Dr. Richard Nongard

What You're Inviting Into Your Event
When you book me for your gathering, you're not hiring a magician who performs and disappears. You're inviting a psychological experience that transforms networking into shared mythology, small talk into philosophical inquiry, and ordinary moments into stories your guests will tell for years.

**Close-up magic and mentalism designed for intimate settings** where everyone becomes a co-conspirator rather than a passive observer. I work best with smaller groups of 2-50 people—spaces where eye contact matters, where breath can be heard, where the impossible feels personal rather than theatrical.

**Performances that explore the shadow side of wonder** because the most memorable magic happens in the uncomfortable spaces between knowing and not-knowing. Things can get deliciously dark while levity reigns supreme. I'm not interested in comfort—I'm interested in experiences that challenge, provoke, and ultimately expand what your guests believe about themselves and reality.

**Stories woven from philosophical enigmas and psychological precision** that recognize the observer and observed are inseparable. Drawing on thinkers like Carl Jung, Edward Bernays, and Alan Watts, each effect becomes a meditation on consciousness, choice, and the strange dance between fate and free will.

**Interactive experiences where your guests don't watch a show—they become it.** They shuffle the cards. Make the choices. Control every variable. And yet discover that control was an illusion from the beginning. They'll leave wondering: what else in my life have I been choosing without really choosing?

**An atmosphere where questions matter more than answers** and mystery outlives explanation. This isn't magic that resolves neatly. It's magic that follows your guests home, that interrupts their thoughts days later, that becomes the lens through which they view coincidences and choices for weeks afterward.

Experiences That Rewrite What Your Guests Believe Is Possible

**"The Mutual Dream"** - What if two minds could share the same dream before either person spoke it? I guide two strangers to make private decisions in the space between thought and word. Then I send them my card—not through language, but through what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. They receive the color. The suit. The value. They find my card in the deck without ever being told. And when we reveal what we each chose, they discover we were dreaming the same dream all along. As I tell them: "You didn't guess my card. You remembered it—the way you remember a dream that was never entirely your own to begin with."

**"The Twins"** - This is what the Greeks called Kairos: the opportune moment when time itself conspires. Your guests won't just watch this happen. They'll wonder what else in their lives they've been choosing correctly without knowing it—all those moments when intuition spoke louder than logic, when coincidence felt too perfect to be random.

**"Engineering Consent"** - A demonstration of the invisible switches that control human choice, based on Edward Bernays—the man who made women smoke, nations fight wars, and desire itself become a product. I'll show your guests how thoughts are planted, decisions are guided, and free will might be the universe's most convincing illusion. They'll make choices throughout. Completely free choices. And discover they were engineered from the beginning. When it's over, they'll leave wondering: who else is reaching for my switches? What other choices aren't really mine?

**"The Carnival of Broken Promises"** - A carnival con man once told me: "You can either hold the cards or hold the receipt." Your guests will shuffle, choose, deal, count—make every decision themselves while I never touch the deck. And yet, a prediction made before any of it began will prove that mathematics is just destiny wearing a lab coat. This isn't about skill or luck. It's about the terrifying possibility that the universe has been guiding them toward one inevitable moment since before they sat down.

**"The Weight of a Thought"** - Your guest thinks of a card. Never touches it. Never speaks it. Never gives a single clue. And yet, through nothing but the subtle shifts in breath, posture, and presence that thoughts create in the body, I'll find it. Because here's the secret: a thought has weight. It has texture. It leaves a shape in the air. Alan Watts once said the part of you watching your thoughts isn't the same part creating them. Your guests will feel that separation—and realize their mind just spoke without making a sound.

For Adults Who Want Their Reality Questioned - and to Laugh Doing it!

Let me be direct: I am not a children's entertainer. My work explores psychological confusion, philosophical ambiguity, and the unsettling spaces where free will meets manipulation. This is sophisticated entertainment for grown-ups who appreciate complexity, nuance, and experiences that challenge rather than comfort. My performances are predicated on what we actually believe we know—both about ourselves and the world around us.

If you're looking for balloon animals and card tricks for kids' birthday parties, I'm not your performer. But if you want your adult guests to leave your event astonished, delighted, and yet questioning the nature of choice, consciousness, and coincidence—then we should talk.

My performances are exclusively for adult audiences (but by adult, I do not mean sexual, obscene, or inappropriate). I do not perform at children's parties, teen events, or family gatherings with those under sixteen as primary guests. This work requires maturity, philosophical curiosity, and a willingness to sit with uncomfortable questions while creating a night of enchanting personal growth.

