561-558-8033 Gary Goodman has been
declared one of the nation's most creative
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May 13, 2004 “SPOTLIGHT” You’re getting veeeeery funny Houdini-esque Illusionist/Hypnotist brings magic to The Music Hall for Rotary Club Mega-Benefit Gary Goodman can put a sword through your neck. He can also convince you that you’re Justin Timberlake or Janet Jackson (hold the wardrobe malfunctions, please). And like Houdini, he can escape from a burlap bag locked in a trunk while wearing handcuffs in three seconds flat. Goodman will return to The Music Hall on May 21 with his rare combination of magic, illusion, hypnosis and comedy. The event is the Portsmouth Rotary Club’s biggest fund-raiser of the year, and it’s hosted by WMUR’s Chris Thomas. Last year, Goodman’s show raised $110,000 for polio vaccines. This year, the money will be donated to Seacoast organizations such as AIDS Response-Seacoast, the American Red Cross, Cross Roads House and Seacoast Hospice, to name a few.
Goodman began practicing magic when he was 8 years old after a magician came to his birthday party. Years later, he ran into that same magician, who then hooked him up with the man who built illusions for Harry Houdini. By the time Goodman was 20, he was performing his illusions at big venues. It wasn’t until after he learned how to escape from a padlocked trunk that he took up hypnosis and close-up magic like card tricks. Now, Goodman is a certified hypnotherapist. He says he always rewards his audience victims, er, volunteers by giving them free hypnotherapy. While they are under hypnosis, he will give them suggestions to help them enjoy work or have less stress. “I make life a playground instead of a battlefield,” says Goodman. He promises that the hypnosis show will be all new this year. Last year, he made a woman believe she was a Martian and a man believe he was a Martian language interpreter. While the woman spoke gibberish, the man translated. This year, he’s thinking about suggesting to someone that they are a contestant on “American Idol” and to someone else that they are Simon Cowell. “I enjoy it as much as the audience,” says Goodman. “It’s very entertaining.” Goodman also says he’s happy to help raise money for Seacoast causes. “I’m looking forward to helping Portsmouth,” says Goodman, who hails from South Florida. “It’s always such a pleasure to come up there.”
April 3, 2003 “SPOTLIGHT” Hypnotism at the Hall Get Your Tickets Before They Disappear! There’s snow in the forecast again. Reports predict it will be confined to The Music Hall and will prove a lot more entertaining than the lot we’ve lived through the past few months. In fact, it promises to wipe away those frigid memories and leave you in awe. It should hit us about 8 p.m. on Friday, April 4, the results of a breath of fresh air, blowing north from Florida: Comedian, Magician and Hypnotist Gary Goodman, headliner for the Portsmouth Rotary Club’s, “Benefit to Eradicate Polio Reality Night.” Seriously, it will snow. Right there in the hall, though “only momentarily,” says Goodman, speaking from his car phone recently. “It will be a very, very entertaining evening of laughs and wonder. In a presentation he likes to refer to as the magic of the magician and the magic of the mind, he’ll dazzle on many fronts. Goodman reads minds, switches roles with an audience member, and even puts one in what is apparently great peril. “I’m being careful not to say too much, because part of the magic’s fun is the element of surprise.” If you think you’ve seen all the magic there is to see or know what a hypnotist’s show is about, Goodman says you’re in for an even bigger surprise. Because he’s really got something up his sleeve. “People come up to me and say, ‘I’ve never really enjoyed watching magic…till I saw your show.’ I think it’s because there’s so much humor. I don’t take myself seriously. For me a show has priorities: first, entertaining the audience and second, fooling them.” The show is presented in two acts. Act One is all about comedy and magic. In Act Two, the comedy is back, this time coupled with hypnosis. Goodman is quick to explain that the hypnosis part is not about humiliation. Too often, that’s how these shows run, with the MC putting folks through embarrassing situations, he says. A certified hynotherapist, he likes to have fun with the act and the volunteers – or guest as he refers to them. But he likes to do so in a good humored manner, topping the experience off with a little gift for his guests – hypnotist style. “Those that participate walk away saying ‘Hey, I’ve never experienced something so relaxing.’ For being part of the show, I help some with a suggestion that can help them throughout their life…help them enjoy life more.” All that and they get to be Frank Sinatra or Britney Spears for a while. Goodman has been making things appear and disappear professionally for 25 years. He works Las Vegas a lot and is seen on the cruise line circuit. The phone call from the car was made on the way back from a few weeks with the Disney Magic Cruise Line. He’s opened for numerous celebrities, including Joan Rivers, Jackie Mason, and the Smothers Brothers. Goodman has received the International Brotherhood of Magic’s ‘Order of Merlin’, for his outstanding performance record. His interest and stage career started before junior high. It was a natural course for the son of a showbiz couple, his dad a bandleader and drummer, his mom a singer and dancer. His uncle was a stand-up comedian, who just happened to use magic in his act. “He’d show me a trick once a year when he’d visit…He said if I could do that one next year, he’d teach me another.” There were numerous events that moved him along, notably a magician who performed at his eighth birthday. By the age of 12, he was entertaining his northwestern New York neighborhood “for 10-cents a ticket.” (“I made $2!”) Soon, he was placing advertisements in local papers and started working private parties all around town. That magician from his eighth birthday saw one of his advertisements, looked him up and introduced him to the man who used to build Houdini’s illusions. Goodman went on to earn a degree in psychology, though he never gave it any traditional use. Instead, he left school and went directly into a full-time career as a magician, with all the trimmings. Years later, he again met up with that birthday magician. This time the older conjurer taught Goodman Stage Hypnosis. And now he’s bringing it all here, “incredulous works of art,” snow and all. “It’s always my hope they sit there and say, ‘How does he do that,’ rather than why,” he says with a laugh adding. “It’s going to be really, really fun.” |
Last
year, Goodman made it snow on stage. This year, he’ll put on a
show some say rivals David Copperfield. Gary Goodman will
perform both his “Stage Hypnosis” and “Grand Illusions” show at
The Music Hall. He has 25 Grand Illusions total in his
repertoire. Among them, there is the Shrinker, in which he
shrinks his assistant to only 12-inches tall. In the Basket &
Sword Mystery, Goodman drives five swords through a basket after
his assistant steps inside. When Goodman removes the swords,
she resurfaces with her costume in tatters. “It’s what you’d see
on TV or in Las Vegas,” says Goodman.