16th February 2021.
This months Topic was “Out of Our Minds” and was hosted by Club Secretary and professional mentalist Conway Restom.
Conway opened with a his own version of Jon Allen’s “Silent Treatment” using signboards that led to an audience member choosing a playing card from a display. Later another board was displayed with every card in the deck except the chosen one which was then produced from Conway’s mouth. He then performed Bill Cushman’s “The Force” where every audience member read his mind to divine a four digit number using their phones.
Conway then shared with us the first of his top ten tips for performing mentalism and completed the list over the course of the night.
John Kanawati performed a comedy routine of his own devising in which he first claimed that he is always one off when finding a chosen card. The three of hearts was named by a vounteer and then from an envelope John produced an incorrect card. Followed by four further incorrect cards until the last card in the envelope was the four of hearts. One off as predicted.
Jack Sharp began by playing themes to famous movies on a keyboard and asking us to guess them. Then using a deck of cards that had movie posters on them, several chosen movies were correctly divined. Both Jack and Conway then talked about using cards that are not playing cards in mentalism to take away the feeling that the routine is nothing but a card trick.
Anthony Dillon performed a routine where an audience member multiplied a large number of randomly chosen single digit numbers. The audience member was asked to read out the final result but to withhold one of the digits. Anthony correctly stated the value of the missing digit. He talked afterwards on how it was based on a little known mathematic principle.
Club Vice President Peter Wood asked audience member to choose a book and to open to a random page. They were directed to find the first word on the page that was an object. After spending a little time talking about the impressions he was getting of the word Peter named it as “shark”. However the word turned out to be “whale” which everyone agreed was very impressive all the same.
Conway talked about spiritualism and how the psychology behind the secrets triggered neurological responses that produce emotional responses that can make mentalism such a strong art. He then demonstrated this by having two peoples names written on cards. He asked for one alive person and one deceased. After burning one of the cards he correctly named both people.
Club President Dale Trueman placed a chosen card back into the deck and then back into it’s box and placed it under a lit candle. The volunteer asked to imagine the card in the flame and Dale pinched the flame leaving blisters on his thumb and finger that represented the three of hearts. It was confirmed as the correct card and then the cards were taken from the box and the three of hearts was found to be fire damaged.
Conway then had a house key selected and initialed with a marker. This key was then held firmly in the audience member’s hands. An audience member then held a pendulum made from a key above the closed hands until it moved in large circles. The hands were opened to find that the key had bent significantly. He then asked three people to come on stage and choose an envelope each from three envelopes. They were asked to choose characters and colours. When the envelopes were opened each person had matched the contents of the envelopes.
New member Steve then performed a multi staged book test that involved a calculator, a ball of paper and a deck of cards. First the cards were used to choose a book. Then a calculator was used to come up with the page number. He concluded with the thought of word being found on the ball of paper that he had previously thrown into the audience and when the word was entered into a phone using the alpha numeric key pad, it was also the page number chosen.
The final performance of the evening was Phuoc Can Hua who displayed five cards on a stand with their backs towards the audience. After an audience member chose one of the cards an envelope that had been in full view the entire time was opened and revealed to contain a five of diamonds, which was also the chosen card.
The meeting concluded with our usual supper and fraternisation.
Dale Trueman
Sydney Magic Club 