Jim Snack called a woman up on stage. Look in the bag, he told her.
She did. There was nothing there.
Snack said a few words, made a few gestures. Look again, he told her.
She did. There was an egg in the bag.
This woman just freaked out, Snack said. `The look on her face was, oh my gosh. The audience went crazy.`
For Snack, that moment at a recent performance in Washington, D.C., reminded him of just why he made magic his career.
Snack, of West Sand Lake, will bring his act to the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library on Tuesday, Dec. 28, at 2 p.m. Families with children 4 and older are invited to the free show.
Snack was just a kid himself when he was turned on to magic. When he was 8, a magician made his head disappear. Crouched inside a box while the audience roared, Snack fell in love with magic.
He went to the local library and read all its books on magic. He saved his allowance and sent away for tricks in the mail.
When it came time for college, Snack would have loved to study magic, but he settled for majoring in theater at the University at Albany. For years after he graduated, though, he made his living as a magician, doing what he calls `classic tricks` like pulling coins out of the air.
`They’re tricks that have stood the test of time,` he said. `You put your own spin it.`
Whereas Snack was initially attracted to magic because it fascinated him, the lure now is just the opposite. He loves seeing his tricks fascinate other people.
`I love watching people react to it,` he said.
That’s especially true of younger audiences. `Children haven’t lost their sense of wonder,` he said.
So he’s excited for the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library show. It was originally scheduled for the summer, but Snack had to reschedule after landing another performance elsewhere.
The other performance wasn’t strictly a magic show. Over the years, Snack has branched out beyond magic, billing himself as a motivational speaker who delivers customized programs on change, creativity, teamwork and communication. Magic punctuates his performances.
It turns out those kind of engagements pay the bills a little better than standard magic shows do. When he first started out, Snack was a regular on the local library scene, but then started to be booked for corporate meetings both locally and nationally.
Last summer, he got a call from the Cohoes library. They needed a magician and wanted to know if Snack could recommend someone.
He looked at his calendar. He was free on the date in question. The library had often booked him when he was first starting out; he figured he could return the favor.
`I told them, I’ll do it,` he said. `I went and I had a blast.`
So, on a lark, Snack contacted other local libraries to see if anyone else might want to hire a magician. He was floored when 18 booked him for the summer.
Compared to his speaking gigs, it wasn’t the most lucrative work. But it paid off in another way. Snack said he `really had a great time` interacting with local kids, watching their faces light up the way the woman’s had when she found the egg in the bag.
So when the Clifton Park-Halfmoon gig fell through, even though Snack provided a replacement magician, he offered to do a makeup show whenever the library wanted. It chose the December break.
Snack considers himself a teacher at heart. He went back to school for a master’s degree in communication and worked as a teacher’s assistant, winning an award as an outstanding TA. When he returned to entertaining, he found he missed teaching. So he started to incorporate some messages into his shows. At the library show, he’ll talk about the importance of reading.
The library gigs proved fulfilling enough that Snack is considering doing more this summer, even if the conference he attended when he was supposed to do his original Clifton Park-Halfmoon performance pretty much covered the pay he would bring in for a whole week of library shows. Conferences and the like are really how he makes his living, and he enjoys them. At an upcoming General Electric conference, he’ll take part in a conference call in which Snack will enlist people from remote locations to help him pull off a trick.
The speaking might pay the bills, but the magic, he said, is the fun part. He’s found his clients ` and there are dozens of them, from the Capital Area School Development Association to General Motors ` like having a speaker who can infuse some levity into a lecture.
To learn more, visit www.jimsnack.com.“