Magic for Non-Believers
Magician Peter Boie greets Exeter with a smile and a wave. Holding a blue scarf in one hand, he shows the audience his left palm, indicating that it is empty. Then, he stuffs the scarf into his tightly clenched wrist, snaps his fingers and unfurls his fingers to reveal an egg —the scarf is nowhere to be seen. The crowd erupts into excited murmurs and eventually a deafening applause.
On Saturday, Boie entertained a crowd of around 200 Exonians in the Assembly Hall. The show, called “Magic for Non-Believers,” lasted for an hour and involved everything from escaping a straitjacket to guessing how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Although reason would have us believe otherwise, Boie brought magic to life and forced many Exeter students to rethink their reality.
“People are people; once you give them a smile and let them know you are just a person like them, they smile back and put down their guard.”
Boie began exploring his interest in magic at age eleven. Since then, he has toured the country, performing for A-list celebrities and racking up many awards in the process. He also performed for the legendary magic TV show, Penn & Teller Fool Us. He brought the same humour, awe and professionalism when he visited campus.
Senior Alex Rothstein was one of Boie’s many Exeter guests invited onto the stage. She noted her appreciation for his ability to combine comedy with magic, as well as the fact that he involved the audience. “My favorite act was definitely the one with the two volunteers,” Rothstein said, elaborating on her amazement at the way Boie “hypnotized” both Exonians into believing he’d touched them. Lower Makinrola Orafidiya also enjoyed this particular act, calling it “interactive and exciting.”
Senior Marvin Bennett was one of the volunteers during that particular trick. Although he found the experience to be “unnerving” at first, Bennett enjoyed being on stage and participating. He was later reassured when a friend described the situation from the audience’s perspective. “The performance was generally a little disturbing at times because of the weird spiritual aspect,” Bennett said, referencing a part of the act when Boie claimed he could conjure up a spirit. He went on to elaborate on his favorite part of the evening, when prep Ervin Williams was called onto the stage as a random volunteer. Williams had to count how many licks it took to get to the center of the lollipop and shared that number with the audience. Somehow, Boie had managed to guess the exact amount before the show even started.
Orafidiya echoed both Rothstein and Bennett’s statements, saying that the interactiveness made Boie’s performance enthralling. He was also impressed by the amount of people who showed up, as Orafidiya originally expected a smaller crowd. However, he didn’t particularly enjoy the trick where Boie cut a string into multiple pieces and magically managed to put them all back together into one. “It was confusing and repetitive and got boring quickly,” Orafidiya said. However, he had an overall positive feeling towards the show. “At first I wasn’t too excited, but by the end I was pretty captivated,” he explained.
Perhaps Boie’s most successful trick was attracting crowds of Exonians, abandoning their schoolwork to attend his magic show. Furthermore, it was a welcome release from daily stresses. Boie says this of his magic: “People are people; once you give them a smile and let them know you are just a person like them, they smile back and put down their guard.”