BERKELEY SPRINGS â€" Hagerman the Magician is coming back to the Ice House Wednesday by popular demand. Math-A-Magic is Hagerman’s newest show to hit schools, featuring his sense of humor and magical talents. The show has comedy, magic, audience participation, and, as the title eludes, math. Admission is by donation.
Math can be fun, he believes. He said his show invokes a sense of wonder in children when they see miraculous things done with familiar concepts. Math-A-Magic may be educational, but it’s also entertainment perfect for all ages and open to all.
Hagerman was born and raised in Missouri. His interest in magic began when his father went to a library to learn magic to perform at one of his birthday parties. Then one day, Hagerman saw an episode of “The Brady Bunch†where Peter went to a magic shop and became a magician. He was inspired; so he asked his mother to take him to a magic shop for his ninth birthday.
Learning magic helped the young man in his studies. He not only wanted to know how a trick worked, but more importantly, why it worked. His research uncovered the real secrets of magic, which he said is science. He taught himself basic scientific principles through the magical art. As a result, he excelled in his scientific studies. It almost came naturally to him as reflected by the many academic competitions he won during his scholastic career. He had dreams of becoming a chemist or a mathematician: the magician was always just a fantasy.
After college, he started performing for money. When he was 22, Dynamic School Assemblies, an agency based in Detroit, Mich., contracted Hagerman’s services for nine months and sent him to California. This would be his first regular engagement. But this wasn’t for magic as such. This was for science shows. The next year, the school asked Hagerman to take the number one performing position in the company, the Midwest tour. Hagerman averaged four shows a day, five days a week for years. Years later, he is still entertaining audiences.
The Morgan Arts Council brings Hagerman’s Math-a-Magic program to county schools November 4-6 as part of its Adopt-a-School program. Funding for this and other Adopt-a-School programs comes in part from the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, the Eastern West Virginia Community Foundation, Tom and Virginia Seely Foundation, the Clay Center, and local hotel/motel taxes.
The Ice House is at the corner of Independence and Mercer Streets. For more information, call 258-2300 or visit www.macicehouse.org. For more information on Hagerman, see www.hagermania.com or Hagerman the Magician on Facebook.
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