WAUPUN — REACH Waupun held a banquet fundraiser last Saturday at The Rock Golf Club with live entertainment from the “Magical Mentalist” Jym Elders. Mentalism is a performance art where mentalists perform acts of highly developed intuitive ability that appear to be almost psychic. Waupun Pioneer journalist Jaedon Buchholz was able to sit down with Elders following the event to talk about his career and his thoughts about Waupun.
JAEDON BUCHHOLZ (WPN): That was a really good show, I’ve never really attended live shows like that.
JYM ELDERS: Not too often you see shows like that.
BUCHHOLZ: No, not at all. It kind of reminds me of a TV show called “Psych”. The main character is a mentalist who pretends to be psychic to solve crimes, and the humor from your show was very similar to that series.
ELDERS: I’m familiar with it. I’ve only seen a little bit but people say that what I do and how I perform is a little reminiscent of that character because I like to be goofy when I’m up there. It’s really easy for a show like this to be heavy at times, it can be unnerving to some people so I like to add in a lot of humor into my show and it puts people at ease. And you know, at the end of the day it’s meant to be entertainment so I don’t want it to be too heavy. But to me, a good show has a lot of texture to it. The whole thing can’t be one big gag otherwise you lose credibility. There has to be highs and lows, parts where you’re gonna laugh and parts where you’re gonna gasp, and hopefully I was able to achieve a little bit of all of that.
BUCHHOLZ: Yep. And like I said earlier I’ve never been to one of these sorts of shows. I know it’s a bit of a cliche question but how do you do it?
ELDERS: Well, there’s a lot of different things at play. There’s a lot of different psychology involved, and there’s some things that I can do to manipulate the situation into my favor. One thing about this show is that it will always be at least good. Depending on the audience or depending on the particular night sometimes it can be great. And if the audience is too distracted by a bunch of other stuff, it can be a negative thing. But yeah, there’s a lot at play, a lot of psychology involved, and that’s what my background is in. I studied psychology, and a month before graduating I dropped out to pursue this full time so that’s what I’m doing.
BUCHHOLZ: Right. Were you ever a comedian or anything like that before becoming a mentalist?
ELDERS: No, but a bulk of my work are corporate audiences or company parties like this. Once in a while I’ll do college shows, sometimes trade shows where I’ll have a booth and generate a little crowd gathering around. But the majority of my audience is a show similar to this. Sometimes, particularly around the holidays, they’ll have raffle prizes and they’ll ask “hey do you mind sticking around handing out prizes?” and I say sure. There’s a lot of other entertainers who would say “I gave you my show, that’s all I’m here for” and they’re out the door. But for me, it’s sort of an open mic night that a comedian might have at a local comedy club that they’re otherwise not doing. So in situations like that, my show is already done my part so everything after that is just gravy. So I’m just standing up there handing out prizes and I can ad-lib whatever I want up there. And if I say something funny, it’s great, if something falls dead, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already done my show and I’m just up there with a mic. To answer your question, I have training as an actor and doing improv, but I’ve never been hired to do just comedy.
BUCHHOLZ: Right.
ELDERS: You know, when it comes to mentalism there’s not an open mic for mentalism as compared to a comedian. For a mentalist, you need to have an audience, you can’t practice this stuff just in front of a mirror. So for me, that situation came when I was 19 years old, just out of high school. I was going to college and in philosophy class and we had to set up a project for ourselves. It could be anything you wanted. And I thought “well this could be a good excuse to get myself in front of an audience.” And I went back to my high school class, and the psych teacher was a really cool guy, and I knew that we used to have a segment on ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception). And I approached him, “how about I come in for this personal learning project that I have and I do presentations for the students that you have for your classrooms and it could be a learning experience for them and something I enjoy as well” and he really liked the idea. And I thought that he was gonna have all his classes come together into the small auditorium and I would do a makeshift show for all of them at once, and he said “no no, just come into my classroom and do this for each class period.” And that really freaked me out because instead of doing one show, suddenly I found myself doing seven. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the first show that I did was terrible—the students loved it, they’ll tell you that it was great, but I thought it was terrible. But because I repeated it six more times by the end of the day some things sort of hammered out. And I would go back every semester on and off for about ten years or so. So that was sort of my open mic where I could go speak. And I wasn’t being paid to be there so it didn’t matter if it was bad or not, so I just kept doing it. So that was it for me, and a good portion of the show you saw me do tonight came directly from years of doing that same thing.
BUCHHOLZ: So the story you told about your childhood, was that true?
ELDERS: Yeah. The thing about my show is that any story I tell is true, including when I have dreams that come true. Like one time I had a dream that I had a pet praying mantis and I went to lunch with a buddy later that day and I told him about this dream. And we walked out of the restaurant, which had this huge parking lot, all concrete with no vegetation or anything around. I got back to my car and sitting on the hood of my car was a praying mantis that was just standing there staring at me after just getting done telling my friend about this dream. That happens to me all the time. So yeah, I don’t make up any of the stories that happen to me, and I don’t have a lot of stuff in my show that is scripted. So if you saw me doing this same show tomorrow night you might hear me say a lot of different things than you heard me say tonight, because I don’t follow a whole script. There are some jokes that are scripted in there that I say all the time but I like to keep it organic. That’s what makes it fresh for me. There’s a lot of performers who go out and say the same things and do the same thing every night and it gets old to them. This never gets old to me because I change it up all the time and the audience is always going to change all the time, so it always seems brand new to me.
