Mentalist Ken Salaz WOWS Catawba With His Magic
Photo Credit: Erin Kidd
Aly Halter, Editor
February 23, 2010
Filed under Events, Top Stories
Wigwam Productions featured Mentalist/Magician Ken Salaz on Friday, February 19th in the Student Center. To say the least, Salaz was a hit.
Wigwam Productions Crew Member Josh Owen discovered Salaz on the trip Catawba Singers took to sing at Carnegie Hall. Salaz is from New York City, but he travels all around the country to perform his amazing act of magic and mind-reading.
As a self-professed non-believer of magic and mind-reading, I can honestly say Ken Salaz’s performance is the best I have seen in my entire life. I can normally always point out flaws in magic tricks, but Salaz left my mind boggled. I know the Catawba Community in attendance can agree.
Salaz performed numerous outstanding tricks. In addition to his stage show, he did a number of “teasers” up close and personal with the crowd. One of my favorites included his “cell phone trick.” Salaz had me scroll through my phone, which was face-down, out of his sight, and stop whenever I wanted. He then instructed me to quickly look at the name, without him seeing it, and look into his eyes while thinking about the person I landed on from my contacts list. He had never seen my phone, let alone viewed my contacts list, so how did he correctly guess the first AND last name of the friend I landed on? I’m still trying to figure it out!
Salaz can turn $1 bills into $100 bills. I saw it with my very own eyes. It’s a wonder he has to keep working with tricks like these.
The most impressive trick of his stage show included his grand finale. When we booked Salaz, he requested the name and address of a random student who would be present at his performance at Catawba. He then mailed Lindsey Jackson a sealed envelope with strict instructions to not open it. Lindsey brought it to the show, unopened as instructed.
Salaz guessed the student's favorite drink, then magically created this Gatorade from a piece of paper.
Salaz had numerous students in the audience come up and spin the prize wheel Wigwam uses for BINGO. As each student spun a random number, they wrote it on a big board and returned to their seat. Salaz then had random audience members call out different elements of a story: a car type, a celebrity, a vacation location, etc.
Salaz then had Lindsey bring her sealed envelope onstage. Salaz randomly chose Brandi Cockerham out of the audience, and had Lindsey hand the envelope to Brandi. Brandi was told to open the sealed envelope and begin reading the piece of paper inside.
Salaz could "sense" random items with 50 cent pieces duct taped his eyes
Brandi began the story written on this piece of paper. In the beginning, there is a pause, in which the paper reads, “isn’t Brandi doing a great job reading?” She was completely shocked, and so was the audience!
The paper began to read out an entire story containing all the elements random audience members had called out. Also written on the paper were the numbers random audience members spun just moments before.
At the end of the story, one last note was written on the paper. It noted that on the headline of Friday’s paper, there would be an headline about a certain plane flying into a building.
Once again, this letter was mailed to Catawba 7 days before.
Ken Salaz’s magic astounded us all. Don’t worry if you missed him… Wigwam Productions is sure to have him back again!
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