Weekend of Wonder
February 25-27, 2022
Nate Staniforth, Illusionist
Bringing joy and laughter as he inspires WONDER
Nate will be the featured speaker and presenter for our Weekend of Wonder. He will introduce us to and remind us of the magic of the world around us, encouraging a state of wonder.
Click the play button/arrow below to learn more about Nate, and a sneak peek at the wonder he will bring to River Road.
“Just caught a Nate Staniforth show,” one reporter tweeted after opening night of the last tour, “and now I have no idea what to believe about anything ever again.” No rabbits. No top hats. No smoke machines. Nate’s shows feel more like jumping out of an airplane than a night at a comedy club. He abandons the ubiquitous style-without-substance bravado so often associated with magic and appeals instead to the imagination and intellect of his audience. The journey is wild, visceral and immediate, and like all great art, encourages us to open our minds and hearts, and see the world in new ways.
“When you’re young, it’s easy to be amazed,” says Nate Staniforth. “As you get older, that experience of astonishment gets harder and harder to find. Good magic isn’t about deception. It’s about trying to see things the way you saw them before they became ordinary.”
For over a decade, Nate has toured the US college circuit as one of the busiest working magicians in the country. He’s given a TEDx Talk, lectured at the world-famous Oxford Union, and in 2018 the Harry Potter-famed Bloomsbury Publishing released Nate’s debut memoir in bookstores worldwide. Here is Real Magic (an Amazon Best Book of January 2018) follows Nate’s evolution from obsessed wunderkind to disillusioned wanderer, and tells the story of his rediscovery of astonishment—and the importance of wonder in everyday life—during a trip to the India, where he met a 3,000-year-old clan of street magicians.