On Friday September 21st, Southwestern’s own University Programming Council (UPC) hosted the eccentric magician Norman Ng! Norman has been performing his exhilarating art across the nation for over 23 years! He began his career in magic when he was only 8 years old where he started performing sleight of hand magic tricks. Norman shared his preference on his favorite type of audiences and disclosed his preferred type was small intimate settings like a college campus. He has travelled and performed at over 600 college campuses and universities. Besides colleges, this captivating magician has appeared on a number of television shows including “Penn and Teller Fool Us”, which aired across 48 states and even Canada. Along with television, he has garnered over 500k views on Youtube. Norman has gathered quite a few awards including being named “Americas Best Variety Act” by Campus Activities Magazine that gave him national recognition in the performing magic community.
The Friday Night Live (FNL) event took place in The Cove with a relatively large crowd. Norman began the evening by “reading” a member of the audience’s mind. This was an amusing trick to where he purposefully guessed what the audience member was thinking of wrong on the first couple of tries then on his last attempt successfully “read” the individuals mind. However, this had a slight twist at the end of the trick. The audience member was thinking of a bowling ball and on his last attempt to guess, he guessed a bowling ball where he then made a bowling ball materialize out of his enormous drawing pad from thin air. A common trend throughout the evening was incorporating “reading” audience members minds into his own acts. Another daunting act included making a person’s iPhone disappear. This trick started with the phone hidden inside of a bag where there was two other identical bags next to it. Norman mixed the bags up and asked the audience member to choose two bags in which he will smash the two chosen with a baseball bat, and hopefully the one not chosen would include the individuals phone. The two bags were smashed and the last bag was revealed to not have the audience members phone inside, yet her phone was hidden inside of a Pringles can that was already sealed ahead of time. This trick left the audience flabbergasted and in shock of how the phone was hidden inside of the can. Overall, this event had a solid turnout and the tricks performed were intellectually engaging which thrilled the crowd through the art of misdirection.