Practitioner
Thomas Florence
Founder, But Why? — not interviewed
Works But Why? — immersive theater company, Liverpool · psychological illusion, escapology, mind reading
Experienced for this research Not experienced
Thomas Florence has not been interviewed for this archive. This page is written from published sources and from the compiler’s own experience of the work, and nothing on it is attributed to Thomas Florence as testimony.
Why he appears here
A show related to hostage negotiation announced on the But Why? Instagram page on 6 June 2026 is one of the two margin figures in the report. It is the piece of the wider field that most closely parallels what Nicky Perfect does professionally — a maker reaching for negotiation as dramatic material at the same moment I was interviewing a negotiator about it.
The adjacent practice
He has performed escapology and mind reading since he was fifteen, and describes fusing psychological illusion with escapology. That places him near Parker Sela’s palm-reading turn: both are working with the cold read, the practitioner who appears to already know something true about a stranger, which is the mechanism my own retired project ran on.