HOLLYWOOD, California, USA, May 23, 2026 — The title of Katrina Kroetch’s new one-woman show seems to answer a question nobody asked: “I Am Not a Spy. This Is a Magic Show.” Case closed. Except — could this be a case of a lady who doth protest too much? Should the title be taken at face value more than any words uttered by a magician — or a spy?
Spies and magicians share more than a passing resemblance: both traffic in deception, both cultivate the appearance of the ordinary to disguise truth, both engineer escapes from impossible situations, and both will look you directly in the eye while doing something you will never see coming. Whether Kroetch is one, the other, or something the intelligence community hasn’t classified yet is only discernible by seeing the performance — and that requires a ticket. Perhaps that’s the caper.
Kroetch, who performs professionally as Magical Katrina, will premiere I Am Not a Spy. This Is a Magic Show. at the 2026 Hollywood Fringe Festival this June at the Madnani Theater. The 45-minute production is framed as comedic noir — a femme fatale on a top-secret mission involving innocent bystanders and weirdly correct predictions. Audience members may find themselves onstage. She may accidentally refer to them as agents. Any classified files that appear are, for legal reasons, props.
The show has its origins in a 2024 corporate event for cosmetics brand Hourglass, where Kroetch tailored her close-up walk-around performance to fit the client’s spy themed event — playing an operative sending guests on their next mission. “I thought it would be a one-off thing,” she told Conjurly. “But I fell in love with the synergies between spies and magicians.” A few months later she began developing ideas for a full spy-themed act. After consulting with colleagues throughout the magic world and finding no existing spy-themed acts, she set about building one from scratch — watching some 60 spy films and reading extensively in the genre along the way.
The production draws on both sides of the spy canon. Some routines are adapted classics reframed within the spy world. Others are new. A personal favorite involves rope magic performed with a grappling hook prop. There is also a quick-change sequence — an instant transformation from a classic 1960s black leather spy outfit to a glamorous red gown — that captures the dual nature of the show itself: equal parts action and noir glamour.
What is not a trick is her résumé. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Kroetch came to magic through an unlikely path — she trained as an actress before attending the Clown Conservatory in San Francisco, then pivoted to magic and never looked back. She has since performed in more than 20 countries, toured with the international stage production Champions of Magic, and appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us and Masters of Illusion. Her corporate client list includes Formula 1, the Olympics, Porsche, Prada, and Ritz-Carlton. Most recently, she was brought in to perform close-up magic and mentalism in Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova” music video — chosen because the production wanted magic that felt personal and emotional, not decorative.
She is a member of The Magic Circle in London and has performed for Hollywood’s Magic Castle. She lectures on the business and craft of magic for the International Brotherhood of Magicians, Society of American Magicians, Penguin Magic, and the Magic Circle. Her competitive awards include first place at AbraCORNdabra and Family Entertainer of the Year from the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians.
For her model of character-driven narrative magic, Kroetch cites two touchstones: Rob Zabrecky, the Los Angeles magician and actor known for his darkly comic persona and seven Academy of Magical Arts awards, and Lucy Darling — the stage character of Canadian magician Carisa Hendrix, a sharp-tongued Golden Age Hollywood socialite with 1.5 million Instagram followers. Both performers built distinctive worlds around fully inhabited characters rather than tricks alone. That, Kroetch says, is what she is after.
Hollywood Fringe, Kroetch says, is where the mission begins. “You have to start with a raw stone and a chisel before you create a beautiful statue.” She is candid that this premiere is a work in progress — “this will be the worst version,” she says, with the quiet confidence of someone who already knows the target — with plans to develop the show further toward the Melbourne Magic Festival, running June 29 through July 11, 2026. After 13 years of performing, the goal is something beyond a living. “I want to produce something worthy of the art — something I can be proud of and that inspires others.” Whether that ambition is the work of a magician or something more clandestine remains, for now, classified.
Conjurly posed the question directly: Magicians have been known to fib — are you really not a spy?
Kroetch smiled. “You’ll have to come to the show to find out.”
I Am Not a Spy. This Is a Magic Show. is appropriate for audiences 8 and older. Tickets are $25, available now at hollywoodfringe.org.
The show schedule is also available on the Conjurly Events Calendar.
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