Students were amazed and in awe after mentalist Sean Bott’s performance on Thursday in Gottessman.

The seats in Gottesman were full almost immediately as soon as the doors opened and the room was filled with laughter when the performance began.

The event started out with a couple of jokes to lighten the audience and then was based off of audience performance and improvisation in order to keep the audience continuously engaged.

“This was my first time seeing a mentalist perform and it was awesome! I didn’t think I’d be on stage at all,” said Kendra Lowe, sophomore at Pace.

Bott’s performance was interrupted halfway through the show by a student’s phone call, but rather than asking the student to silence her phone, to the audience’s surprise, he asked her to answer the phone and asked the caller to say a word that he used for his final act.

“The ending was really my favorite. I was not expecting him to use the girl’s phone call in the act, I thought he was just trying to make the best out of a bad situation but that part was definitely my favorite,” said Harshini Rajkumar, sophomore at Pace.

Bott’s self-deprecating jokes and sarcastic demeanor brought his performance to life because of how relatable the audience felt that he was.

“I was not expecting to like this performance that much because I thought it started out a bit slow but this guy is hilarious. There were so many times when I thought ‘same’ with his anxiety and his description of his worst performance,” said Jaime Reuter, sophomore at Pace.

Bott ended the performance with a letter he wrote a week in advance describing the answers that would be guessed by the students during his show on Thursday and it included the word that was guessed during the phone call.

The room was filled with screams and gasps at the letter and half the students went up to Bott at the end of the performance for pictures and questions on how he was able to do what he did.

“It’s just not possible. It has to be staged! How could he have done it without staging it? What if it wasn’t staged and he can actually read minds, can that really be a thing?” said Kristie Oluyemi, sophomore at Pace.

Other students were not at all shocked by the idea that certain people can be gifted and can read people’s minds.

“I went to the mentalist performance last semester too and I’m not shocked at all. I truly believe that there are people out there that are just gifted and just know. A lot of people don’t want to believe in the magic but I do. I know there’s more than what we can comprehend,” said Rachel Hyatt, junior at Pace.