On Wednesday, Nov. 5, mentalist magician Matt the Knife stunned a packed audience in Eaton Chapel. Intricate chalk artworks had been scattered all throughout the campus grounds, and flyers posted on every poster board ahead of his arrival — and the turnout reflected it. As he entered the main stage, the whole of the chapel erupted into uproarious applause, prompting a wave and a bow on the part of the showman, who immediately worked the crowd.
Before beginning his proper routine, he made certain to earn the title of “comedian” displayed prominently on his flyer, setting audience participation as one of his show’s central pillars early on. By pure coincidence, one of our very own Round Table journalists was roped into his antics, affectionately referred to as a “stalker” for the duration of the show, on account of her notepad. In a way, he was right. We were there to stalk him, but not as a ragtag bunch of amateurs. The Round Table prides itself on being a collection of professional stalkers, and that’s exactly what we did. We went in not merely determined — but completely resolved — to not let a single trick slip past our watch.
The show began with a high bar — for his opening trick, Matt was keen on demonstrating his sword-swallowing skills, which he purported only a hundred or so people the world over could do safely. Notably, for logistical reasons involved with going on tour, TSA, and the safety of audience participants, Matt the Knife did not use a real sword for this act. Despite the missing “oooh” and “aaah” factor of a genuine longsword, Matt’s showmanship and charisma arguably made up the difference. His wire coathanger, bent to the approximate dimensions of a sword, still managed to enrapture the audience and set envy ablaze in the nether regions of every penis-wielding audience member.
Matt highlighted the danger of this trick, stating that even something as blunt as the coathanger could punch directly through his stomach lining, swiftly ending his magic career, and rendering Eaton Chapel a crime scene. He entrusted a college student to pull a long object out of his throat, which is worryingly antithetical to the male student body’s population labeled as “known head pushers.” Incredibly, Matt survived the feat, receiving a round of thunderous applause, with no organs punctured (as far as we’re aware) and no heads pushed (onstage, at least).
In an exclusive post-show interview, we asked Matt about what inspired him to pursue such a death-defying specialty. “Ray Bradbury was always a big [inspiration] for me. ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ is what made me end up being a sword swallower,” Matt told The Round Table.
Continuing a theme of blades, in keeping with his name, Matt set up his next trick, lining up three ordinary Home Depot plunger heads, one of which had a large metal spike firmly attached to the center. He called for audience participation for this one, after which it was revealed that the tops of each plunger would be concealed with identical foam cups; the trick involved Matt interlocking hands with an audience member and slamming down on the foam cups one by one, until only one remained, with the hope of avoiding any irreversible maiming. One brave Beloit College student took up the challenge, and made his way on to the stage.
Objectively the funniest thing to have ever happened in Eaton Chapel, if not across all of Beloit College campus, was when the student was presented with the three cups, one of which was certain to impale his dominant hand, and was asked what his odds were of spearing himself on the nail. In response, a smile on his face, the absolute madlad replied: “like… fifty-fifty.”
Math skills aside, Matt continued to turn up the heat, dimming the lights, and projecting a compilation of “fail clips” from this exact trick, some televised on major networks, showing performers and unwitting daytime talk show hosts on the wrong end of the magic, leaving with bloodied hands and broken dreams in equal measure. But, feeling the audience’s concern mounting, he took the time to ease their fears, assuring all in attendance of the trick’s safety by proclaiming he was in no way responsible for any physical, emotional, or psychological damage that any willing participants may or may not incur.
With tensions high and anticipation frothing over, the metacarpal’s gamble began. Hands interlocked and shaking visible even to the third row of audience members, Matt slammed his own hand atop a Beloit student’s, down onto a foam cup sure to give way, and intertwine their fates for better or worse.
Luckily, both Matt and the student participant came out of the trick unharmed and were applauded for their bravery. Though, you may have expected that — if that weren’t the case, this article would have a very different title.
