Vitaly Beckman, a world-renowned magician, brought a mixture of laughter, art and illusion to Sauder Concert Hall last Friday. His show, “An Evening of Wonders,” featured two acts, each consisting of a selection of illusionary magic. 

Friday night’s show was his third in Goshen. The first was Thursday night, which was a special show for Goshen College faculty and students, as well as a variety of community members and organizations. On Friday morning, over 800 third grade students filled Sauder. 

Vitaly came to fame after fooling the celebrity magicians Penn Jillette and Teller on their hit TV show, “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” in 2016. Since then, he has returned to the show twice, successfully fooling Penn and Teller in each performance. 

Most of Vitaly’s tricks are heavily based on art or photography. His brief opening trick involved sketching a rose, coloring it in with nothing except his hand and then pulling an actual rose out of the picture. 

“I used to paint as a kid, and my inspiration was from painting, sculpture and movies … All of that awakened in my work as a magician, so it’s just natural to incorporate those elements now,” Vitaly said. 

Most of the tricks were very elaborate, involving several steps and volunteers from the audience. The first one involved three audience members drawing a simple picture and ended with Vitaly drawing one of them with a magical, self-drawing marker. Sarah Miller ’24 was the final volunteer in this trick, serving as the connection between the three artists and Vitaly himself. “I felt my heart start to race a little bit, even though I’ve been on stage before,” Miller said. “It was just really cool, and I was trying to see if I could figure out what he was doing, and I just could not.” 

Other tricks included blindly serving an array of randomly mixed-up drinks, normal photographs with moving figures in them, a signed card appearing in a bottle, an audience-arranged still life transported onto a painting, audience members’ driver’s license photos disappearing and a heart-warming sleight-of-hand finale reminding the audience to smile.

Audience members shared their awe and appreciation of Vitaly’s appearance in Sauder. Jannatte Yoder ’66 thought she understood some parts of his illusions, but couldn’t figure out how he did the driver’s license trick. 

Jonah Reichenbach, another audience member, said, “I’ve always grown up enjoying magic, especially card tricks, and I like the math and science behind it. So I thought it’d be really interesting to see this guy put on a cool show, and he did a great job. It was pretty inspirational.” 

Both Vitaly and Jeshua Franklin, executive director of the music center, shared a sentiment of ease in making the shows run. “He has a stage manager that’s with him. So just the two of them, but they’re very friendly and easygoing, so they’ve been a delight to work with,” Franklin said. “They’ve been very pleased with our crew and the preparations we made for them to be ready for what they were gonna do.” 

Vitaly said, “It’s definitely gonna be such a memorable trip. I loved everything. You know, traveling with my show is not always easy, but everybody here made my life as easy as it can be. It was really a pleasure.”