Brett Schneider’s apartment seems normal. A worn-out taupe couch is pushed against the window and an unmade queen-sized bed sits in the middle of the spacious bedroom. But in the corner next to a small glass coffee table is an old black trunk with brass hinges. On top of the trunk sits a small blue velvet mat, decks of playing cards, a few coins and a magic wand that resemble a childhood magic set a quirky uncle might give a 6-year-old for his birthday. These aren’t a child’s toys, however, but the tools of a professional magician.
“Have you ever seen David Blaine on TV?” asks Schneider, a Communication junior. “He did this on NBC.”
I pull the four of spades from a normal deck of playing cards – unseen by him – and bury it back in the deck.
After a few attempts at guessing my card, Schneider holds the deck as if throwing a dart and chucks the cards against his window just a few feet away. The cards are splattered all over the floor – except for the four of spades, which is stuck on the other side of the closed window.
“That was it, right?” he says.
“Yes!” I say, jaw dropped, as he smiles.
I don’t think they’ve invented cards that can open windows and adhere themselves to glass. We were the only ones in the apartment. I had been staring at that window for the past hour. There’s only one explanation for what I just experienced – it was magic.
Schneider has been a professional magician since he was 13. He says he became addicted to magic as a young boy, spending all his money in local magic shops in Oakland, Calif. He began performing at dinner parties, children’s birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs for money to support his hobby.
This Halloween weekend, Schneider is starring in his own one-man magic show. He has been working on the show, Dark Room, for the past six weeks with two close friends, Weinberg senior Alex Robins and Weinberg junior Jeff Brenman. The production is an unconventional magic show that explores magic – and why it works – through a narrative of Northwestern ghost stories and urban legends. The show will be held in the opera dome of the Music Administration Building, Northwestern’s second-oldest (and arguably creepiest) building. Schneider wants the performance to be a departure from cheesy magic shows.
“When people think ‘magician,’ they think of this semi-sleazy guy who does these tricks and wants to fool you,” he says. “It’s cheesy and cheap, and it’s not genuine. The idea of this show is (that) I want to be as genuine and straightforward as possible.”
Schneider likes to challenge himself when performing magic. In his young teens, Schneider started participating in local competitions, and by the time he was 16 he won the San Francisco State Magic Competition, the largest competition in Northern California. There were no specific age groups at the competitions, and he often found himself competing against seasoned performers.
But Schneider says he was always more interested in coming up with fresh ideas than with beating the other guy. That’s how Schneider came to the idea of the narrative magic show. He says many magicians simply try to entertain and puzzle the audience for 30 minutes, but he wants his performance to have more integrity.
“There are a few magicians out there that share my philosophy that magic should be magic,” he says. “If you perform a miracle, you’re performing a miracle and you shouldn’t perform it as a cheesy party trick.”
As Schneider goes through his performances, he constantly thinks about how the audience receives it and what does and doesn’t entertain them. For him, watching the audience is the best part.
“I really enjoy the moment when people have the realization that what they just saw could not happen,” he says.
College students make the best audiences, Schneider says. Students are not often exposed to magic in a college setting and have a hard time believing the unbelievable. When he performs magic in the college setting, it’s usually informal. It’s a spur-of-the-moment thing at parties, and he doesn’t need a “show.” The spontaneity makes it all the more effective, he says.
Schneider says he wants students to leave with more than a feeling of being entertained. He wants the audience to acknowledge those moments where they experience magic every day.
“There are those moments in everyday life where what we experience with our senses, what we see around us, conflicts with how we understand the world,” he says. “That is when magic happens, when what we see and experience conflicts with what we know is possible.”
Dark Room is playing in the Music Administration Building opera dome Oct. 28 and 29, with 10 p.m. and midnight shows. Tickets cost $5 and will be available at the door.4
Medill junior Carrie MacQuaid is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
