Unlike many magicians, Steve Hamilton didn’t start practicing his craft as a kid.
Hamilton, a Sumner resident who performs as “Steve the Pretty Good,” actually lived another life as a Marine, musician and paramedic before mastering his first magic trick at age 30.
“It’s actually kind of wacky how old I was when I started doing this,” he said.
Although he might have come to the art of magic late in life, Hamilton has made up for lost time by becoming one of the region’s most-sought-after magicians and family entertainers.
At 2 p.m. Saturday, Hamilton and wife and assistant Doreen Buckhalter, will bring their popular family comedy magic extravaganza to audiences at the Auburn Avenue Theater as part of the Auburn Ave Kids Series.
According to Hamilton, it was through his wife’s work as an elementary school teacher that he got his first taste of performing magic.
“She was going to do a reading program, called ‘The Magic of Reading,’” Hamilton said. “We decided she needed to have a magic trick. But we’d never even seen a magic show or knew any tricks.”
The couple made a trip up to the Market Magic Shop at Pike Place Market in Seattle, where they settled on a simple rope trick.
“We learned how to do it, and she performed the trick,” he said.
Somewhere in the process of learning his first magic trick, however, the magic bug got under Hamilton’s skin.
At first he used the rope trick to break the ice with his new paramedic co-workers.
“I would do the magic trick, and they would say ‘show us something else,’ ” he said. “But I didn’t know any other tricks.”
Hamilton’s daughters soon took care of that, helping to feed his newfound hunger to learn magic by buying him a book about sleight of hand.
“I went through that like crazy,” he said. “It’s like I was made to do it. Then it became like performance art, and I started looking for places to perform.”
Soon Hamilton was doing small shows, kids’ parties, office parties, wherever he could perform.
“And that was almost 20 years ago now,” he said. “The fascination of using knowledge, this deep knowledge that takes people’s perception of things and spinning it a little bit and showing them something that puts that perception into a tailspin – that sort of thing was fascinating for me.”
Although many magicians conjure up an air of mysticism around their performances, Hamilton said he prefers to use comedy to connect with his audiences.
“My act is basically about deception,” Hamilton said. “In order for it to be authentic, you need to bring some truth. The personality of the person performing is the truth of the whole package. So I love to make people laugh, that’s who I am. The light-hearted approach of the presentation is who I am.”
Hamilton continued:
“The mysticism part – and I can do that kind of thing – too many emphasize that part of it. I would rather share that moment of surprise rather than lord it over my audience. I would rather participate with them about the possibilities of what is out there.”
Showtime
• What:
• When: 2 p.m., Saturday
• Where: Auburn Avenue Theater, 10 Auburn Ave.
• Tickets: $6. Call 253-931-3043, Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or online at www.auburnwa.gov/arts.
