Most youngsters get up to mischief, but Point Cook teenager Jake Wilkinson gets up to magic.
It started when he was 11 and watched a television program revealing the tricks of stage magicians.
“I got a couple of coins and started practising making them vanish and appear – and it worked,” he says.
Now 16, the year 11 Bayside College student hopes to conjure up a career of magic. He’s been practising his tricks professionally at various shows and parties for the past two years.
Following in the footsteps of Australian illusionist Cosentino, who finished second in the 2011 series of television’s
Australia’s Got Talent, Wilkinson auditioned for the show last year and will try again this year.
“There were three auditions and I got through two, but didn’t make the final cut,” he says.
Wilkinson says he is often compared to Steven Frayne, the magician known as Dynamo.
“Dynamo is from Manchester [England] and so am I,” he says. “I like to take the best from people like Dynamo and Cosentino and make the magic my own.”
Wilkinson’s tricks involve cards – including “mind reading” what card a participant will choose – and linking and unlinking metal rings.
A favourite with audiences is putting a bottle on one side of a table and a glass on the other, covering each with a metal tube and switching their location. He has mastered the Harry Houdini trick of getting out of a straitjacket. But unlike the great illusionist, he’s not allowed to test his skills under water.
Wilkinson regularly performs for children at The Brook on Sneydes, a Point Cook venue, but now he’s branching out to adult shows.
“There is a trick behind every bit of magic,” he says. But when asked how he transfers a ball from his hand to a child’s palm, he answers: “magic”. After all, he has spent too many years learning and practising the tricks to give away the secrets so easily.
