What makes this year’s stunt so impressive is that the more you think about how they did it, the more impressive the staging was.  There are some surprisingly hidden depths here that also serve the purpose of teaching how to stage a similar prank if you’re so inclined.

The key here is the magicians’ rule.  It’s all about setting expectations.  Phish actually set up the whole thing back in the first set of the run.  Trey kept mentioning that “I Didn’t Know” would have the final vacuum solo of the decade.  He repeated it three times - along with other silly concepts - to make sure that the idea stuck in our heads.  This would be the final vacuum solo.  At the time it just seemed like typical Trey silliness, but actually it was foreshadowing.

Two nights later when they played HYHU and Fishman came out, I know I wasn’t the first person to be thinking, “HEY!  They already played the last vacuum solo of the aughts!”  That led to the whole Rich incident - and incidentally, does Rich get any performance royalties when people buy the Live Phish? - which itself seemed a little odd but flowed naturally out of the continuation of 12/28.

That’s the secret here.  Slowly set expectations, lead our mind in a direction, and then let us fill in the gap.  Everyone had a good 15 minutes at the beginning of the New Years’ set to think, “Cool!  Human Cannonball.”  It was such an interesting idea - especially when Fishman crawled into the disco ball, that even the most analytical fans - like, y’know, ME - were busy trying to figure out if they practiced this and if it was safe and didn’t even think that the joke was to send the ball through the roof.

From the staging perspective, the question comes now as to when Fishman was removed from the ball.  I have two theories.  One is that there was a trap door underneath the 2010 base and Fishman crawled out when Trey and Mike did the whole pretend to lift the ball but were unable to do that joke [1].  The other is that this happened when the cannon was moved off stage during the helicopter gag; the lighting made it very hard to look at anything but the helicopter.

So now all of the pieces are in place.  Sarah was called out and it made a kind of sense because Rich came out the night before.  We never saw Fishman leave the cannonball, so we still had no clue where he was.  The expectations were managed incredibly well so what people were asking during Fluffhead were things like, “Is she a drummer with another band?” and “How did Phish know to pick that person?” rather than trying to figure out how Fishman did the replacement.  It took until two or three songs in before it became obvious that there was a swap but, then one more trick was done.

While watching the band play, it looked like Fishman in a costume but the bow confused me again.  That didn’t look like Jon at all.  After being pretty sure what was going on, we all started arguing again.  “I think that was Fishman the whole time… right?”  It was only in the airport when I talked to someone sitting behind stage, that I found out that the real Sarah was ducked behind the drum riser the whole time, and they switched out again for the bow.  Attention to detail is what made this stunt, including having that entire maple syrup car - and in retrospect, come on, a car that runs off of maple syrup?  Sure that sounds possible in a biodiesel way but I can’t imagine the syrup could run fast enough to power the engine and there’s no way it has enough energy density and yet until this moment I was just thinking that I couldn’t believe they destroyed that car.  You’d think being told it had, “a GPS system that embraces post-colonial paradigm by eschewing cardinal directions,” would be enough of a tip off - be the target for the disco ball.

Sometimes reflecting on the stagecraft can kill a stunt but this time it adds to it.  There are so many extra levels of humor here - like the maple syrup car that no one really questioned - that it actually is worthy of reflection.  The more I think about what it took, the more impressed I am about the level of detail involved and how excited I am to have the return of that kind of creativity to Phish’s world.  Good job guys and I’ll understand if this one isn’t topped for a while.

[1] I just watched a youtube video of this and I’m 99% convinced that that’s how Fishman got out as the ball was a lot lighter looking when it was lifted into the cannon.