Media Credit: Amy Brooks

Media Credit: Amy Brooks

Media Credit: Amy Brooks

Students filled Hauck Auditorium to capacity on Tuesday night - sitting for two hours, jaws dropped, wondering what just happened.

It wasn't the first time magician Jim Munroe - brought to the University of Maine by Campus Crusade for Christ to present his magic show, MAZE - received that response.

"I learned my first real magic trick when I was about 12 years old," Munroe said in an interview before the show. "I learned to make a spoon disappear. I knew it was good because my parents were like, 'What just happened?' instead of the response I had been getting, which was, 'Aww, that's great.'"

Munroe did street magic in Memorial Union and around the library throughout the day, spreading the word and building hype for his show. It worked - students lined up from the doors to Hauck all the way to Union Central.

Show-goers were allowed into the auditorium about 20 minutes before 8 p.m., and seats filled almost immediately. The stage was set with a table at the center and a projection screen showing what could best be described as morphing Rorschach images. Funk and rock music played loudly through the speakers, creating a mystical atmosphere. Five minutes before the show started, a large countdown appeared on the screen and the music swelled.

The director of the MAZE Entertainment Group, Brad Fogerty, took stage first, telling the audience the MAZE's "job is simply this: to mess you up." He then introduced the man of the hour, Jim Munroe.

The magician took the stage and immediately brought two young women up from the crowd. Without saying a word, he performed his first mesmerizing illusion. After swallowing a rather long piece of string, he seemed to be in pain. Lifting his shirt, he revealed the end of the string, protruding from the skin on his stomach.

Speaking for the first time in the show, he asked one of the women to hold the end of the string, but "not to pull, just pinch." Screaming in agony, he stepped backward and the string was pulled out of his stomach. A camera was trained on him the whole time, showing the audience in the back what was happening on the giant screen on stage. The crowd squealed, laughed and cheered with delight.

The climax of the show involved three audience volunteers, a phone book and a secret. One volunteer was given a rolled-up piece of paper and asked to hold it high. The key volunteer sat at the table and was given a phonebook. Munroe asked her to flip to the white pages, and asked an audience member to pick a number between 25 and 229. The man chose 111. The volunteer with the phonebook flipped to that page, and Munroe seemed nervous.

Pensively asking the first volunteer to open the sheet of paper and reveal the phone number, the audience was shown it was incorrect. Munroe paced nervously, mumbling slightly. Irritated, he addressed the audience. "It's a free show guys, what do you expect? ... I feel like Michael Jackson at Toys 'R' Us right now."

The audience remained quiet, save for one man's shout of "We forgive you!" as Munroe walked to the table. He ripped the tablecloth off and threw the table forward onto the floor, revealing the correct phone number written in huge print on the table's top. The audience roared.

After a round of applause, Munroe sent the volunteers off stage and spoke with the audience. "We are going to take a five-minute intermission and here's why. It's not for you to get up and go to the bathroom. I'm going to talk to you about my world view - about what I believe to be true. ... I happen to be a Christian. If you feel like you're going to be offended by a Christian world view or whatever, I really thank you for coming to the show.

"The last thing I want people to think is that I'm like the guy who preaches about the homosexuals out in the quad or whatever. ... For those of you who do stick around, it's just getting interesting."

A few departed, but most stayed. After the intermission, Munroe came back on stage and did a trick involving guessing how much change an audience member's mother had on her, the answer being revealed over the audience member's cell phone, then moved on to his message.

"I travel all over the country, and I talk to a lot of students. I've dedicated my life to figuring out deceptions. ... I'm a little bit of a professional on what it means to be deceived." He went on to say that "the biggest deception I think people fall into is 'being religious.' So many people are deceived about what it means to be religious."

Munroe's "Christian world view" was inclusive, and he railed against people who used "hellfire and brimstone" in attempt to spread their religious message. In an earlier interview he commented that what was needed in ministry was "conversation," which often couldn't happen because people were so intent on "conversion."

"The Christian church today is really judgmental - there isn't a lot of care. It's all, 'I'm right; you're wrong. You're going to hell; I'm going to heaven. If you want to be like me, come on.' I can't stand that."

After speaking with the audience for a few minutes, Munroe performed another trick. He put a huge black sack over his head, effectively blinding himself, and proceeded to dangerously stab a knife into a wooden surface upon which his hand was placed. Jabbing the blade quickly between his fingers, the crowd recoiled, anticipating the worst, but no blood was shed.

He addressed the crowd again: "People think Jesus said, 'if you want to follow me, then you must be a total jerk to everyone else.' Am I right? I'm not making this up. But all he said was, 'Follow me.'"

After leading a prayer with the crowd, some of whom bowed their heads, Munroe tied up a few loose ends with some show-spanning tricks - too complex to describe here - and took his leave.

Munroe succeeded in providing a thrill-packed night of illusion and deception.

"I think the honest reaction from the crowd is, 'I'm just happy to have seen something great,'" Munroe said in a post-show interview. "People are appreciative to meet a Christian who isn't really pushing anything."

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