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homerhorizon.com life & arts
the Homer Horizon | July 19, 2018 | 17
Magician performs for more than 50 children at Homer library
Variety of tricks
entertain local youth
Jacquelyn Schlabach
Assistant Editor
It’s not every day someone
or something gets levitated
in mid-air, but more than 50
children recently got to see
the feat firsthand.
Smiles and laughter filled
the Homer Township Public
Library July 11 as Kevin Kelly
and Mrs. Magoo, a bunny,
took the crowd by storm and
performed a variety of magic
tricks during their children’s
magic show.
“My favorite part was the
floating [trick], only because
there’s no way to explain it;
how did he do that?” 10-yearold
Evelyn Siedlarczyk said.
Siedlarczyk was there
with her three friends, Natalia,
Damien and Emily Fudala,
to watch Kevin Kelly’s
magic show.
“I think the floating [trick]
was my favorite,” Natalia
said. “It just looked cool.”
There’s no doubt that the
levitation of one of the children
in attendance and Kelly
himself was a crowd favorite.
Of all the tricks he does
during the one-hour show,
it’s Kelly’s favorite, too.
“If you could see the audience
from my point of view,
from all the smiles and the
laughter, it’s just fun,” Kelly
said. “The show isn’t really
work. Everything else
is work, the setting it up, the
tearing it down, but the show
is just fun.”
The magician has performed
shows for over 50
years, starting when he was
just 7 years old at his home
in Chicago. He and his
brother, Keith, performed
under the name The Kelly
Brothers and did shows on
their front porch.
“We had a big bungalow,
and we charged two cents
admission on Saturdays,
and we’d get a lot of kids,
and then the neighborhood
moms and dads would start
hiring us,” Kelly said.
The pair continued performing
through high school
before Kelly attended
Chavez Studio of Magic in
Colon, Michigan. His first
gigs started in the late 1970s,
doing his show at magic
clubs such asv Houdini’s
Pub in Oak Forest and then
Coconuts Nightclub in Chicago
in the mid-1980s.
“Then, right around then,
my sister had my niece, and
then my nephew — they’re
in their 20s now — but I
found out I was good with
kids, so then I put a kid show
together, and now I do primarily
kids shows and families
shows now,” Kelly said.
Kelly has done the children’s
magic show at least
2,000 times over his career,
performing at preschools, libraries,
birthday parties and
children’s camps. He also
does a few senior shows, as
well.
“I never grew up, I think,”
he said. “I just like acting
silly, and it just works, I just
have a thing for making kids
laugh. I can’t really put a finger
on what it is, but I have
fun, and they have fun, and
I like making goofy sounds
and being silly.”
The Chicago native does
three to four shows a week
on top of working a full-time
job. His customers are within
a 50-mile radius of where he
lives, but to him, it doesn’t
always feel like work.
“If it wasn’t fun, I
wouldn’t do it,” Kelly said.
During the show last
Wednesday evening, Kelly
pulled Mrs. Magoo out of a
top hat, pulled paper out of
his mouth, flowers out of an
empty brown paper bag and
even made an American flag
by putting three different
Magician Kevin Kelly pulls his rabbit, Mrs. Magoo, out of an empty box as part of one of his tricks during his magic show
July 11 at Homer Township Public Library. Photos by Jacquelyn Schlabach/22nd Century Media
colored scarves into a hat.
He didn’t try any new
tricks that evening but said
he has a few things up his
sleeve that he’s working on.
“And when I work on a
new piece of material, I’ll
take something out and put
that in [the show],” Kelly
said. “I have a basic outline
in my mind, a sketch. I’ll
write down a basic script,
and then after four or five,
six shows, I see what works,
what doesn’t, and it slowly
evolves from there when I
work on new stuff.”
Throughout the year, Kelly
does between 150 to 200
shows a year, including his
Easter show, Spring show,
Halloween show and Christmas
show. It was his first
time performing at Homer
Township Public Library,
and the crowd’s reactions
showed they enjoyed the
magic before them.
Children sit in amusement as Kevin Kelly does a ventriloquist act using a character he
drew on a dry erase board that moves with his eyes and mouth.