Tacoma-born magickian (we’ll get to the spelling in a minute) Geoff Kanick invites you to follow him down the rabbit hole this weekend. A master of many arts, Kanick’s talents will be offered as part of Hypothesis, a synthesis of illusion, comedy, sideshow feats, juggling and vaudeville variety. As he describes it, Tacoma should prepare to get its mind “blowed.”



Kanick spells magick with a “k” to distinguish his art. Magick with a “k” is a linguistic signal pioneered by Victorian bad boy, mountain climber and legendary mystic Aleister Crowley, who used the word magick, with a “K,” to distinguish his explorations of consciousness and other psychonautic systems from the stage work of everyday magicians. Kanick, like Crowley, is no everyday magician, and says his goal is to take people out of their comfort zones to a place where magick is more than an act.



“I never call what I do ‘tricks’,” says Kanick. “What I do is never about tricking people. Magick should be about an experience between two people that needs to be taken outside the realm of possibility to happen. The experience and memories are the important part. I want to make magick artistic, sincere. I want to make it meaningful.”



The Bellermine Prep graduate added to his repertoire while he prepared for college, influenced by artists such as Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Louis Armstrong, Shakespeare, fight choreographer Rod Kinter, Tim Burton, Frank Sinatra and English skeptic and illusionist Derren Brown. Kanick joins Brown and a host of other performers who have used brain science to enhance their work and add new dimensions to what they do on stage. Kanick, meanwhile, says he doesn’t have any primary influences, despite his respect for the work of people like Brown and fellow Brit illusionist Luke Jermay.



“I try to experience magick on my own level. This is not your typical show,” says Kanick.”I use a lot of left brain and right brain techniques. My character changes from being a fun comedic guy to a guy focused on the psychology and mathematics of the brain. A lot of this is about the duality of the mind.”



At 19 — yes, he just finished his freshman year at Gonzaga — Kanick has synthesized his disciplines and influences into mind-boggling performances. The recent success of his work at Gonzaga encouraged him to take the show home to Tacoma. Dubbed Hypothesis, the show is equal parts vaudeville, comedy, mentalism, illusion and Fear Factor. Kanick will juggle, perform intense physical feats, such as balancing a 10-foot ladder in his face, and perform Houdini-style escapes and big stage illusions.



Beyond the physical stuff, Kanick says he incorporates a lot of psychology into his work, taking advantage of and emphasizing the quirks of our right-left brain mental mapping systems. Did we mention that Kanick is a hypnotist as well? Beyond his skills as a mentalist, Kanick designs most of his own illusions, and puts his own personal twist on any he borrows from the greats. Some of Kanick’s custom work can be seen on Exit133.com, where he debuted a trick designed just for Tacoma with local tie Erik Hanberg. The display, carried out in front of the UW Tacoma steps on Pacific Avenue, put Kanick in leather arm shackles, with duct tape over his mouth, in a body bag, with eight people holding him down. Just to make sure no key is hidden in his mouth, an observer does a quick examination before Kanick’s mouth is taped, and his body is sealed away.



Accomplice Andrew Evans, meanwhile, takes a group across Pacific Avenue with a deck of cards. Evans asks an apparently random girl, on her way toward UW Tacoma to pick a card from the deck, and write her name on it with a red marker. The card is then placed back in the deck. Evans asks a friend of the girl to count out the deck, hands it over, and watches as she counts 51 cards. The missing card is the one with her friend’s name on it. Evans returns to the other side of the street with his slightly larger crew, where Kanick is still being held in place. At Evans request, the bag is opened, revealing Kanick seemingly as he was left. Another random audience member removes the duct tape, as Kanick produces a rolled-up playing card from his mouth. When unfurled, the saliva-soaked card appears to be the card that disappeared from the deck, across the street, with the young woman’s name written on it.



Kanick says that performance is just a… um … taste of what to expect at his upcoming show, which he declined to share details about.



“This show has its roots in the traveling carnival,” he offers. “The carnival is fun at daytime, and it takes on a sort of eeriness at night, where you’re smiling, but you don’t know why.”



[McAstocker Theater, June 13 7:30 p.m., June 14 7:30 p.m., and June 15 2 p.m., $10 available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/36097 or at the door, Bellarmine Preparatory School, 2300 S. Washington St., Tacoma]]