Mark the Magic Man took over The Plaza Arts Center Oct. 15, with two shows that left his audience amazed and confused.
The afternoon matinee was a family-friendly affair that featured the usual pretty girl in a box getting spears stabbed through it, along with audience-involved card tricks and other illusions that drew at least half the kids in attendance onstage for a spell. Kids and parents were smiling, laughing and having a great time at the magic show.
After a brief intermission, all that was clearly just a build-up to a mindblowing second act that actually began with yours truly joining Mark on stage.
More than a week prior, on Friday, Oct. 7, the Magic Man visited The Messenger offices in downtown Eatonton, where he and I sealed inside a locked box that was placed within a slightly larger, welltaped- up cardboard box, his predictions printed on paper for what the Messenger’s headlines would read the day of his show. To keep things interesting, Mark put on the line whatever payment he was meant to receive for the show that was being held as a fundraiser for the Putnam County Touchdown Club. If he was correct, he got paid; if not, the PCTC would benefit that much more.
To be honest, I was expecting some kind of sleight of hand trick that delivered “close enough” results, but that’s not what happened.
Keep in mind, too, that the locked, double-boxed, taped-up container had remained in my possession, in the Messenger office, throughout the entire week. I know that no one had touched it, not even myself, until it came time to deliver it to The Plaza last Saturday afternoon.
Now, I did not deliver it by handing it over to Mark. That would be too easy, obviously too suspicious. Instead, the box remained by my side, I was sitting alone off to the side of the theater, awaiting my moment on stage. The box remained 100-percent intact.
So, when Mark called me up, handed me a sharp knife to cut the cardboard box open, retrieve the padlock key that we’d left inside a week earlier and I then unlocked the box and removed the paper inside myself … okay, mind officially blown. He got every single headline correct, right down to mentioning a small War Eagles game teaser featuring Jalon Kilgore’s 4 TDs a couple of days earlier.
Now, obviously Mark the Magic Man had seen the newspaper before writing out this list, I mean, it was practically word-for-word, but how that large piece of paper (I’ve got it pinned up in the office now as an exhibit) got inside that sealed box that I know had not been compromised is more than this Canadian brain can fathom. I honestly felt chills as he read each successive headline.
Later, Mark did a couple of even bigger illusions, climaxing by making a real car appear on stage, but the magic for me had already cost my mind.
And the evening, adults-only show was even better; true sorcery, I suspect. But don’t just take my word for it. Go see Mark the Magic Man someday, and then tell me I’m wrong. I really don’t think you will.