The Daily Campus

Issue date: 10/6/08 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Pauley Chea Illusonist Wayne Hoffman dazzled audiences Friday night at Jorgensen. His act included stopping and restarting his own heart.

The world of magic has become increasingly complex and even more mysterious over the past century. Gone are the days of taking a rabbit out of a hat, as the days of the mentalist and illusionist are arriving. Students can no longer just call these guys magicians. Their world has grown to encompass so many facets of mystery and fantasy that it is understandably hard to keep up.

Enter mentalist Wayne Hoffman. Which basically means he can read minds with a lot of accuracy. He has appeared on talk shows, news networks and shows like "Deal or No Deal" for years. Most recently he appeared on the NBC show "Phenomenon," which is essentially "American Idol" for mentalists, illusionists and magicians.

Friday night at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, Wayne Hoffman gave UConn students a chance to put their skepticism to the test. He seemed very aware that there were a lot of nonbelievers out there and wanted to try his best to show that there was nothing shady going on during the show.

The first trick he did involved a paper airplane. In order to show complete randomness with the selection of his volunteer he threw a paper airplane into the audience. Whoever caught the airplane was told to bring the plane to the stage. The girl who caught the plane brought it up to Hoffman and she was then asked to pick a random number between 1 and 100. She picked 26. He asked her to look at what was written on the plane in very small letters on one of the corners. Oddly enough, her name, followed by the number 26, was revealed there as the audience gasped in disbelief.

That was just a sample of how Hoffman amazed the audience at Jorgensen Friday. He was so adamant in proving the legitimacy of his routine that he even asked the whole audience to participate for a segment of the show. The audience was told to write a word or phrase down in front of them and he would attempt to figure out as many of them as possible. He even produced a few laughs of disbelief when he figured out an audience member's phone number and proceeded to call her in front of everyone.

Hoffman continued the show with a serious segment about facing death in which he actually stopped and restarted his heartbeat. It was a segment that seemed very close to his heart and his sincerity came through.

After a segment involving identical twins and the previous heart stopping act, he rounded out the performance with a finale in which he emptied, crushed, reconstructed, refilled and re-cooled a Coke can right in front of our eyes.

After the show, audience members got a chance to get his autograph and ask a few questions. Rishi Kothari, a 7th-semester computer science major, asked him about his inspirations. Hoffman responded by saying that he was inspired by David Copperfield as a child but that there was never really one true source of inspiration.

"It was really a combination of many different individuals," he said. He added that, though he began college intending to go into business, "it was really lucky actually because I had to take a psychology course and that set me towards this path."

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