As a PowerPoint illuminates the training room, a tall, silver-haired man at the podium catches your attention with a mesmerizing sleight of hand. It might be an 8 a.m. meeting, and your coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, but that unique approach got your brain to connect. You want to know more.
Magic is how Marty Thomas-Brumme keeps his audience involved in training, keeps them awake and curious. He’s been a magician for more than 30 years, and he’s been using illusion as a teaching tool for 20. He’s also director of major gifts in Elizabethtown College’s Development Office and a workshop presenter at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 1, at Bowers Writers House.
The workshop, “More than Just Hocus Pocus: Magic as Tool in the Education and Training Worlds,” offers a dynamic approach to group learning, revealing how magic, used as a training tool, can create interest in the subject or, simply, wake people up.
I use it to change pace or when coming back from a break.”
“I use magic at the start of the session or to emphasize key points,” said Thomas-Brumme about utilizing illusion as training tool. “I use it to change pace or when coming back from a break. It’s a way to (influence) people to think about the things I want them to think about.”
Thomas-Brumme enjoyed magic as a kid and, in college, met his roommate’s uncle who was a magician. “He entertained us for two hours that day,” Thomas-Brumme said in a recent interview. “He told me about a book to buy” that went beyond the basics. After reading the book he was hooked.
While living in New Zealand in his 20s, he had learn “a bunch of tricks” but, because he never really performed them for anyone, he didn’t think of himself as a magician. He began volunteering at a hospital once a week, where he honed his talents with patients as his audience. “I did this for a year. I got lots of feedback. It was kind of a captive audience,” he said chuckling.
After the year, Thomas-Brumme said he felt like a real magician and realized he could make money with his sleight of hand. Four or five times a year he performs at banquets and adult birthday parties, but not for children. “Kid’s magic is completely different,” he said. “They are more difficult; they are more observant.”
About 10 years in to his avocation, Thomas-Brumme became involved in training and found that tricks helped to loosen up the group and keep them focused. Also with the Pennsylvania Council of Mediators, Thomas-Brumme has used magic to help open communication in mediation sessions.
As students do presentations all the time, he said, they might eventually begin to feel a bit uninspired, especially when they sense their audience is losing interest. Magic, he said, helps bring that interest back.
In the Writers House workshop Thomas-Brumme will show an “effect,” then the audience will break into groups to discuss how the members would use that bit of magic in a presentation. After coming back together, each group will share their stories. “I won’t be doing a lot of talking,” he said of the presentation. He wants, instead, to get the audience to think ‘how can I use the effect someplace else’.”
“I want them to create their own style.”
“Marty is a master of presentation,” said Jesse Waters, director of Bowers Writers House. “He is able to empower people to find what is authentic and genuine with in themselves that can bring a population of people ‘into the fold’.’
During the event, Thomas-Brumme said he will employ a play on words, make something disappear and reappear as something else and will predict what someone is going to say about a situation — all as unique training tools.
Bowers Writers House is located at 840 College Hill Lane on the Elizabethtown College campus. The event is free and open to the public with first-come, first-served seating. It is recommended to arrive 30 minutes before the event.