King finds ways to stay busy in Amish Country
By Bobby Warren
If Kevin King thought coming back to his Midwest roots would help him slow his life down just a little bit, then he was mistaken. Since returning to the Wooster, Ohio, area, King has been performing in a variety of venues, whether college campuses, summer festivals, or intimate settings.
King has helped put magic back on the map in Wooster and Wayne County, a city about 60 miles southwest of Cleveland, just like he did as an up-and-coming magician when he was a teenager at West Holmes High School in Millersburg, Ohio, a town nestled in Amish Country, about 20 miles south of Wooster.
King came back to the area after 20 years of performing his style of comedy magic on national and international stages. He spent a decade performing a stage show for Carnival Cruise Lines at ports of call in tropical locales.
After King graduated from West Holmes High, he enrolled in Butler University in Indianapolis to study theater. His thinking was anything he could study related to the arts would translate to better magical performances, and based on the reactions of locals, he was right.
Throughout King's stage show, he keeps the audience in stitches. He bills himself as a “magicomedian,” and he delivers. As one audience member put it, “He's funny, and he is a good magician.”
During a recent interview over lunch, King said he really enjoys the comedy. The magic serves a vehicle for him to drive home the laughs. King typically performs an effect with a borrowed bill – the larger the better – early in his act. He tears up the bill, but somehow messes up in trying to restore it to its former condition. He ends up taping the pieces of the bill together and affixing them to his trunk, where they remain throughout the show.
As King's act unfolds, he returns time and time again to his friends “$20 bill,” “$10 bill,” “$5 dollar bill,” fifty-cent piece, and quarter – with each passing reference the denomination of the borrowed currency diminishes, which gets a laugh every time. Before King wraps up his show, the bill is restored to its pristine condition, much to the delight of the volunteer.
During a recent show on the campus of The College of Wooster, King entertained and amazed the audience with his comedy and his magic, which included silks disappearing and reappearing; a rope being repeatedly cut in two and then restored until finally there was just a single loop of rope; and a card routine that culminated with King using a knife to locate the selected card. He also performed his signature piece, Linking Hangers, and he even did a David Copperfield impression, sort of.
Oddly enough, some bits of business with balloons generate some of the best reactions in King's show, which was the case at the college show and at a fundraiser for a club that caters to people working through the recovery process of substance and drug abuse. He will sometimes pull out a sculpting balloon and ask his helper to name any animal, and he will create one with the balloon. As soon as an animal is named, he gets rid of the balloon and says he can do a better trick. He will also ask a spectator if she would like a balloon animal. When she says yes, he tosses out a balloon that has not been inflated and says, “Here, make one.”
But what generates the most reaction is when he inflates a balloon and starts making a noise by squeezing the opening of the balloon. He continues to have fun making the noises until all of the air has escaped from the balloon. Somehow, though, the limp, deflated balloon continues to make noises, until it finally gives up the ghost. This little interplay keeps the laughs coming. He then ties the balloon in a knot, hands it to a spectator, saying it is a “pregnant worm.”
Stage shows have been the bread-and-butter of King's career, but deep down, he loves the “knuckle-bustin',” the pure sleight of hand. As he discovered over the years, people will pay good money for a stage show, but he does not pass up an opportunity to perform his close-up in intimate settings. His close-up skills were polished when he worked at Illusions near Indianapolis and Bill Malone's Magic Bar in Florida.
His close-up shows feature cards, coins, a cup and ball, rope, and silks. Whether standing center stage or sitting at a table, King keeps his audience entertained.
"He is pretty adaptable to any place he goes," said Ron Leatherman, who attended the show at The College of Wooster. “He really knows how to engage his audience."
Following one of his shows, the stage was being broken down. However, because the show was standing room only, some in the back had difficulty seeing King's act. So, he was asked if he could show the group some close-up stuff. Right away, King scooped up some of the cards that had found their way to the floor after an Ambitious Card-Meets-Card Stab effect. He showed them a Paul Harris effect of linking and unlinking three cards.
To catch up with Kevin King, check him out on Facebook.
Editor's note: Some of the material in this story originally appeared in a story about King in The Daily Record, where Bobby Warren works a full-time reporter.
