For two full years, 20-year-old mentalist Eaden Marti, of Warwick, worked to build a one-man, full-length stage mentalism show for a live audience — and then the pandemic struck.
Marti, 20, said this show was set to be one aspect of his degree program at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he was preparing to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts in May of this year. The final project was going to see Marti perform a full, hour-long show at the Warwick Town Hall in May, after graduating.
“I worked with my theater advisors and different people in the performing arts faculty to create this show and the final goal was to perform it in the Warwick Town Hall,” Marti said. “That was going to be my trial run of it and then I was going to, hopefully, take that on the road. I had plans with other performer friends this summer to hop around performing that.”
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 and the social distancing practices put in place, the show could not be presented to in-person audiences. To make up for this missed experience, Marti decided to perform the new set in another format — virtually. After graduation, Marti worked throughout the summer to adapt to the digital format. In September, he presented the updated show, which was filmed live at the Warwick Town Hall and streamed to a large virtual audience.
“Warwick has always been a supportive audience for me and a great audience, so I wanted to start out there,” Marti said. “My entire show relies on people wanting to connect and wanting to be a part of it, so it’s a fun crowd to try new things with.”
Even in a virtual format, the entire show relied on a large amount of audience participation to keep the performance as interactive as possible, as that is the main goal in Marti’s mentalism shows. In his performances, Marti creates a space for individuals to connect and enjoy a shared new experience, something he believes has carried over to the virtual format. Throughout the show, Marti connected with different members of the audience to demonstrate mind reading, psychological influence and other feats of the mind.
The September show ended when Marti asked an audience member to think of a celebrity they admired and then preceded to have them call random phone numbers until the call went through and someone answered. The random individual reached was then able to connect with the caller and divulge the celebrity that they had in mind.
“The virtual format is a very new challenge for all types of performers but, for myself, my entire show is pretty much all audience participation,” Marti said. “For much of my show, I have people on stage with me, so I really had to figure out what could work without being in person.”
Fortunately, Marti had some friends who were willing to act as a test audience while he ran through his metaphorical bag of tricks to see what translated, and what didn’t, over Zoom. Some things needed to be adjusted, or cut from the show entirely. He even created some new pieces to add to the performance.
“It forced me to think of things in new ways,” Marti said. “One thing that makes it challenging, but also fun to work with, is the fact that everybody is on your screen all at once. You can quickly have people throw out different pieces of information.”
Notably, there are some downfalls to the digital medium, like a lack of intimate connection with the audience, but for the most part Marti says he was able to make the virtual format work smoothly. After his successful virtual performance this fall, Marti hopes to hold similar events in the future so he can help keep his art as vibrant as possible, even during our new normal requiring social distancing. While this will be a placeholder for now, he looks forward to the day he can step back on stage and present his full hour-long show to an in-person audience.
Marti said he’s been interested in magic and mentalism since seeing a magic show at his elementary school when he was just 6 years old. While always drawn to the psychological aspects of such performance, Marti began to really focus on mentalism a few years ago. He said he likes to blend things like hypnosis, a scientifically proven practice, with other traits of performance. He said audience members will often come up to him after shows and ask how his tricks were done.
“With mentalism, a lot of it, it’s really happening,” Marti said. “Hypnosis is a real thing that’s happening right there, same with a psychological reading, or suggestion. Some people believe in that already, some people don’t know if it’s real or not. I really love that challenge of mixing that in with slight of hand and with other aspects of performance.”
He also loves having those conversations with audience members after his shows. He said what they see on stage is “as real as you want it to be,” because “it is really happening.” Of course, he said, here is some level of interpretation or disbelief allowed to the audience.
“People have different backgrounds and different beliefs, but no matter how much they choose to believe in it, it’s still a new, unique shared experience for everybody,” Marti said.
The biggest challenge in transitioning to a virtual platform was trying to maintain this sense of community and connection, as it is easier to be distracted if you’re not sitting in a crowd watching the act unfold onstage. Fortunately, he said mentalism is something that is a little less familiar to crowds than traditional magic tricks and this novelty combined with the interactive nature of the performance has helped keep eyes glued to the screen.
While currently unable to perform as often as he would like due to the lasting COVID-19 pandemic, Marti, who has been a member of the Warwick Fire Department for some time now, served for a number of months as wildland firefighter in California with Americorps. He said he started in September, after his virtual performance in Warwick.
To learn more about Marti, follow him on social media @eadenmarti or find him online at eadenmarti.com.
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.