to only go for the public domain stuff. As far as new quests, those are brand new every year. Never know what you’re gonna get. Our house point chips are always brand new. The broom ride, I don’t know if you were able to experience that. I love the fact that we get to brag that at CONjuration and at Stellar Fest, you not only come for a convention, but you also get a ride just like it’s, you know, Six Flights. And at CONjuration, it’s a broom ride and you’re riding all through Hogwarts. You can ride all around the castle, you can go down to Hogsmeade, you can go over the lake. Absolutely amazing. It’s very laid back. Uh, if you’re not on a mission, um, you’re just enjoying yourself on a broom for a couple of minutes. And he made sure that he thought about everybody when he created the ride.
He made sure that it’s easy to get on no matter what height you are. He’s got accessibility areas. He made sure he made it of heavy duty material so that even if you’re a giant guy like me, you could still ride and not have to worry about breaking the broom. For Stellar Fest, he turned it into a, one of the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi. It’s a lot more difficult. You’ve got things that are hunting you down and I didn’t survive at all last year. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Maybe this year I can survive. If not, well, I get to ride the broom in, in November and that’ll be great. <laugh> No chance of dying on the broom. And he comes up with some other interesting things and we never know what he’s gonna throw at us. Sometime around July or August he’ll say, “Hey, would you like me to make this, that, or the other?” And we’re like, “Oh my god, yes. Yes, absolutely.”
So we never know what to expect. As far as the performers are concerned, the performers submit in the same way that the panelists do. And Angela keeps a closer eye on them than I do. So she has a vague idea of what’s coming. But once again, we don’t make the hard decisions until, you know, like August, we’ll contact all the performers and go, “Oh yeah, you’re absolutely in.” And that’s how we wind up with various improv groups and magicians and live action Dungeons and Dragons, which Funyons and Flagons has done. We’ve had a group come down from New York that have performed. Those are always fun to do. People get a kick out of actually being able to participate in somebody else’s performance. I think that’s what’s always made magicians fun to be around. And as far as the live action Dungeons & Dragons is concerned, it’s the same thing because the audience is choosing exactly what happens to these poor, poor people, so.
Last year there was a brilliant burlesque show that just blew my mind.
Chris: We have had burlesque at CONjuration since, I wanna say since 2016. It may be 2017. No, 2016 sounds right. We had one group that did it for a couple years, then we had another group that did it for a couple years. There were some inner turmoil, you know. We’re, we’re not a part of that. We just, we find a group that we like and they did a good job. I, I have to say that I think it was the second year I went to the burlesque show and they had Mad Eye Moody on the stage. And when he took his shirt off and he actually had Mad Eyes, I, I lost it. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. But for the last probably six years, seven years, uh, we have had a group, CRH Productions from Florida that’s done it. Their director was on American Ninja, I think.
So she’s very athletic. She teaches them how to move their body. It’s all about movement. They also do the aerobatic performances that we have in the main lobby. And so it’s all about movement for her. So the burlesque I think works well because these people are geeks and know how to cosplay and they’ve been taught by a master as to how to move their body well. So it’s a very smooth performance. I will agree with that 100%. It’s always fun. And the room is always packed to the gills. So get there early or stand in the back. That tends to be the, the way of things.
Now I try to keep these interviews fluffy because that’s what’s fun for me. But I did wanna try to thread a slightly scarier needle for me. CoONuration is very clear about a no religion, no politics policy. And for a lot of wizard rockers are younger and queer or from other marginalized groups, and that can feel like you’re saying they’re not gonna be safe there because their existence is considered political, you know, what bathroom they use or how they, you know, appear to other people. So is this still like a safe and fun place for them? Are they guaranteed same protections?
Chris: CONjuration is absolutely one of the safest places I have ever known. No matter who you are, no matter what you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you have been, no matter what your beliefs may be, literally since the very, very start, we want to make sure that we’re open to everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. We don’t want anybody to be downtrodden for who they are, where they come from, or what their belief patterns may be. So when we say ‘stay away from politics and religion,’ you know, when, when it comes to a panel, let’s stick with the magical fantasy. Leave the politics and religion at home. As far as it comes with treating other people, we haven’t had any instance ever at CONjuration where somebody has been treated badly because of their sexuality, their transgenderism, their race, color, creed, sex, religion, national origin.
