A Mind Circus
⊆ July 26th, 2006 by courtney | ˜The National Theatre presented CIRCUS OF THE MIND: ALAIN NU on the opening weekend of the Festival. Alain is a young mentalist from nearby Maryland who has performed in Las Vegas, on the Learning Channel, in Atlantic City, and on our SATURDAY MORNING AT THE NATIONAL and MONDAY NIGHT AT THE NATIONAL programs. He reads minds and bends spoons, and does other mind-boggling demonstrations. I saw his show three times and I have no plausible explanation for how he does all this.
He used at least ten volunteers from the audience at each performance, reading their thoughts, hypnotizing them, etc. I saw that they are different people for each show, so there is no way that they could be “plants or “confederates.” Our audiences stood in line in the heat for as much as an hour-and-a-half to get in (admission was free and first-come-first-admitted). There is no way he could have paid or convinced 40 people or more to do stand in those lines! We did two shows on Friday and two on Saturday, seating 130 for each show. We had to turn away 60 to 100 people from every performance.
Before bending one spoon, he has a member of the audience draw some design of their own choosing on the spoon. Then they watch as the bowl of the spoon spoon bends around 180 degrees, and it bends further when clasped between the volunteer’s hands. The volunteer is given the warped spoon as a souvenir.
Following the second performance on Saturday, I asked the young woman who had volunteered and drawn the design on the spoon if I could examine it. She removed it from her back-pack. Her design — an asterisk-like shape — was still clearly there, and the rather heavy spoon was indeed twisted front to back, all the way around. Even with a vice and pliers, this would take considerable effort. Nu says it’s mind over matter that makes it happen, and I can see no other Magic-tricky explanation.
