CREDIT: MICHAEL VINCENT
He does the impossible. Wayne Hoffman is a mentalist and illusionist and he's coming to Fanshawe to blow your mind on October 29.

World-famous mentalist and illusionist Wayne Hoffman will be making a stop at Fanshawe College on October 29 to share with students his freaky ability.

“I’m coming to rock your campus,” he said.

Hoffman started off doing magic as a child, even getting paid to perform as a teenager. When he started studying psychology in university, he started adding a new element to his magic show.

“I noticed that people enjoyed mentalism more than magic,” he said. “They looked at illusions as just a trick but when I did the psychological stuff everybody was intrigued by it.”

“Eventually the majority of my show became mentalism and psychological stuff – mind reading if you will.”

Hoffman says he’s always been naturally intuitive.

“As a kid I thought I was just lucky,” he said. “I realized I was reading people … I think really more so than suddenly learning that I had the ability it was more of a learned ability. I trained in order to do it.”

He incorporates sociology, statistics and interrogation techniques.

“You find patterns in human behaviour,” he said. “You’ll notice if you use a certain inflection and ask a question a certain way that this type of person will typically answer this.”

He admits he sometimes gets it wrong, however.

“I am [wrong] sometimes,” he said. “I’ve had people tell me that actually makes it better because if I were to get it 100 per cent of the time then it would clearly be a trick.”

“My audience is very forgiving and I just move onto the next one … Being wrong is part of being a successful mentalist.”

When he comes to Fanshawe though, there’s no telling what to expect. Just don’t think rabbit out of a hat.

“It’s going to be fun and upbeat,” he said. “But people are going to leave scratching their heads saying, ‘How the hell did that just happen? What is life?”

“I’m going to crush people’s sense of reality too.”

Hoffman says he gets a number of reactions from his audience too.

“I’ve seen it all,” he said. “I want people to yell and scream and say, ‘WTF’ and everything in between, but I’ll get people where their jaw will drop and they won’t move.”

“If you see something that breaks the laws of reality, you should be stunned.”

He’s even seen people run out of the theatre.

“The phrase I hear the most is, ‘mind blown.’”

Get excited to see Hoffman, Fanshawe. You’re just his type of audience.

“Everyone that’s coming wants to have a good time, otherwise they wouldn’t be there,” he said. “The energy is always upbeat … When you’re at a university [or college] everyone’s there to party and that fits my style perfectly.”

He knows his job is done when he sees the first reaction from his audience.

“Hear the first gasp or have two people look at each other eyes wide open just stunned,” he said. “You can tell in an instant as soon as you hit the stage and you perform, that moment when the audience – you just know they’ve left reality.”

There are no rules.

“If you come to this show, you have no idea what’s going to happen and I promise you, your world will be turned upside down.”

Hoffman will perform at Forwell Hall on October 29 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 and are sold at the Biz Booth and on the Fanshawe Student Union website.

For more information on Hoffman, visit his website waynehoffman.com.