Suhani Shah is the world’s most popular mentalist, with over four million YouTube subscribers and two million Instagram followers. After sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe, Suhani is finally bringing her smash-hit show Spellbound to the Adelaide Fringe. Wherever Suhani goes, audiences and critics have all been similarly astonished, and now it’s Adelaide’s turn to have their minds blown.
Suhani spoke to Glam Adelaide about her show, the creative process, mentalism, and how she got into magic in the first place.
“I did not start with mentalism – I started as a traditional Indian magician and illusionist. When I was six years old I watched a magic program on television and I was totally fascinated. I didn’t just want to watch more magic after that, I wanted to be that person, the one who’s doing miracles. I walked up to my father and I remember telling him I wanted to do magic. I come from a family where kids are taken very seriously. I have an elder brother and even though we were kids, we used to be very careful of what we are telling our parents because we knew that they’d agree. The first time I asked him, he was like, ‘Okay, go back to study, we’ll figure it out another time’. But I walked up to him again and again until he saw that I was serious about what I was saying. I remember him telling me something like, ‘If you want to perform magic, it can’t be in a school or a birthday party. You need to perform big stage shows’. He was a visionary. He liked to see the big picture. For me as a kid, it didn’t matter where I was performing, as long as I’m performing. As a six-year-old, you don’t understand the difference between a birthday party and an opera house. You just perform. And that’s what happened.
“In India, magic is transferred from generation to generation. However, I don’t come from a family of magicians. Magicians are a far cry for my family – they are not even remotely connected to anything with entertainment. We tried to find people who would help me and teach me. By the time I turned seven, I was performing my own magic shows.”
We asked Suhani what led her to move from performing magic to mentalism.
“I’ve been doing magic for more than two decades now. When I started, it was traditional Indian magic and illusions. I would travel from one city to another, one village to another village. It’s a very traditional way of performing. Because of this, I did not attend school. So I haven’t been to school since the first standard. When I was 14 and I was still performing, my father suggested that I should write a book on my experiences. It was a very big problem. I did not know how to write because I had not gone to school. I could speak in Hindi, which is my mother tongue in India. I could write a bit of English, like basic words, but I did not really know how to talk and write. So when I was 14, I worked on my language. That’s how I know languages today. I did write a book, but that wasn’t good enough to publish. I wrote another book after that when I was 15, but that had nothing to do with magic. That had to do with human psychology and body language, because travelling and magic has so much to do with people’s psyche. After the shows, people would come to me and they would ask me, ‘Can you cure us of our illnesses by magic?’ And this wasn’t just in one state. It was all over the country. I used to get calls from a lot of companies and corporate business to give a talk on similar things. And that journey in the field of body language and psychology and human behaviour started after the book.
“There came a point where I realised I was doing way too much, and it started affecting my creativity. I was writing books, I had newsletters, I was giving talks and training programs, and I was doing magic. So I took a break. In a classic Indian style, I went to the Himalayas. I stayed there for like a month in silence looking only at the ground. There were some revelations there and a lot of insights. When I returned I realised that I wanted to combine everything I did. I wanted to combine my knowledge of psychology and human behaviour along with my art of magic and then serve that to people. And that’s where mentalism came into the picture.”
Suhani shared with us how she develops new tricks or shows.
“Planning an actual trick is the last thing I work on when I’m creating my shows. I start with what story I want to convey, then I add what emotional journey I want to take them through with the story that I have decided. Do I want something serious, something funny, or something that is going to have a moment of revenge? I like to think through what my audience is going to feel. Once I have worked this all out, then I add the magic to it so it matches the story and the emotions. In this current show I start with probability, which is where I try to figure out something which is one out of two, then one out of five and so on. I increase it to something that is reaching to a point where it seems impossible.”
Suhani is really looking forward to performing at the Adelaide Fringe for the first time.
“I was told beforehand that I should be prepared for the Australian audience. I was told that they are loud, they are fun, and if they like an artist, they will express. I love an audience that gives you feedback in real time. I just did my first show the other day, and I had so much fun, because they were loud, they were interactive, they were fun, but they were also empathetic. I always try to break the barrier between me and my audience, and to do that with an Australian audience is very easy. It doesn’t take a lot of time, because they are a part of the show, even before they enter. At the Adelaide Fringe, people know the drill, so I feel it’s much easier to perform here. I feel happier performing here and I’m really looking forward to a good time.”
Suhani Shah – Spellbound
The Box – Garden of Unearthly Delights
24 February – 9 March, 2025
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/suhani-shah-spellbound-af2025
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