Following the hellish variant of the Monty Hall problem, Matt showcased his abilities in a particular subset of magic, his specialty, known as mentalism. He called on two audience participants — one to think of and write about their first love, and one to think of someone close, a friend or family member, they’d recently lost. By random selection, and with the help of a third audience participant, the latter had been chosen for Matt to psychically determine traits of the deceased in question, including but not limited to eye color, gender, age of death, cause of death, first and last name, and family-assigned nickname.
Admittedly, certain parts of this seemed slightly hokey at first, in an exercise-in-probability sort of way. But by the time Matt had correctly identified age of death and full legal name, skepticism dissipated from the crowd, stunned by such an inexplicable feat. In an attempt to understand this trick, and mentalism magic as a whole, we asked Matt about this in our interview.
“For me, it’s usually influence, reading, and precognition… Influence, making somebody do something whether they want to or not… reading, which is like mind reading… precognition, determining an event before it occurs… those are kind of ‘mind things,’ but I have a lot of different ones in there,” said Matt about this particular trick.
Returning to the show proper, Matt was not simply content to rest on his laurels. Determined to one-up his earlier sword-swallowing, he took a set of five brand-new razor blades from his pocket, using each to slice a sheet of construction paper in plain view of the crowd, and proclaimed that he’d devour them all at once — only allowing himself to remove them when he could tie each blade to a string — which he’d also eaten, using only his mouth. With music booming through the chapel, applause rose in higher and higher waves as the magician drew each blade, firmly tied to the string from his mouth. This was vaguely salacious in ways indescribable in written word.
For his final trick, Matt returned to his earlier mentalism work. See, throughout the show, there sat a glass jar atop a stool downstage left of the entire performance. This jar contained a clip with a folded-up piece of paper. Nobody came within arm’s reach of this jar for the entirety of the show — Matt ensured as much by assigning three different audience members to watch over the jar, one of whom was a Round Table field reporter.
Recall earlier in this article that Matt had summoned two audience participants to be vulnerable — one about love, and the other about loss.
Inside the jar, on a piece of paper folded up and wedged in a small metal clip, lay clearly written details of the former audience participant’s first love, including name, age, and the nature of their encounter. Details that Matt the Knife should not have had any way of knowing prior to the show, when the jar was first assembled before an audience.
This feat of superhuman precognition sent the crowd into a frenzy, cheers, clapping and shouting erupting from every corner of the chapel. And as he took his final bow, a line spanning almost half the length of the floor had already formed to speak with him.
“There are things I reveal, there’s some mentalism where I can tell you exactly how I do it and what I’m doing, and it’s still very miraculous… Kind of like, you can almost conceptualize it, [but] you still can’t replicate it… I actually think that understanding it better makes it more impressive, because then you go ‘wow, there’s even more layers, there’s more going on that I appreciate,’” Matt explained.
Beloit students left Eaton Chapel on Wednesday night with one question — what is Matt the Knife? Is he a psychic? A divinely ordained speaker from beyond? A hoax? Six opossums in a trench coat? A duplicate of Lin Manuel Miranda from another universe that has merged its pathway into this one? An actual, sentient knife?
“Matt the Knife… has been a nickname since I was 15,” Matt said. “It’s a reference to card cheating… A term in America for a card cheat is a card mechanic, and I didn’t like that term, so I would go by the British term, which was sharp, because those in the know were sharps, those who were getting scammed are flats — like musical notes, sharps and flats… And someone went, ‘oh, Matt’s so sharp, he’ll cut you like a knife,’ and it stuck — Matt the Knife.”
Demonstrably, Matt is not a sentient knife. But he is a 12-time Guinness world record breaker. “My favorite [record to break] was probably when I broke the record for fastest escape from a straitjacket while underwater,” Matt said. He’s also performed in 21 different countries, and a viewing of his performance reflects exactly why. Among stunning showmanship, enrapturing stage presence, and a surprisingly competent comedy routine to tie it all together, it’s no wonder how Matt the Knife has gained so much traction. Students were bewitched and astounded to have him here at Beloit, and we’d love to have him again in the coming years.
Featured Image: Betty Cavicchia’28
Leave a Reply