Past Shows and Events
Dr. Esterline and President Jimmy Carter at the Plains Peanut Festival
Magician Paul Esterline displays the sealed envelope containing a prediction that he will reveal during his March 1 performance at the Barbecue Beach Blues Jam.
Editor
Paul Esterline has been addicted to magic since he was 5 years old and his brother came home with a trick that he refused to share.
It was the old jumping rubber band illusion. Esterline figured it out and has been analyzing, reinventing and improving on tricks ever since.
By the time he was 9 he was putting on magic shows in the small town where he grew up, earning $20 a performance with tricks he invented.
"Twenty bucks to a 9-year-old was a fortune," he said.
It was also a calling.
"I was hooked, totally hooked," he said. "It was all I could think about from that point on. I eat it, breathe it, sleep it."
Magic kept a young man who could have made some bad choices focused on a road that led him safely through potential trouble.
"It gave me something that made me unique," he said. "It gave me something to hold onto. It helped me fit in even though I didn't."
And, more important, " It kept me from getting beat up," he said.
Magic and love
After he got out of school he signed on with a company that put on school assemblies. His first tour, in 1985, took him to the scenic beauty of the Dakotas. In the dead of winter.
He performed in one town that had a three-room schoolhouse, a general store and a bar. When he walked into the store to make sure he had found the right place, the storekeeper immediately knew who he was and assured him the whole town was coming to see him.
And it did. He did his show in one of the classrooms at the school before an audience of 16 people, including the entire population of the school.
A similar contract for school assemblies with another company took him through the Southeast, where he met and fell in love with the woman he would marry and the place he would live.
He and Darilyn, a teacher at a school where he performed in Virginia, married and they moved to Sarasota, where Paul took a job at the Magic Moment restaurant. After years of working "anywhere I could get work," he settled down into a steady gig. When the restaurant closed, "then I kind of went independent," he said.
Being independent means jobs from birthday parties to corporate trade shows and cruises, trying to catch the eye of someone looking for the next David Copperfield.
"There's no corporate ladder in magic," Esterline said.
Presto-changeo
But even if you haven't seen him perform, there's a good chance you have seen his work. He invents new illusions for his fellow magicians as well as himself, and has put his own spin on some of the classics.
"If I can't add a different twist to it," he said, " I won't do it."
In the case of Metamorphosis, an illusion popularized by the immortal Harry Houdini, Esterline is handcuffed, stuffed in a bag and locked in a trunk. Darilyn stands on the trunk, raises a curtain around it and, the count of three, Esterline appears in her place, opens the trunk and reveals her handcuffed in the bag in his place.
Esterline said Houdini would recognize the trick, but not the speed with which it is now performed.
Another illusion -- Air for the Violin -- is entirely Esterline's invention. He is seated at a table when a strolling violinist -- Darilyn, an accomplished musician -- approaches. She sits on the table and continues to play while he removes all four of the table's legs and passes a large ring around Darilyn and the floating table.
"A lot of the stuff I do is original," he said. "No one knows how I do it."
His major magical influence was the late Doug Henning, an elfin performer who "made it OK for a magician to appear on stage without a top hat and cane."
"Doug Henning deserves credit for changing the world of magic for the better," he said.
Like Henning, Esterline avoids the cliched props and gestures of the magicians of an earlier era.
"Everything has to have a purpose," he said. "If it doesn't, you're just up there showing off."
But this magic junky will watch any magician, any time.
"Every single one of them -- from bad to the best -- has something to teach me,--" he said, "even if it's only how not to do it."
He recalls the performance of a Russian magician working the magic rings, which Esterline uses in his show (in fact, he makes his own rings).
In spite of knowing how the routine is done, Esterline said, "He fooled me bad. In the hands of a master the secret becomes secondary."
Escape artist
As a baffled grown-up, Esterline proves one of his own points.
"An adult is much easier to fool," he said. "When you're a child, everything is magical because you've never seen it before. I think we as adults would like to get that back."
What he takes away from every show is the rush of performing.
"I've never felt happier than when I was onstage," he said. "When you get an audience that's giving it back, I can go on forever."
But silence is even better than applause, he said, because it means "you have done such a thorough job astounding your audience that they're speechless.
"This is the highest compliment they can give you," he said.
You could call him an escape artist, even though he rarely does escapes for his audience these days.
"We have a lot of things to worry about in the world," he said. "If I can make them forget about their problems and think anything is possible, then I've accomplished my purpose."
"I want to make them laugh," he added. "I want to surprise them and hopefully show them something so special I can move them to tears."
In the works are illusions involving time travel and making it rain on his audience. He said the latter trick is close to completion.
What's next? The same thing that motivates all of Esterline's colleagues.
"We're searching," he said, "for the thing that's real magic."
See him live
Paul Esterline will be performing at the Barbecue Beach Blues Jam, Saturday, March 1, at 12:30 p.m., at Barbecue Beach, 4238 South Tamiami Trail. His performance will include opening an envelope in which he sealed a prediction several weeks ago. The envelope is on display at Barbecue Beach.
The event will also feature music, a new car display, door prizes, food and fun. For more information, call 941-544-5581.
You can contact Paul Esterline at The Ester Line Company, 770-707-7893, or by e-mail: mysteries@bellsouth.net.
By Bob Mudge
Call today before your desired date
vanishes before your eyes!
Paul Esterline
The Ester Line Co.
120 Glennwood Ct. Hampton, GA 30228
770-707-7893 - home/office
770-707-2352 - fax
© Luanne Hott 2007