By Karen Shih ’09 / University of Maryland
(originally appeared in Between the Columns, April 2015)
On campus, he’s the guy in the goggles, overseeing a world of construction and creation in the wood shop tucked into one corner of the Architecture Building.
In his other job, he makes things disappear.
From swallowing razor blades to making fluffy foam balls vanish, Joe Largess wows audiences as magician “Joe Kerz” (get it?).
“You really get to see what people are like when you surprise them,” says Largess, who has managed the wood shop for the past year and is also working on his fine arts degree at UMD. “Some people get so shocked, some laugh, others get flustered, and some even get a bit angry.”
He was just 4 years old when he learned his first trick, making a ball disappear in a vase, but it wasn’t until college that he started to perform for others. He took a job at a magic shop in Silver Spring, where he learned everything from sleight of hand to more complicated stage effects.
“You start working muscles in your hand you never knew you had,” Largess says. Learning the tricks takes plenty of practice, often in front of a video camera or mirror, but being able to engage the audience and draw them in is often the key to misdirection. Those in the business call the verbal routine “patter,” and Largess considers it a magician’s “bread and butter.”
He performs as regularly as he can—business picks up during the summer, October and the holiday season—everywhere from kids’ birthdays to Halloween Goth parties to senior centers.
One place he never expected to end up was a funeral.
“It was the most difficult show I ever did,” he says. The deceased man had said in his will he didn’t want people to be sad, and had requested a magician. “I couldn’t take it personally if people didn’t applaud.”
Always a hands-on guy, Largess is also skilled at making prosthetics. He once turned a friend into Gollum from “Lord of the Rings,” and though he says he’s not quite fast enough for the TV show “Face Off” on Syfy, where contestants create science fiction and horror prostheses, that would be a dream come true.
“Most people would say, ‘How can this be possible?’ Most magicians would say, ‘How can I make this look plausible?’” he says. “An old saying makes a strong point: ‘Today’s magic is tomorrow’s science.’”
To book Largess for an event, email him at joekerz@gmail.com.