Cal State Fullerton’s Associated Students hosted illusionist Kevin Blake on April 15 for a virtual magic show. (Isaias Ruelas / Daily Titan)
With a slide of their hand and playful trickery, Cal State Fullerton’s Associated Students hosted Kevin Blake’s virtual magic show on April 15 to engage students in mind blowing magic experience through their computer screens.
Kevin Blake is a critically acclaimed magician that has been featured on several shows, including “America’s Got Talent,” “Penn & Teller: Fool us” and “Thrillist.”
Blake hosted from a vintage theater that had secret rooms, a bar and a library. He kicked off the night with simple tricks by inviting students to join him on the virtual stage as he pulled out every card that they named from a stack of playing cards.
Throughout the show Blake maneuvered his way through the theater, performing a different trick in each room — making the theater its own character in his show. With his second trick, Blake engaged a student audience member with a card trick that brought out the student’s “extra sensory perception.”
“The idea that you might be able to send something extra with an extra sense. It's kind of like having psychic powers right,” Blake said.
After the student successfully named all of the cards without seeing them, Blake left the audience asking themselves how he pulled it off.
Blake’s biggest trick of the night was left for the end of the show. After making his way around the theater, Blake ended up right where he started, on the front stage. It was there that he invited another student to help set up his next trick.
“I want us to choose a word, I want to put on the checklist a list of words that are synonyms or related to the idea of magic and you're gonna help me choose one. So all you're gonna do is you’re gonna help me choose a word, we’re going to roll some dice and roll them on the table. We'll add them up whatever number we get,” Blake said.
After shuffling and adding, Blake came up with the word “phantasmagorical.” From then on he asked six students to participate by giving him a number. Blake noted the numbers and pointed to a box.
“This box has a wish inside. I wished for a lottery ticket. Every single day, I ask six people to give me six numbers, and every single day, they get them wrong,” Blake said.
Blake shocked his audience by revealing a printed lottery ticket with the six numbers students had just provided him with.
As students looked on in wonder, the magician wrapped up the show by adding in the magic word.
“This whole night it's been absolutely phantasmagorical,” Blake said.
The last trick demonstrated how Blake tied together the whole show with subtle bits and pieces that he had been giving the audience throughout the night.
Zaynab Alhakawati, one of the ASI event coordinators, said the idea to host a virtual magic show came from Trang Tan, ASI’s student programmer.
“I know we wanted something really engaging and that was something that we definitely got out of this event. It was really cool to see him call out students, and kind of like, be in the studio in person on Zoom. So I really enjoyed that aspect as well,” Alhakawati said.
Just like the audience, Alhakawati said that she had no idea how Blake pulled off his impressive tricks.
“Of course like none of us are experienced in magic or anything like that. But it was kind of fun to sit there and kind of analyze, ‘oh my god how do you think he did that?’” Alhakawati said.
Alhakawati said that the planning process meant that they had to leave a lot of trust in the artist’s hands. That trust paid off because Alhakawati said she was happy with the results.
Alhakawati and her ASI colleagues said that they hope to put on a live in-person magic show for students if they’re able to return to campus safely in the fall.
“If the pandemic ends and we were able to go on campus, having a show like this in person, let's say like at the pub in the TSU or something like that would be really cool as well, so kind of thinking of different opportunities for the future,” Alhakawati said.
Alhakawati also said that she encourages students to keep an eye out for future events.
“We've been putting a lot of work into keeping students engaged virtually this past year, and it's definitely challenging, but it's a great way for us as coordinators to get more experience and kind of like help out other students,” Alhakawati said.
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