James Fagan, Staff Photographer
Peter Boie is a magician who was invited to perform here at the University of Southern Maine on Friday, January 26th. Boie’s magic tricks ranged from something as simple as a “Is this your card,” trick at the beginning of the show, to a grand finale of escaping a straitjacket. Although some of his tricks were fairly common tricks, the level of audience participation was very high and it was a fairly interesting show.
Peter first became interested in magic at the age of eleven when he found a magic book at his local library. He now travels around the country performing his show. Peter’s show is about two things, surprising the audience with magic, and making sure the audience has a good time watching the show. Boie has recently done his show on national television, where he performed his act on the show, “Penn and Teller Fool Us.” He has also performed for celebrities such as Neil Young, Tom Brady, and the whole of the Patriots football team.
Several hours before the actual magic show started Boie went to the Brooks dining hall and did a promo for his show that was happening later. His promo involved transferring a stick figure he had drawn on a piece of paper to an audience members hand. This promo left several people talking about it for the rest of the night almost as much as the actual show did, showing the extent of Boie’s talent and ability to astonish.
The title of Peter’s show, “Magic for Non-Believers,” is a reference to the fact that magic is not real. One of the first magic tricks that he performed was a trick where he makes it look like he’s turned a handkerchief into an egg. Boie then goes on to explain that the egg was in fact a fake, plastic egg, which had a hole in the back for the handkerchief.
One of Boie’s tricks started close to the beginning of the show, but wasn’t brought up again until near the finale. Boie started the magic trick by asking for a volunteer, once the volunteer walked onto the stage he had them take a tootsie pop out of the bag of tootsie pops. He then announced that the point of his trick was to answer the age old question “,How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?” After the volunteer took the tootsie pop he had them go back to their seat and start licking the tootsie pop until they got to the center. After this trick was started he continued doing other tricks until later in the show. Later when he returned to the tootsie pop trick he explained that the amount of licks has been different for as many audiences as he’s done it for, with some audiences getting as low as twenty licks, and some getting as high as 1,500 licks to get to the center. Peter then got out a pre-typed message on a piece of paper that summarized the trick, and at the end correctly stated that the tootsie pop was raspberry flavored and took eighty licks to get to the center of, astounding the audience.
Though Boie’s show was magical in nature, it also had a twist of comedy throughout. The magician made sure to involve as many audience members as possible. Peter did a trick where he cut a rope into smaller parts, and then put it back together into one whole rope, eventually he had an audience member come up and try to blow three knots off of the rope. The first two knots the volunteer blew off of the rest of the rope on their first try, however when the volunteer tried to blow off the third knot, it wouldn’t budge, it was only then the Boie asked the volunteer if they were asthmatic, prompting laughter from the audience when they said that in fact, they were.
This upcoming October, Peter is planning on coming back to the University of Southern Maine to perform his second original show, “Summoning Spirits,” which is a cross between a Seance and a magic show meant to get your heart pumping. This show will bring to life several old legends and haunted stories to amaze the audience.
Peter Boie’s show was very fun to watch, though he performed many classic tricks that are commonly done, he made it interesting by explaining how he did several of his tricks, combatting the idea that “,A good magician never reveals their secrets.” Learning how several of his tricks were done actually managed to make the show more interesting in some ways, sticking to the theme of, “Magic for Non-Believers.”