Making Magic
While magicians use sleight of hand, illusions and props to perform their tricks, mentalists use an understanding of how people think and behave to create magical effects. One couple from Tallmadge, Ohio, combines both approaches to astound audiences—and their act recently earned them a spot as contestants on a popular television show.
Stacy (Paquin) Greenamyer, BA ’06, a mentalist, and her husband, Jason, a magician, appeared on the “Jedi Mind Tricks” episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us on Jan. 22, 2021. In the show, which airs on The CW Network, magicians compete by performing their best tricks in front of Penn & Teller. If the world-famous illusionists can’t figure out how the tricks were done, contestants win a “Fool Us” trophy and get to perform as Penn & Teller’s opening act at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
After auditioning for four years in a row, the couple, who perform as The Alans, finally made it on the show. “The process was long and difficult, but worth every minute,” Stacy Greenamyer says. This time, the producers asked them to submit a trick they had done a few years earlier. They reworked and perfected the routine for months before traveling to Las Vegas to compete on the show.
During the TV episode, The Alans share the “magical” story of how they met 10 years ago. He tells how he remembers it and she jumps in to remind him of how it actually happened. Their playful banter, while performing several magic tricks, highlights their chemistry as performers and as spouses. While they don’t fool Penn & Teller, they do impress them with their performance.
The couple—who married eight years ago—also have had a four-year residency performing monthly at the Alex Theater, located in the Metropolitan at the 9, a luxury hotel in Cleveland. They hope to reopen their show in the fall. Their main market is corporate events; prior to the pandemic, they traveled the country to perform at conferences, sales meetings and resorts.
Greenamyer has a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from The University of Akron and worked as a therapist prior to her marriage. She is also a balloon artist and does balloon twisting and decor, working her balloon events in around their magic performance schedule. Her husband got his first big break as a magician by landing a cruise-ship contract soon after graduating from Youngstown State University.
“When we aren’t performing, we are usually working on the back end of our business, which includes things like marketing our services, learning new tricks, writing new scripts, rehearsing and building props for our shows,” Greenamyer says. “Jason and I have never had an agent, and we do everything in our business ourselves.”
At the beginning, performing was new to her, and she started out as her husband’s assistant on stage. “We quickly realized that assisting did not fit my personality, and Jason introduced me to a few mentalists and gave me a few books to read,” she says. “He knew my background in psychology would mesh well with mentalism. I was hooked. Using my psychology background on stage made me more confident and comfortable, too. From then on, we began changing our act to be a duo instead of magician and assistant.”
Greenamyer discovered her love of psychology after taking one psychology course two years into her bioengineering studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It was the first time I found myself reading a textbook for pleasure,” she says. “That’s how I knew I wanted to change majors. I had always had a passion for working with people, as well.”
As a junior, she moved back to Ohio to live with her family and save money by commuting to Kent State to pursue a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
“Kent State is where my love for psychology grew,” she says. She worked in a research lab for two years with psychology professor Maria Zaragoza, PhD. “The work was fascinating, and she was an amazing professor and mentor. I still talk about my experiences in that lab.”
—Lindsey Vlasic, BS ’22, is a public relations major and intern at the Center for Philanthropy and Engagement.
View The Alans’ performance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us.