Magician's Masterpiece: Making Kids Pay Attention

It's always magic, whenever life turns out just right. But as any good magician knows, great effects come from preparation, practice, and perseverance.

Stephen Bargatze, magician, is renowned at his art - a three-time World of Wizards Champion, a late-night television star, an opener for Cosby, Leno and Dolly Parton - but growing up, there was precious little magic in his life. His dad was an alcoholic who died at the age of 52; while he was alive, Bargatze says, he never once had a conversation with his father. When he was 9, his father left him unattended at a bowling alley while he drank in the bar. He, Stephen, got in a room where guard dogs were kept; they ripped out a part of his tongue, and the damage they did to his face required reconstructive surgery.

At school he got made fun of a lot, and got in a good deal of trouble for fighting. When his dad died, he left home.

"I thought I was a mistake," he says. "I tried to take my life. I thought no one in the world would miss me."

Today, Bargatze can make fun of himself, of the young man he was. Humor, besides magic, is his stock-in-trade. He uses both to get the attention of kids, to loosen them up before he delivers this hard message:

"Drugs and alcohol isn't the answer. Don't cloud your judgment, before you've even had a chance to find out what life's all about."

As director of the Student Services Program for the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, Bargatze gets the opportunity to perform and speak to over 45,000 students each school year. Everywhere he goes, he finds a captive audience.

"When he came here last year," says Wayne Hines, a teacher and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (an organization with whom Bargatze often works) sponsor at Harpeth High School in Kingston Springs, "we had the entire student body in the gym. He had their complete attention for an hour and a half."

At Harpeth, where Bargatze performed again last month, a group of ninth-graders alternately laughed and sat spellbound, goggle-eyed with wonder at his bag of tricks, which included pulling a bowling ball out of thin air, ripping up a newspaper and putting it back together, enlarging and multiplying a red rubber ball, some mystification with balls, lemons and cups, and, for his finale, making a snake jump out of a basket. During his act, he enlisted a couple of student assistants, and these became the butt of his jokes.

"We did a lot of research to see what works with kids," Bargatze says. "We found that you can't make fun of all teenagers (in a crowd) - you have to single out one." Once he finds one, Bargatze employs the humor of exaggeration to make that comic foil feel, not small and put-upon, but big and special.

Bargatze takes his show on the road to 120 schools a year. Now in its ninth year, the program is paid for through grants, by the TSSAA and with the help of corporate sponsors. Bargatze performs for adult audiences, as well, including professional sports teams and corporate gatherings across the U. S. He used to play nightclubs and bars - "My job was to keep 'em drinking," he says - until, perhaps, he heeded the wisdom he imparts to kids:

"We are meant to find the truth of why we're here."

The awful truth about alcohol, as Bargatze points out, is that 22,000 Americans die in alcohol-related car crashes a year; 80 percent of people incarcerated in U. S. prisons are there because of alcohol or drugs.

"I used misdirection a minute ago," Bargatze tells the kids in his audience, explaining how he got a ball under a cup. "You fell for it because you weren't paying attention. And if you fall for the beer commercials' misdirection, you're not paying attention."

Much of magic, indeed, is misdirection; on the other hand, when one has direction, magic can be the result. "I thought my life wouldn't matter," Bargatze says of his former, untransformed self. "What an awesome life I have now."

"What he (Bargatze) does better than anything," Wayne Hines says, "is get across the message that you're responsible for your own future, no matter how bad your circumstances. And the feedback I get from kids is always, 'That's amazing.'

"I don't know if they mean his magic or his life."

Stephen Bargatze has been a professional magician for over 25 years. He has performed in a variety of venues, including trade shows, comedy clubs, banquets and corporate functions. In addition, he has performed and lectured to magicians around the world, which attests above all to his skill as a sleight-of-hand artist and performer: Performing for ones peers is one of the greatest honors obtainable in the field of magic.

The TSSAA Right Team was established over 10 years ago to be a resource for schools in the following areas: Student leadership development; race relations; alcohol, tobacco and drug prevention; eating disorders/body image information; conflict resolution/violence prevention; sportsmanship and citizenship education. In the last five years, the Right Team has directly reached over 242,000 students across the state of Tennessee. One of the most exciting programs offered to the schools through the TSSAA Right Team is the Magic of Stephen Bargatze.