A man in a black button-down shirt and dress pants holds up a card with the letter "y" on it with a student assistant on stage.

Magic at PVCC with Peter Monticup

Events Opinion

On Monday, Sept. 23 at 1 p.m., magician Peter Monticup visited the PVCC main building event space to host his magic show, Monticup is Magic. During his show, Monticup showed off some of his magic tricks, engaged the audience with jokes and stories, and even brought volunteers on stage to assist with the magic. 

For the first trick,  I was chosen out of the audience and was asked to “catch” an invisible deck of cards. I shuffled the deck, “handed” a random card to the person sitting beside me to see, and “threw” the deck back. I walked on stage, where Monticup pulled out a real deck of cards. When I announced what card I had handed off, the six of clubs, he shuffled the face-down deck and took a card, which was magically the one I had chosen. 

Monticup then brought three ropes out, each a different length, and asked me to inspect them for anything abnormal.  He then took the ropes, waved them around a bit, and suddenly, they were all the same length. Then, with another wave of his hands, the ropes were back to normal.

Monticup performed many more fascinating tricks during his show. These included a bag that changed to a new color each time it was flipped inside out, three metal rings that could magically be chained and unchained from each other, balls that disappeared with the flick of his hand and dots that vanished from the face of a giant card. My favorite trick involved a toy duck, which  always picked the card that a volunteer previously drew from a deck.

Once the main show  ended, Monticup offered to show audience members magic tricks they could do and provided the necessary items to pull them off. The tricks he introduced were easy yet impressive, and all of the supplies and instructions were provided to do these tricks at home. Throughout the show, Monticup was friendly and helpful, making it more fun and engaging.

Peter Monticup can be found online at https://www.magictricks.com/

A man in a black button-down shirt and dress pants sits next to a student paticipant on a stage while he demonstrates a magic trick.
Peter Monticup giving magic lessons. Photography by Jake Daubner