Mike Gilliland had a peculiar journey to finding what to call his magic act.
“I was always trying to look for a kind of catchy name,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘My name is Mike, and I do magic. Magic Mike!”
After a certain film with the same name was released, phone calls came from people with expectations slightly skewed from Gilliland’s magic show.
“That seems to be a running gag now into shows,” he said. “I’ll introduce myself as Magic Mike. I’ll always look at the women and say, ‘Put your money back up!’”
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Though born in Texas, Gilliland grew up in the Augusta area, and his magic events enterprise, Magic With A Twist, is based in Martinez. While he’ll travel around for gigs, there’s no shortage of work at home, whether children’s birthday parties or “gospel magic” shows for churches, even though one might not expect a magician to be based in Columbia County.
During the New Year, I got hired to work at Doctors Hospital,” said Gilliland, remembering an unusual turn of events at a recent show doing strolling magic, in which the magician mingles with the audience to perform short sets for small groups. “But instead of hiring the local, they went to Atlanta and hired the booking agent, who called me here.”
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Gilliland likes to incorporate humor in his performances, both to keep himself relaxed and to soothe the audience, whether adults or children, into a more receptive, enchanted headspace.
“I clown around a little bit,” he said. “It’s not real serious. We’ll make something disappear and then it reappears in an unusual place. It’s more a comedy. It helps the audience can ease into ‘OK, we’re going to see some magic.’”
His fascination with performing illusions began when he was eight years old, after getting a magic kit for Christmas. That first trick was a simple sleight of hand in which the performer places a ball on top of a plastic cup, and then two other cups on top of that, then lifts the three cups to show the ball at the bottom.
“I open the box, it’s got all these colorful-looking things,” he said, recalling when his first encounter with the craft. Gilliland says that he had a tough time reading the kit’s instruction booklet, as later he would be diagnosed with dyslexia. He shuffled through foreign language versions of the instructions until he finally found the English section.
“Once I figured out the English version, I picked it up and, I guess, never put it down,” said Gilliland.
While his mother was in nursing school, Gilliland says, she studied under Dr. Corbett Thigpen, psychiatrist and author of “The Three Faces of Eve.” Gilliland’s mother found out through Thigpen’s niece, a classmate, that the renowned Medical College of Georgia professor was also a magician. For a time, Gilliland says, Thigpen was his magic mentor.
“He taught me a few tricks here and there,” he said. “He wouldn’t teach me anymore until I came back next time and showed him what I had learned and that I could practice.”
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Gilliland’s interest persisted, and he went on to attend magic conventions and start touring. By the time he launched what’s currently called Magic With A Twist in 2001, though by then he had already been touring as a magician for years. After going to a magic convention lecture about being more visible in marketing, Gilliland started adding to the business. He rented out inflatable bounce houses, and his daughter even performed alongside him as a clown for some events.
Over the years, however, Gilliland has made his way back to the core of his act. While he still occasionally provides the inflatables, Magic With A Twist is primarily Gilliland touring with this magic tricks. One of the more popular sets, he says, includes his animal productions, making birds or rabbits disappear and reappear, at parties usually with the help of the birthday child.
“I’m starting to get back to the bare bones doing just the magic again, because that’s what I really enjoy,” he said. “I’m a big kid at heart. And I guess that’s the reason people go magic shows is because they want to feel that wonder.”
For more information on Magic With A Twist, visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MagicMikeGilliland or its website at www.magicwithatwist.com.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
