Educational Magic

By KARL BURGDORF J&D Staff Writer

When John Tudor says "magic," he doesn't mean "hocus-pocus." He means "The Magic in You."

Through the medium of magic, the Columbia based magician took hundreds of Carver-Edisto Middle School students on a roller coaster of magic and lessons in life. From a fiery compact disc holder full of "hot music" to the paths of choosing a good life, Tudor kept his young audience attentive and enlightened. "This show is about your life," he told them Thursday, while taking out a magic rope.

"There are two kinds of life- a good life and a bad one," Tudor said, before cutting the rope and making knots disappear. "A good life is the kind of life everybody wants... a bad life is being sick for a long time, being alone or being poor." "Want to know secret, magic words?" he asked,as a barrage of hands raised and voices called, "Me! Me!"

"The first magic word (to a good life) is choice," he said. "You have that power every day."

Tudor pulled one student from the audience, had him choose a playing card from an oversized deck that he "turned invisible." He made the deck reappear, had the student announce his card and fanned the deck producing the chosen card turned backward.

He explained that the free choice the student demonstrated in picking his card is the same power of choice everyone uses to make good or bad decisions. The specific choices of staying in school and avoiding drugs were his main focus. Holding a cylindrical tube, Tudor dropped several items through it.

"Things will pass through your life," he said, referring to friends, jobs and other things that change with time.

"Only one thing will never pass away. What you learn in school will never, ever pass away," Tudor said, pouring a dark liquid into the cylinder without a drop falling through the bottom.

Taking a "Just Say No To Drugs" sign in hand, Tudor shortened the message "for the primary kids" by first removing the "Just," then the "Say," then the "No." Crumpling the pieces back together, he produced two complete signs- one with "Just Say No To Drugs" and the other with "Say Yes to Success."

In another ripped-paper trick, Tudor told students how his former fiancee' used drugs and drove away everyone who cared for her, one-by-one, until she finally drove even him away. "I had a dream one night that everything came back together," he said, producing a whole paper from the pieces. "But it was only a dream. "Did you know you can get 'high' without drugs?" he asked, before levitating his assistant, Denise Atkins. At the end of the show, Tudor and Atkins met a tremendous round of applause.

Tudor said the show is unique because it brings together the fun of magic and the importance of all aspects of life, Tudor said. The program started when a school in Columbia asked him to do a program on dropout prevention, but it has evolved into a mountain of entertaining subject matter, which can deal with everything from teen pregnancy to conflict resolution.

Afterward, two other schools called him and requested the program. "There was a demand for what I had to say," Tudor said. "I was able to take communication skills and tell stories form my own life. Kids always ask two questions-how did you do that trick and are those stories true," he said.

Tudor's own experiences included being shot in the leg at a mall and being left for dead. Several "magic coins" were all that kept buckshot from severing an artery, he said.

Tudor began his career as a magician, when he received a magic kit for Christmas one year, he said. "I was shy as a child. It was an outlet to develop personality," he said. "I went into the professional theater to get over being shy, (but) magic was what I wanted to do."