Mentalist The Amazing Kreskin is raising funds through a Kickstarter campaign--and these days, who isn't?--to mount a new two-hour Off-Broadway show called Milestones next spring to celebrate his 80th birthday, which occurs January 12, 2015.
TV watchers are just this week shaking off the History Channel's melodramatic miniseries Houdini, their appetites perhaps whetted for some real-life mentalist "magic." Happy to oblige, Kreskin is preparing what he calls a "once in a lifetime performance" offering "mind-blowing experiences" that have "taken me over 20 years of work. Nowhere has anybody seen what I plan to bring to the stage."
Kreskin intends Milestones to run for six weeks beginning in April 2015 powered by the skills he has honed over 65 years of performing, by the production team that's been working on the show for over a year, and by the $125,000 he hopes to raise by October 3 through his Kickstarter campaign.
"The show will incorporate many new unbelievable demonstrations," Kreskin says. "You will also witness my signature 'Check Test', in which a committee [of audience members] will hide my check; if I should fail to find the check, my entire fee for the night will be forfeited. [Kreskin says he has failed in this trick nine times out of some 6,000 attempts.] I will also be tapping into the audience's thoughts, and for the finale I will have a group of people on stage doing things they can't control."
And he adds, "Yes, be prepared to have a good laugh."
Born George Joseph Kresge in 1935 in New Jersey, where he still lives, Kreskin isn't showing any signs of slowing down. Just after wrapping up a 39-performance run at the CNE festival in Toronto, he attended a Victor De Souza show at Fashion Week in New York City in support of the defenders of the Central Park horse and buggy trade, which Mayor Bill DeBlasio wants to rein in citing maltreatment of the animals. In 2012 he came out with the book Conversations with Kreskin. He's already appeared several times on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, having outlasted both Johnny Carson and Jay Leno.
"I've traveled 3 million miles, performed 25 thousand shows, and have read 1 million minds," Kreskin says, but in fact he does not claim psychic or occult powers. So Harry Houdini, spiritualism's great enemy, would probably be fine with Kreskin.
