Students and their families were blown away on Friday during a performance by Robert Channing for Family Weekend in Gottessman.  

Students and family members received a blank index card upon entering Gottessman after checking in for an act in Channing’s performance.

The entire room was filled with silent students and parents before Channing started his performance. However, his perfomance made the crowd more animated and social.

In order to make his act more inclusive, Channing asked parents and students to assist him on stage and follow the specific instructions he gave out.

For his first act, the America’s Got Talent participant asked a parent in the audience to pretend he is taking out change from his pocket and guessed the exact amount of change that the parent was thinking of.

“I thought the performance was really cool. The first act completely blew my mind because it’s not even real. It’s just a thought in someone’s head. How did he do that?” said Andrew Giodarno, a parent at Family Weekend.

For his second act, Channing asked two members of the audience to completely blindfold him using heavy duty tape and an actual blindfold in order to completely block out light. Then he asked them to collect obscure objects from the audience and was able to guess every single object perfectly.

Some parents that came in were initially not amused because they believed that there has to be some kind of device hidden away giving him hints of all the information that he was going to guess. However, after his performance, they were amazed.

“It’s a little scary how he did it. There’s no way he could have known the exact model of my car from my car keys. He didn’t even touch them and he guessed it within seconds,” said Tom Paulsen, a parent at Family Weekend.

For his final act, Channing asked the audience to answer questions on the index cards that were handed out at the start of the event and was able to say exactly what the audience wrote, what they were wearing, their name, and made a prediction about their future.

“I’ve always wanted eight kids in the future. He said I’m going to have eight kids. Isn’t that insane? It feels unreal,” said Maura McCarthy, a junior at Pace.

Several students were confused about how Channing was able to pull off the performance without any help at all.

“I’ve always been amazed by mentalists, but I just think it’s amazing how they do it. People shouldn’t ask to find out though, it takes away the magical feeling from it,” said Rachel Hyatt, a junior at Pace.

At the end of the event, families and students were socializing with one another and shared their thoughts about the performance, which led Family Weekend to a successful start.