What does the audience do during hour-long breaks while taping Wizard Wars?

Question

There is a relatively new show on the SyFy network called Wizard Wars. The format is somewhat of a ripoff of cooking shows like Chopped and Iron Chef; two teams of magicians are each given the same set of three or four ordinary items; for example a recent show featured luggage, a cape and a white rabbit.

The two teams have an hour to create a set of related magic tricks using all of the items. Each team then performs their routine in front of a live audience plus a four-person panel of judges that includes Penn and Teller.

The winner of the first round then against two of the resident "Wizards"; same thing, create magic tricks from ordinary objects and present them to the audience and judges. If the winning team from round 1 beats the Wizards they get $10,000.

My question is this: after the teams are given their items to create a routine around, they essentially disappear back into one of two "magic workshops" where there are a lot of other stock items to pull from (again, much like the cooking shows) for an hour. Except for a brief peek at what they are working on (which seems pretty hokey), he audience has to wait around for an hour before they perform their routines. This happens twice.

How is that handled? I wouldn't want to wait around for two hours in the audience and do nothing. I've been to tapings of live-audience sitcoms, where there would usually be unavoidable delays, and the "warm-up" would come back out and chat with the audience. But this is a little different.

Or is it? For example do they have someone else come out and do magic for both hours?

I would be interested in hearing from any audience members from this show, or anyone connected with the show, how they handle this. Just curious. Great show (I love magic of all kinds).

Answer 1

A behind the scenes article at Reality Blurred shed some light on the actual process with the help of magicians Shimshi, Penn and Teller from the show:

Episodes film back to back: All six episodes are filmed over three days, so it’s back-to-back magic performances.

There are unseen magic acts: Both sets of competitors create routines for the second round, but just the winning team performs. That leaves unperformed acts...

The magicians get help: Also not disclosed on camera is that the magicians get assistance. “We have help,” Shimshi told me. “The wizards and the challengers both have help... "

How much time the teams get varies: Each team of magicians, whether wizards or challengers, was given information about the props beforehand, and then given a set amount of time to actually produce and rehearse the act. [...] The show makes it seem like the tricks are created between act breaks, in maybe an hour or two. Penn said “that’s so unimportant. [...] It’s still improvisation.”

So it's possible that the audience gets to watch not only performances from both teams but also from 2 episodes, and some things are set up in advance (there are also pre-taped segments).

Answer 2

I THINK (but don't know) this is like the Q bit in a James Bond film. The team gets their stuff plus extras, spends their hour preparing, then the audience bit is done as part of filming the acts.

The link to Q is they used to film that last, once all the sequences with the gadgets were filmed, so that was how Q knew just what to give Bond.