Magic was in the air Wednesday evening in the Union Theater as a packed audience watched magician Adam Trent.
An international award-winning magician, Trent — who described himself as Justin Timberlake meets David Copperfield — combined illusion-style magic with dancing and singing studded with audience participation.
”His performance was unlike anything I have seen before,” said kinesiology junior Keigan Duckett.
Beginning with what Trent called “volunteer time,” a University sophomore was brought on stage. After discovering her name, he gave her a folded tissue, which he instructed her to unfold and proved it was a regular tissue. With Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” playing in the background, he crumbled up the tissue, and without touching it, made the tissue crawl up his arm.
The audience watched in awe as Trent folded the tissue into a rose, made it float in the air and then lit it on fire. The crowd erupted in gasps as they watched the folded-up rose tissue that was lit on fire instantly become a real rose.
In Trent’s next act, he brought a Baton Rouge Magnet High School student on stage for a card trick. He first had her choose a card out of his deck, which was the queen of clubs.
Trent then flipped through the cards. Each card had a cartoon of Trent drawn on the back, which created a flip book. As Trent flipped to the end of the deck, the last card had the queen of clubs written on it.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Duckett said. “How could he know she would pick that card in advance?”
Trent’s next card trick involved him doing a card shuffle, which he called the “ex-girlfriend shuffle” because “it looks good but doesn’t do anything.” He then brought forward two men from the audience and had them each put 10 cards from the deck into their pockets. Next, Trent invisibly transferred three of the cards from one of the volunteer’s pocket to the other volunteer’s pocket.
Trent also told the audience he wanted to learn a magic trick with them for the first time. The audience watched as Trent put a squished banana into a folded black fabric. He then stumbled through the steps and fooled the audience into believing he messed up the trick. Then, to the audience’s surprise, he unfolded the fabric, and there was no banana inside.
“I’ve never been to a magic show before, but this definitely makes me a believer in magic,” Duckett said.

Gallery • 7 Photos

Richard Redmann

Adam Trent asks his participant to keep unwnding the toilet paper from his mouth Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013 during his Magic Show in the Union Theater.