arts&life
p ro f i l e
Magic
M an
Vitaly Beckman
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Master illusionist
Vitaly Beckman
mystifi es even
the most jaded
audiences.
details
Vitaly Beckman will perform
at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18,
at the Berman Center for the
Performing Arts in the Jewish
Community Center in
West Bloomfield. $23-$33.
(248) 661-1900;
theberman.org.
V
italy Beckman eas-
ily remembers his first
attempt at creating magi-
cal illusion.
Seven years old and living in
the Soviet Union, he tried to
imitate a magician he saw on
television. The entertainer made
a card castle appear under a
handkerchief.
In a friend’s house at the time,
Beckman noticed alphabet
cubes and asked for a handker-
chief. He put the cubes on his
hand, assembled them like a
castle and covered the pieces
with a handkerchief just before
his friend’s grandmother came
into the room.
As soon as the woman
appeared, Beckman pretended
he didn’t see her and removed
the handkerchief as if he made
the cubes appear.
“She asked me how I did that,”
Beckman recalls. “In reality, she
probably played along, and I
said that I created magic. I didn’t
know why I said that, but many
years later, I turned it into a
career. For some reason, it seems
like a prophesy.”
Seven more years went by
before Beckman decided to take
magic more seriously. Having
moved to Israel, he simply
started developing illusions by
trial and error, inventing and
improving.
“Nobody ever taught me,”
Beckman says. “I simply started
performing for family and
friends and moved on to per-
forming at events, including
weddings.”
Now 36, living in Canada
and giving up an engineering
career that began after studying
at Technion (Israel Institute of
Technology), Beckman tours to
showcase his approach to staged
illusions. He will appear Sunday
afternoon, Feb. 18, at the Berman
Center for the Performing Arts in
West Bloomfield, where he will
mark his premiere appearance in
Michigan.
Although Beckman’s brother
has also moved to Canada to
pursue a computer science
career, his parents remain in
Israel, where his father is an
engineer and teacher and his
mother is an economist. The
magician returns to Israel for
family visits and will schedule
shows as well.
“I look at what I do as noticing
wonder in the world and turn-
ing it into a [wonder-filled] and
magical experience for the stage,”
he says. “I get inspiration from
the real world and remind peo-
ple that wonder is everywhere
around us. What I do cannot be
seen anywhere else.”
Beckman describes one part
of his act as making art come to
life.
“That involves pictures, pho-
tographs and drawings,” he
explains. “I draw objects, and
the drawings come off the page
into reality. I make a paintbrush
come to life and draw all by
itself, and it’s what an audience
member thinks the paintbrush
will paint.
“It’s not really happening. It’s
about feelings and emotions and
making the audience feel some-
thing is happening. If you watch
a painting, you feel like you see
images and people, but it’s just
paint. What I do is similar to
that.”
The famous magic duo Penn
& Teller freely admitted they
were stumped by Beckman as he
appeared on their TV show Fool
Us. The team is among the magi-
cians Beckman saw and loved
while he was getting started.
Other favorites have been David
Copperfield, Siegfried & Roy,
Matt King and Derren Brown.
“The turning point in making
this a full-time career was when I
moved to Canada about 10 years
ago,” says Beckman, a single
Vancouver resident who defines
himself as secularly Jewish.
“I went into magic because I
thought I could create a whole
new world through magic and
wanted to share it with an audi-
ence. It’s an artistic expression
for me.
“I always wanted to live in
North America and travel the
world. I got a bachelor’s degree
in mechanical engineering
and worked as an engineer for
almost two years. Engineering
helped a little bit with my illu-
sions, but it did not help as much
jn
as I was hoping.
“A lot of people think magic is
about a certain type of science.
It’s certainly a combination of
many different sciences and
art, but magic is also very much
psychological and a branch of
theater. It’s really about under-
standing human nature. Illusions
have to be painted in the minds
of audiences.”
To come up with his illusions,
Beckman thinks about what
he would like to see onstage or
what he would like to happen in
the world that would be amaz-
ing. Sometimes, it takes years
before the ideas are worked out
to the point where he can bring
them before audiences. A home
studio provides the environment
for experimentation.
“It’s an interactive show, and
I think that’s what makes it fun,”
he says.
“My shows span all age groups,
but I usually recommend 7 years
and up [the year his interest was
realized] simply because it’s a
two-hour show including inter-
mission,” he says. Under that age
group, he says, it’s hard for kids
to sit that long.
“Kids do the funniest things
when something disappears. I
have an illusion where some-
thing disappears in a person’s
own hand, and a lot of times,
I have kids on stage with that.
They search their pockets, and
they look inside their sleeves.
The reactions are very funny.” •
February 15 • 2018
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