Performance will benefit the Black Swamp Players
By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Matt Neely will bring magic to the Black Swamp Players home on Oak Street, and he hopes to bring in a few dollars to help the community theater troupe.
Neely is a magician based out of Akron. And he’s been taking his newest show “Magically Ordinary” out on the road to raise money for local theater troupes. He estimates he’s brought in as much as $20,000 with these benefits.
That will bring him to the theater on Oak Street on Saturday, Aug. 12, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at blackswampplayers.org.
He’s been working on his magic since he was a child, and since he got his first taste of theater in a production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” he’s also cultivated a love for theater, especially of the community sort.
“I do a lot of works with nonprofits and do a lot of fundraising shows. … Community theater is a cause that’s near and dear to my heart,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “So, I reach out to community theaters every year to do fundraisers.”
He knows that for non-profits every dollar helps, and his show adds something else they can offer to their supporters.
The Tennessee native had formerly lived in Oregon, so he was familiar with people on the area community theater scene, including Heath Diehl, president of the Black Swamp Players.
Nelly, 37, said his is the classic magician’s story. He received a magic kit when he was 7 or 8, saw a magician at his school and said: “That’s really amazing.”
As he got serious, he joined a regional magic club.
He got his start in theater in his high school’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The school was so small everyone was needed. He went on to perform Shakespeare in competitions.
“I spent my teenage years bouncing around Tennessee performing shows and working in theaters,” he said. He worked way up to stage managing.
When he went to Freed-Hardeman College he majored in history, another love of his, and minored in theater.
“It’s not a big leap between magic and theater,” Neely said. “Both involve performing, and both involve getting in front of an audience. … Magic is ‘let me show you this cool things’ while theater is ‘let me tell you this cool story.’”
In 2020 when the world was in lockdown, he decided “it would be really great to mix my love of theater and my love of magic, that mixed the ‘wow’ of magic with the storytelling of theater.”
He enlisted the help of magic maven Carisa Hendrix. “Whenever you’re trying to make something creative, you run the risk of being in a vacuum,” he said. “Getting another set of eyes makes it a little deeper, a little more tactile.”
The show grew from a realization of how social media promotes a fear of missing out. For some people especially young people, he said, they see people flying around first class and acquiring all manner of luxury possessions. And these influencers have millions of social media followers. That makes other people feel like they’re nothing. “But they’re great and amazing people,” he said.
“The show is built upon the premise that sometime the most interesting people are not found in the fancy places in society but found in the places that most people think of as ordinary. … Can something we think of as ordinary be used in an extraordinary way?”
“Magically Ordinary” follows everyman JD McKee, a happy-go-lucky handyman. The props are ordinary objects that members of the audience can relate to.
“Most of the moments in the show where the magic happens are not about showing off but part of the organic flow of the story,” Neely said. “The tricks are all original, but not all brand new. One trick that’s well over 100 years old but we’re doing in different ways.”
Neely has performed that show about 50 times since December.
Magic, and live theater, has enduring appeal, even in a time of high-tech entertainment and artificial intelligence.
“Nothing ever will replace the in-person experience,” he said, just as movies didn’t make live theater obsolete.
“Technology is a tool that allow us to adapt and enhance,” he said. But “no technology will ever replace live magic.”
