Magician Steven Brundage appeared before a small group of UR students, orchestrating an interactive performance by inviting students on stage and engaging directly with the audience’s unconventionally critical behavior.
Brundage showcased his most famous tricks involving Rubik’s Cubes and playing cards. The show, which took place in the May Room on Thursday, Oct.18, began with a collection of videos presented on a projector from Brundage’s social media accounts, in which Brundage did his routine trick of solving Rubik’s Cubes in record times. Presenting the same trick on various television shows, like “America’s Got Talent,” Brundage established Rubik’s Cubes tricks as his trademark.
In one of his first acts, Brundage asked a UR student to scramble a Rubik’s Cube and place it in a plastic bag. Brundage immediately pulled out a solved one, leading many in the audience to accuse Brundage of having two cubes in the bag. The dynamic of the show changed from Brundage leading the show to him interacting with students at each point of the act. In order to prove the audience wrong, Brundage crushed the plastic bag, producing a loud cheer from the small audience.
The next act involved teasing and audience work. Brundage asked a student to come on stage and stand back-to-back with him holding a book, while he proved to the student that he had every page memorized. The joke here was that Brundage was reading his own copy of the same book, pretending to recite it from memory. The ensuing laughter helped bring about an inclusive atmosphere to the event.
As part of another act, Brundage invited a student to lead the show by doing one of his card tricks. The student read off cue cards that Brundage prepared. Finally, Brundage and the student asked an audience member to pick out a card and then pulled out a matching card from Brundage’s mouth.
Brundage ended the show by hosting a Q&A session with the audience. The questions ranged from his opinions on other magicians to his net worth. The audience asked for a final trick, which was to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded and one-handed. As Brundage rotated the sides to solve the Cube in 72 seconds, the small audience in the May Room burst into applause.
