The Magic Show 2007

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of participating in our IBM Ring 327 charity event. It is amazing that this small, local chapter has so many talented magicians. The show benefited the Helping Hands ministry which provides emergency assistance to families needing help with rent, utility payments and other support services. The two family-oriented shows drew at least 200 enthusiastic magic fans.

Lee Novak performed a portion of his stage routine. This is the second time I've seen Lee's show and he has put together some astonding stage illusions as well as some card and billiard manipulations. The audience loudly gasped at his dove productions and vanishes - especially the transformation of 3 doves into a live rabbit.

Tim Stolba also mystified the audience with a newspaper prediction and several great routines from his act. I also watched Tim perform a couple great close-up routines before the show to several delighted children.

Ricky Rowray, a deaf magician from Cedar Rapids, performed his hilarious style of comedy magic. It is amazing to see him delight and connect with the crowd without saying a thing! Ricky is soon to compete at a deaf magicians competition in California. I think he'll do quite well.

The entire show was expertly glued together by the Master of Ceremonies, Dr. Don Nelson. He performed a brilliant torn and restored newspaper. He also performed one of my favorite effects of the night with his shrinking and expanding head illusion.

Bob Beardsly and his daughter performed both together and individually. Bob wowed the audience with a chair levitation. His daughter (sorry I have forgotten her name) is an extremely talented performer for such a young age. The highlight for me was their execution of the Gypsy Rope Escape.

I didn't get to see a couple of the performers as I was busy resetting (or forgetting to reset) my walk around set. Although I only saw a couple of his tricks, Chris Arthur was wowing the spectators with some mind numbing close-up work including a seemingly impossible linking rubberbands routine.

As a new member, I didn't feel qualified to perform stage routines but I did have a great opportunity to perform some strolling magic. I had a chance to try out a new presentation of my Ambitious Card Routine where I had a child draw a puppy on the card. Instead of a magic flick of the wrist to bring the card to the top, I had the spectator call the puppy home. This was a variation of David Regal's presentation with different moves including Max Maven's Classic Tackler move for the ending sequence. This turned out to be a crowd pleaser and the kids got a nice souvenier to remind them of their magical night.