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As a youthful child, Greg Gleason would watch “The Magician” starring Invoice Bixby and dream about just one working day stepping into his footwear.
“He did magic displays in Las Vegas at a casino and he drove a corvette and he had a vehicle cellular phone. That’s cool in the ’70s,” Gleason said. “Final year, when I was operating at Bally’s, I understood, ‘Hey, I am likely to my job at the casino, doing my clearly show, I’m driving my corvette to the location and I’m on my cell cell phone. It is like, ‘Hey, I am that guy from the Tv set display.'”
Gleason has traveled a extended street from his early days of carrying out magic tips at Topeka West Higher Faculty, his alma mater. He has put in innumerable evenings undertaking in Las Vegas and close to the earth.
But now he’s coming again to the Midwest and bringing his present to the Kansas Town region.
The Gleason Magic Practical experience will get started June 4 with exhibits at 7 and 9 p.m. every Friday and Saturday and a 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. matinee each Sunday. The shows will acquire location at The Brass Onion, 5501 W. 135th St., in Overland Park’s Prairiefire entertainment district.
Tickets are $29 and $39 and can be acquired at gleasonmagicexperience.com.
From the magic shop to the huge phase
Gleason started out performing magic tricks he could acquire at the magic retail outlet.
“It was the trick containers and handkerchiefs and ropes and matters like that,” Gleason reported.
Then he grew to become interested in sleight-of-hand magic and illusions.
Gleason realized how to effectively perform magic tricks by going to the library and examining out magic textbooks. Afterwards, he attended magic conventions in the Kansas Town location.
He would expend his nights carrying out at such Topeka dining places and nightclubs as The Caravan and Top rated of the Tower.
Soon after graduating from Topeka West, Gleason attending Washburn University, exactly where he been given a diploma in economics and finance.
Gleason then labored total-time as a magician at a Kansas Town nightclub but fell into administration as a career. For about seven yrs, Gleason managed nightclubs, inevitably building competencies that would force him to turn out to be a successful magician.
It wasn’t right until Gleason was 30 that he made the decision to pursue magic as a job. By the time he was 32, he was headlining at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Carrying out in Las Vegas, amusement funds of the globe
Relocating to Las Vegas seemed to be a pure phase if Gleason wished to additional his magic vocation.
“It had all the shows, all the showrooms, different magicians,” Gleason stated. “You built it when you created it to Las Vegas. That was the huge time.”
Gleason executed additional than 9,000 reveals at the MGM in a theater specially created for his exhibits. A rotating, round stage found in the center of the home authorized attendees to encounter Gleason’s reveals from all angles.
“All the illusions ended up on cables, and they would occur down and land on the stage and then they would go back again up,” Gleason stated. “There’s no wings or backstage, almost everything is right in the center.”
Gleason moved to the Venetian Vacation resort in Las Vegas and then Bally’s in 2018 and 2019.
By the a long time, Gleason has been on “Masters of Illusion,” “Penn and Teller,” “The Huckabee Exhibit” and “Avenue Magic.”
He also introduced his display to far more than 600 cruises all-around the entire world.
Gleason’s Kansas Metropolis shows will supply guests an personal location for magic
Gleason’s several years of traveling and touring his magic show led him to search at bringing his exhibit back again to the Midwest.
“I have accomplished all the things in Las Vegas that I desired to do,” Gleason claimed. “I realized Kansas Town was a genuinely superior market place mainly because it can be broad open. There’s no clearly show like I’m going to be undertaking. No one does anything at all like it.”
Gleason specializes in sleight-of-hand and mind-looking at, which is what guests can count on for the duration of the Overland Park performances.
The 90-moment demonstrates will be carried out in a home that seats less than 100 people, one particular of the smallest venues Gleason has held a clearly show in. It will present guests an up-close-and-personalized magic encounter.
“It can be brain-looking at, so I am going to be doing the job with people today in the viewers and sleight of hand,” he mentioned. “There’s likely to be a significant video clip display screen behind me, so everything that I’m performing shut up, you may be capable to see it no make a difference exactly where you happen to be at.”
Gleason hopes people who show up at the displays allow them to just take away their concerns and complications.
“They will just sit there and feel like a kid yet again, saying, ‘Wow that’s outstanding,'” Gleason said. “But they will also find out a great deal. They will not enable me do this exhibit in Las Vegas.
“It truly is simply because the sleight-of-hand stuff I’m performing with cards and dice the casinos never want any individual figuring out that it can be possible to do the unachievable. I am executing items with a deck of playing cards that is essentially unattainable.”
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