The Prince Albert Exhibition held an open mic at the Main Hall Wednesday afternoon where a spectacular young magician first took the stage.
Hendrix Deschambault, a 12-year-old magician who goes by the stage name ‘Hendrix Stone’, dazzled the audience with his magical act.
“I was nervous, and then I wasn’t nervous anymore. It was sort of just nervous when I started, and then everything was just normal,” said Stone. “This is also my first magic show.”
In terms of getting over his fears, he said to “just do it.”
“I mean, like, one time I went on stage to do a karaoke thing at a church and they were like, ‘Hey, you should go up there and do something,’ I was super nervous. Because I’ve never done that before, and so I just went up and did it and wasn’t nervous anymore,” he said.
He performed card and coin tricks as well as a stunt that involved picking an audience member.
“I got them to randomly pick a page in the book, and then I closed the book, and I got them to write down the bottom number that they saw on the page,and then they wrote that on a paper, and they sat down,” explained Stone. “Then I took a coin, I put it in my hand, and then I grabbed a pen, magic wand. I made it disappear out of my hand into the book. And where the coin was in the book was the number that the person wrote down, and that was the trick.”
Since he was six, he was a self-taught magician, finding ways to learn magic through the internet.
“I just, like, seen magic shows before, and I thought they were super cool. And then I went on YouTube and I just started looking at magic tricks, and I saw magic tricks,” he said. “I started learning them, and then I wasn’t really getting much, like, to know, so I started just creating my own tricks.”
Alongside the young magician, was a table full of his supporters—his little brother, his little brother’s friend, his grandmother’s friend, and most especially, his grandmother.
Marjorie “Margie” Deschambault was a proud grandma as she watched her grandson perform on stage.
“I’m a huge supporter of his magic,” she said. “He’s been fascinated with magic since he was two or three years old. When he was in pull ups, yet he would pretend magic, pulling stuff out of his pants.”
Deschambault encouraged the 12-year-old to perform after seeing the open mic event on the exhibition website.
“So I said to Hendrix, would you like to do this? And so we got him registered and I’m glad it happened,” she said.
Reflecting on his journey with magic, Deschambault said “it kind of surprised [her].”
“I thought, why? You know, this is incredible, because I remember him being fascinated when he was three years, two or three years old,” she explained. “So, it’s maybe a special talent that he’s been given, but he’s very outgoing and has lots of stage presence. So, I can see him wanting to do that when he grows up.”
Deschambault described her grandson as “very sociable and very comfortable with people.”
Stone hopes to sell out shows and go on tour in the future.
“I would like to be a stage performer. Like any sort of magician. Being on stage is really fun,” he said.
The Prince Albert Exhibition is set to hold other open mics from 3 p.m to 4 p.m at the Main Hall until the last day of the exhibition on Aug. 9.
