On the Wednesday during Homecoming Week, Millikin had the pleasure of hosting the talented illusionist and funny man, Michael Kent. Students were able to sit back and watch Kent’s unique way of performing and keeping the audience involved with all of his entertaining tricks.

Kent started out his performance by convincing half of the audience that he ate an actual live bird. Imagine their surprise when he started laughing and took the bird out of his mouth, to show us that it was made of rubber. If you saw the magician during First Week, then Kent’s next trick will not surprise you.

Kent told an audience member to think of a color, he would then try to predict the future and write the correct color on a white board. The audience member ignored Kent’s obvious hints to choose yellow and instead chose blue. So when Kent turned his white board around the audience saw that he had written that Cole was a certain male appendage, the audience died laughing.

Next, Kent introduced his brand new invention, the Thoughtgun. The Thoughtgun’s purpose was to allow him to single a person out and be able to hear their thoughts. He put the machine on speaker so that the entire room could hear peoples’ thoughts. A girl thought about tacos, Cole couldn’t believe that he had been called that name, and the audience found that a guy named David had a lot of people who were quite fond of him.

That was definitely popular with everyone judging by the sound of laughter that filled the room. Later on in the show Kent called up two people from the audience and had them hold the ends of a rope while he cut it in half and proceeded to magically put it back together. One of those audience members he later thought was a rhino because of their laugh.

Kent called to the stage a girl named Caitlyn G., had her put on a pair of rubber gloves, and try to find a plastic egg in a rubber chicken. The egg was not in the rubber chicken, rather it was put in what looked like a raw chicken. When asked how she felt about this she said that “it was very impressive and she had no problem helping out.” She also assured me that the raw chicken was not real.

Near the end of the performance, Kent made a table float in midair. He said the table floated because of a cannon ball that was from the Civil War that he had on top of the table. No strings seemed to be attached to the table and it floated out towards the audience. At the end of the performance, Kent told us a wonderful story about a conversation he had with his father when he was young. He cut a hole in a piece of paper and somehow made the piece he cut out look like a perfect star even though the hole looked like a perfect circle. He then smashed it in his hand and created an endless amount of confetti that he threw everywhere.

According to a few students, Kent is definitely welcome to come back next year. The only complaints were that a few of his tricks were too similar to those of the magician during First Week. Kent’s way of blending illusion and humor was unique and wildly entertaining. Caitlyn called Kent’s performance “a magical sitcom,” which I think is the perfect way to describe it. If he were scheduled sooner, instead of during Rough Magic’s opening night, the room would have been packed.