BUCHHOLZ: What did you think of Waupun?
ELDERS: I got in a little bit early. This was a nice short two and a half hour drive from Chicago, which is nothing to me. I wish every one of my gigs could be something like this. I got here while it was still light out and drove around, it’s a very charming little town.
BUCHHOLZ: Did you see the statues?
ELDERS: I didn’t see the statues but I did see some of the older architecture, some of the older houses and buildings. And I was a little taken aback by the prison, I didn’t realize that was there. But yeah, I like it, Wisconsin in general I like a lot. I would like to live up here if I didn’t have to leave all of my friends and all the things going on down in the Chicago area.
BUCHHOLZ: Have you always lived in Chicago?
ELDERS: Yes.
BUCHHOLZ: How far do you usually travel for these sorts of gigs?
ELDERS: I performed in all but two states. Those being Vermont and Oregon. For some reason Oregon has always eluded me. I always have a potential gig in Oregon but for some reason it never comes to fruition. Now I’ve been to all those places but I haven’t performed in all of them. I was just in the middle of Kansas last week. Usually if it’s within 500 miles I’ll drive to it, and that’s the nice thing about being in Chicago. Because within 500 miles you’ve got Kansas City, the Twin Cities, Cleveland, Omaha—I can get to all these places within 500 miles so it’s a nice hub for me. It’s also easy to fly from Chicago, while it must be a pain to get on a flight from here [Waupun].
BUCHHOLZ: Yeah, you’d have to go to Milwaukee or to a smaller airport like Oshkosh.
ELDERS: Oshkosh, isn’t that where they have the airplane festival?
BUCHHOLZ: Yep, EAA.
ELDERS: My uncle used to go up to that all the time. He was a pilot, still is a pilot. Lives in Montana. He has what’s called a “breezy airplane”, it’s an open-air plane. He took me up a couple times and I would love to do it again, it’s unlike anything. One thing I always thought would make a cool documentary; my dream is to get what’s called a “powered parachute”, it’s basically a go-kart with a big fan behind it and a big parachute above it. They make them two-seaters and they go all to 30 miles an hour depending on what the conditions are like outside. But my dream is to have one of those and fly it into one of my shows. My entire show can fit into one case, I could do two hours easily. So my dream is to get a powered parachute and fly into a town like this and land in a field next to the event center or wherever it is they would meet, and come in, do the show, and then at the end of the show I go back outside and everybody watches me take off into the sunset and “there he goes, off to the next city somewhere” and land in another small town.
BUCHHOLZ: That would be so cool.
ELDERS: I heard that in that prison [Waupun Correctional] was that person, Ed Gein, for a while.
BUCHHOLZ: Yep, and Steven Avery. I mean, most people don’t even think about it in our daily lives, it’s pretty much just a fact of life here.
ELDERS: And the ratio of the inmates to normal population, it’s gotta be close to the ratio of residents in the town or something.
BUCHHOLZ: The population of the prison is about 3,000 and the population of the city as a whole is about 12,000.
ELDERS: Has anyone ever broken out of it?
BUCHHOLZ: I don’t think so. I know there was one case in the early 2000s where there was a prisoner transfer where somehow the two inmates managed to break free of their restraints and they hit the guard that was taking them out of the truck and they made a run for it. But both were apprehended the same or next day.
[There was a break in the interview when the hosts came over to speak with Elders]
BUCHHOLZ: So how many gigs do you usually have in a week?
ELDERS: Next week I’ll be in Wyoming doing a gig, I’ll be flying in and driving about an hour south of that. Then after that I’ve got a couple more local things. There are other mentalists that work a lot more than I do but they’ve been in the business a lot longer than I have. But to answer your question, not as often as I’d like to be. Right now it’s about once a week but I’d like it to be about three times a week. There are some guys who perform five or six times a week and they make a ton of money, but when do you have time to enjoy that money then? There has to be a good balance there. If you do this stuff too much it becomes more work and it does take the fun out of it. I’m always thinking about new routines and different effects, it’s a hobby to not just perform but to create new things, so that occupies a lot of space in my head too.
BUCHHOLZ: Right. And how long do you plan on staying in Waupun?
ELDERS: I’ll probably be leaving tomorrow [Sunday, April 23rd].
BUCHHOLZ: If you’re planning on sticking around for most of the day you should check out the statues in town. Particularly the End of the Trail statue which is on Madison Street. You should find a city brochure at the hotel which will have all the information about the statues in town.
ELDERS: You know one of the things that I love about the work that I do is I love going all over the country. The artist in me can always find something admirable about everywhere I go, always something I can appreciate. Because of this job I’ve seen this entire country, I’ve been everywhere. It’s a great country we live in and I’ve seen most of it. This work has afforded me the opportunity to meet friends and family members who I haven’t seen in a long long time and maybe I would not see without being in places I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit. So I get to reconnect with a lot of friends and family in years because of this.
BUCHHOLZ: I might be biased of course but I think it’s definitely worth checking out Waupun, we have seven outdoor statues and a lot of cool stuff.
ELDERS: I will definitely check that out before I leave town, I’m in no hurry since it’s only a two and a half hours drive.
BUCHHOLZ: That’s pretty much what I had for questions. Thanks again for taking the time to talk to me, this was a really interesting interview.
ELDERS: My pleasure.
