When Derek Hughes was 10, he swapped a chemistry set for a magic set with a friend.
His first trick was placing a penny in the center of someone’s open palm and covering it with a matchbook.
“Then, through the magic of alchemy, it transforms into a dime,” he says. An only child, his audience was largely his parents and their friends.
“To have a grown-up be amazed — that’s a sense of power,” Hughes says. By the age of 12, he informed his parents he intended to be a magician when he grew up.
True to his word, Hughes is performing his “Bag of Tricks” show at Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Liberty Magic Wednesdays through Sundays through Feb. 16.
“I had business cards printed up, and in rural Minnesota (where he grew up and now resides), I cold-called local nursing homes. I did the nursing home circuit,” Hughes says.
By 16, he had begun a 9-year gig performing in local TGIF restaurants, eventually booking corporate events and parties.
Performing in a smaller venue — Liberty Magic has fewer than 70 seats in four rows — allows audiences to do more than observe. “It allows what I like to call an opportunity to witness,” Hughes says. “You didn’t just see it — you witnessed it. The audience can then go testify.”
Building a magical career
Much of Hughes’ allowance and odd job money went into buying tricks from the Eagle Magic store in Minneapolis.
He paid visiting magicians for a few hours of their time, finding mentors including the late Eugene Burger along the way.
“I learned performance theory, the importance of storytelling,” he says.
Despite regular televised performances, Hughes believes magic is meant to be performed live. “I use a lot of audience participation,” he adds. “I’m a general practitioner. I don’t specialize in coins, cards, mentalism, ropes. I’ve curated an experience that incorporates all of the above.”
Taking audience on a journey
In a 2015 “America’s Got Talent” performance, he stunned the judges by correctly guessing cities, names and words they think of silently. Hughes finished the show as a top 10 finalist.
Earlier this year on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, he made actress Olivia Wilde’s engagement ring vanish, only to reappear in a locked box dangling over his head.
For one trick, he borrows an audience member’s beer bottle.
“I make it disappear in a most impossible way. It’s the trick where people come up to me later and say ‘Where is the bottle?’” Hughes says, laughing.
He gets a similar reaction with the reappearing engagement ring. “People say, ‘The ring in the box — how?’” he says.
Those reactions tell him a piece of magic is a keeper.
Bringing magic to Pittsburgh
Since opening in February, Liberty Magic has been filling the venue with artists in residence for six weeks, six shows a week.
“I think a lot of times people think of magicians as entertainers as opposed to artists,” says Scott Shiller, producer of Liberty Magic and the Trust’s vice president of artistic planning.
“We just had The Illusionists at Heinz Hall. We’ve had David Copperfield and Penn & Teller. I think Pittsburgh audiences have gotten used to seeing cars disappear from stages and elephants disappear from stages,” Shiller says.
Liberty Magic offers an up-close view of performers as they work their magical trade, Shiller says, “inches away from the audience.”
“You get away from the mechanics and get sucked into the storytelling,” he says. “You can go on a journey that reminds you of what it was like to be a kid and not have all the answers.”
“I think (Hughes) is a great example of that. He’s done television and movies, Marvel films. He’s traveled the world, but finds a way to tap into his personal story and what he wants to share with the audience,” he says.
Hughes also brings comedy to his magic, another tool in connecting with and disarming and winning over an audience, Shiller says.
He likens Hughes to the Wizard of Oz, or Willy Wonka.
“It’s the idea of here he is, otherworldly. He’s got all of this great magic in his bag and he’s going to give us a sneak peek into what’s behind the curtain,” Shiller says.
