If the most magical moment of your typical Wednesday evening is the instant you queue up the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns you have stashed on your DVR, it’s time for something different. And Andrew Pinard has plenty of tricks up his sleeve, in the most literal sense, to help you break that cycle.
Pinard has teamed with Red River Theatres to bring his show, Discovering Magic, to Concord on four Wednesdays this fall. Pinard’s unique brand of sleight-of-hand magic will debut Sept. 11 at 8 p.m. and will – not unlike Fresh Prince reruns, actually – take patrons on “a guided tour of the impossible and absurd.” Using traditional items like coins, cards and cups, Pinard aims to dazzle audiences with the most satisfying blend of tricks and treats this side of a fun-sized Snickers bar.
Following the Sept. 11 debut, shows will be held Oct. 9, Nov. 13 and Dec. 11.
“I’m hoping while lots of people are going to be impressed by the tricks, and will remember the tricks, I want people to remember what a great time they had with me,” Pinard said. “With my magic, I want people to not go, ‘oh, he’s performing at us,’ but think, ‘he’s performing with us.’ I think of myself as a catalyst. It’s about having every person in the audience involved as deeply as possible.”
Pinard accomplishes that goal by playing intimate settings and involving the audience every step of the way. His act doesn’t feature smoke machines or beautiful assistants being cut in half, focusing rather on conversational and engaging delivery and fast-paced antics.
The tools of Pinard’s trade are cups and tiny red balls, ordinary coins and lengths of rope, and he manipulates the crowd’s sense of reality right in front of their eyes, and often times in their hands. Pinard invites audiences to “leave the mundane world behind and enter a magical realm where nothing is what it seems,” all while feeling less like spectators and more like assistant magicians.
“If you think about it, it’s impossible to convince anyone of anything. They have to convince themselves,” Pinard said. “You can walk them to the edge, but they have to take the leap themselves.”
Pinard took a leap himself in 1991 when he made all of his other jobs disappear and pulled a magic career out of a hat. He’d been working as an adjunct theater teacher at Pembroke Academy, manager of a small typesetting company and part-time director of the Pittsfield Community Center when he stumbled upon a book that ignited a passion he remembered from his childhood, when he’d first dabbled in magic as a second-grader. His girlfriend (now his wife) bought him the book, and thus began the slow transition to becoming a full-time performer.
“At the time I was teaching theater after school and in the evenings, managing the typesetting company and also working part-time at the community center, and amongst all that studying magic six to eight hours a day,” Pinard said. “I didn’t sleep very much. But over time, word got around, and people started booking me for shows. It got to the point where I was being asked to perform at too many places, so I had to give things up.”
He first went part-time at the typesetting shop, then gave up the teaching gig. Within two years, he had left all of his other ventures and was making a career out of magic.
“It was a very positive thing, and it wasn’t something I had time to get anxious about,” Pinard said. “If I had tried to just say, ‘I’m going to quit my jobs and become a magician,’ I would have failed miserably. But the fact that it kind of organically grew out of what I do, that was really the benefit of it.”
Incorporating his background in theater and music, Pinard began honing his skills and developing the interactive style that has become his signature and earned him wide praise throughout the world of magic. He performed table-to-table in restaurants for 15 years and has been booked to entertain at corporate events, resorts and improv groups, among others. He’s performed in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Montreal and in 2011 had the opportunity to do a show on the South Bank in London with a friend who is a busker.
“I got to perform on the streets of London, in the shadow of the London Eye, as well as present at the Magic Circle, which is the oldest magic organization on the planet,” Pinard said.
Through it all he’s stuck to his own approach, rooted deeply in magic history and drawing generously from the vaudeville style. A self-described “student of magic,” Pinard has worked to incorporate new maneuvers with those that have baffled crowds for as many as 500 years.
“I don’t do any material currently with cell phones, but part of me is curious about trying to explore older magic using new technology. Magicians were always early adopters; before the general public at large knew about a scientific principle, magicians were using it to fool them,” Pinard said.
Pinard fools them with any variety of the 185 pieces in his repertoire that he generally has on him at any given time. His shows are never the same twice, with roughly 2/3 of the material usually repeated and between 1/3 and 1/2 new. He doesn’t perform entirely new shows each time, he said, because many people will return with friends after seeing a previous show and expect to see some of the same tricks.
He will also adapt his show to the audience on any given night. With so many items in his bag of tricks, he can select the night’s program based on the layout of the room and the energy and size of the crowd.
The one constant, though, remains fun. More than puzzling over the how’d-he-do-that element of the magic, Pinard simply hopes his crowds leave with a smile on their face.
“If there’s one thing I hope my audiences get when they leave my show, it’s the sensation of play, that we’re all in it together. I start the ball rolling, but they’re there to keep it moving,” Pinard said. “I don’t want people to be constantly thinking, oh, how does it work? My style is designed to let them kind of relax and by the end of it not care about how the magic worked, but leave with a sensation that they’ve seen something that has never happened before, will never happen again and has contravened the laws of physics, but in a playful way.”
Tickets to each show are $15 each. For more information, call Red River Theatres at 224-4697 or visit redrivertheatres.org.