That has never been a thing. And it wouldn’t be a thing because we have an understanding with our security people. If that kind of situation comes up, then those people will be escorted out of the convention and will be banned forever. We let people be people. Uh, that’s just the way it is. I, I did that in my classroom and I’m doing that at my convention.
Okay. So it is very much a safe space policy.
Chris: Very safe. Like I said, the very first year we only had 12 volunteers and three of them are our kids. And let’s see, I think at that time they were 11, 13, and 14. And our 11-year-old ran all around the convention and was as safe as if I had left her in a police cell. She couldn’t have been safer if she tried. We have numerous families that come every year and bring their kids. Like I said, we have a huge crafts and creation section, and the kids really get a kick out of that. And we also have games that they play and, uh, we have the, uh, the Nerf game where they’re doing the Supernatural hunt outside and the broom ride. And so we have families that have literally been coming since their kids were three, four, five years old. They feel very safe, safe enough to allow their kids the freedom to roam the hallways. So couldn’t be safer. We, we look out for each other. Like I keep saying, we’re, we’re one big giant family.
Just to be clear, safe space means, uh, specifically free from harassment for things like being trans or queer or, you know, disabled.
Chris: Yeah. Harassment doesn’t happen, will not be allowed to happen. And, uh, anybody who, uh, decides to harass is gone.
Perfect.
Chris: They’re kicked out.
Thank you.
Chris: But we have a list. <laugh> It’s not a big list. There’s a couple of people through the years who were inappropriate and now they aren’t ever allowed back. Because that’s the way you take care of things. When it comes to situations like that, you, you don’t give second chances. You just say you need to take your, pardon my French, bullshit elsewhere.
I love that policy.
Our final music break has arrived, heralded by Hank Green and “Dead Boy’s Girlfriend.”
~*~
We just heard “Dead Boy’s Girlfriend” from Hank Green, “All For The Wrock” by Pottörhead, and “Into the Forbidden” by the Hermione Crookshanks Experience.
Let’s tune back in to the final bit of my interview with Chris!
Thank you so much for talking with me and for making CONjuration happen. What should people know about 2026? You know, where can they find it? How do they get their tickets? What’s the website?
Chris: Go to www.CONjurationCon.com. That will give you all of the information that you need about what we do, how we do it. Angela was going to update our charities, which are always Georgia Reptile Society. And for the last couple years has been Habitat for Humanity. And when we have special guests, then that will be put on the website. That’s also where you can get your tickets and where you can get your hotel room. Doing it in a hotel helps us out because the more hotel rooms that our people rent out, that means the space becomes less expensive, which means that the convention can continue. Um, when it comes to small conventions, it couldn’t be more important. We tell people, “You may think you got a great deal on Expedia, but when your small convention has to close its doors, it’s your fault. Always make sure you go through the link no matter what small convention you’re going to.” We’ll be at the Sunesta at Gwinnett Place through, I think it’s 2029 we’ve signed contracts. So trying to maintain a standard location. It’s a good space. We have lots of room, but we still have plenty of space for new people to come, so.
And it’s pet friendly, magical friends. That’s very important.
Chris: Oh, yeah. Yeah. My father-in-law died a couple years ago and we inherited his dog. And we, we weren’t pet people. We didn’t have pets because we’re on the road a lot of the time. And when you find a hotel that actually takes pets, it’s a boon. And that first year that we had Roscoe and we realized we can take our dog to our own convention, that was awesome. And she loves it. And she loves all our people too. So yeah, having a pet-friendly hotel is great. And the Georgia Reptile Society is always there and they’re definitely open to creatures because Georgia Reptile always make sure they bring 30 or 40 different slithering critters for people to meet and learn about.
Nice. Is there anything else we should make sure people know?
Chris: Make sure that when you go to the website, it’s CONjurationCon.com. Don’t forget the ‘con’ part. We had to add that somebody else already owned it without the ‘con.’
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Until next time, magical friends!