## From the Riviera to Your Living Room: A Las Vegas Legacy

My performance career has taken me to legendary Las Vegas stages—the Riviera Hotel and Casino, The Orleans Showroom, the Aladdin—venues where icons performed and audiences came expecting the impossible. I've worked rooms where legends stood, where the air itself seems charged with decades of wonder.

But here's what I've learned: the most powerful magic doesn't happen on stages. It happens in living rooms, private dining rooms, intimate gatherings where proximity amplifies impossibility. When you can see the whites of someone's eyes as reality bends, when you can hear their breath catch as the impossible unfolds in their hands, when you're close enough that there's nowhere to hide—that's when magic becomes real in ways theater can never touch.

I'm based in Las Vegas and available for:

- **Private home shows** where intimacy amplifies impossibility (ideal groups of 6-25)
- **Corporate events** that transform networking into shared mythology and create stories your team will bond over for years
- **Special occasions at Las Vegas venues** that deserve entertainment as unique as the celebration itself
- **Hotel events and convention entertainment** that turns attendees into participants and conferences into experiences
- **Exclusive private events** throughout the Las Vegas area where sophistication meets the inexplicable

Whether you're hosting a few people in your living room or planning a larger event at a Las Vegas venue, I tailor each performance to the specific alchemy of your audience. Every room has its own frequency. I find it. Every group has its own psychological rhythm. I match it. Every gathering has its own tone—celebratory, contemplative, provocative—and I calibrate my work to enhance rather than override what you're creating.

## Why This Matters for Your Event

You're not just planning a party or corporate gathering. You're curating an experience that reflects your taste, your values, your sense of what makes a moment memorable. The entertainment you choose sends a message about who you are and what you value.

Generic entertainment creates generic memories. Card tricks and comedy bits that could happen at any event, for any audience, create moments that dissolve into the background noise of life. But when you bring in entertainment that challenges, provokes, and transforms—entertainment that treats your guests like the intelligent, curious, complex adults they are—you create something else entirely.

You create the story people tell at dinner parties months later. The moment they reference in conversation. The experience that becomes part of their personal mythology. "Remember when we thought we were making our own choices, and then..." "Remember when that mentalist somehow knew..." "Remember when reality just... shifted, and we all felt it at the same time?"

This is entertainment that respects your guests' intelligence. That doesn't talk down or play safe. That assumes they want to be challenged rather than comforted, astonished rather than merely amused.

## Your Guests Deserve an Experience That Questions the Questions

I work with a limited number of private events each month. Not because of artificial scarcity, but because each performance requires complete immersion in your specific gathering—its tone, its purpose, the particular constellation of personalities you're bringing together. I need to understand what you're celebrating, who's attending, what atmosphere you're creating, and what you want your guests to feel and remember.

This isn't magic that happens to your guests. It's magic that happens through them. They become the medium. The message. The memory itself. Their choices drive the narrative. Their thoughts become visible. Their certainties become negotiable.

If you're ready to give them something that outlives the evening—something that becomes the story they tell strangers who won't quite believe them—let's discuss your event.

## Let's Create Something Impossible Together

Reach out to check my availability and discuss how we can transform your gathering into an experience your guests will question, remember, and ultimately treasure. Whether you're planning an intimate dinner party, a corporate event, a milestone celebration, or any gathering of adults who deserve entertainment that matches their sophistication, I'd be honored to craft something specifically for your audience.

Because in the end, this isn't about tricks or illusions. It's about creating moments when reality becomes negotiable, when the impossible feels personal, and when wonder—real, unsettling, beautiful wonder—reminds us that the world is stranger and more mysterious than we usually allow ourselves to believe.

**Email me today** to discuss your event and discover what's possible when psychology meets the impossible.

**Dr. Richard Nongard, Psy.D.**
Las Vegas Magician & Mentalist
Close-Up Magic & Mentalism for Private Events, Parties & Gatherings
Where Psychology Meets the Impossible
Adult Audiences Only.

Dr. Richard Nongard: Where Psychology Meets the Impossible

My magic and mentalism journey began in 1981 when I became the first student of Eugene Burger—the legendary magical philosopher who revolutionized how we think about conjuring. Eugene didn't teach tricks. He taught transformation. He believed magic wasn't about fooling people but about creating experiences that touch something deeper than deception can reach. Under his mentorship, I learned that a playing card isn't cardboard and ink—it's a vessel for meaning we pour together, a catalyst for wonder that rewrites the boundaries of what audiences believe is possible.

That apprenticeship planted seeds that would grow in unexpected directions. While most magicians study sleight of hand, I became fascinated by sleight of mind—the invisible architecture of human consciousness itself. This obsession led me to earn doctorates in psychology and leadership, specializing in cross-cultural engagement, and to build a career as a practicing psychotherapist and clinical hypnotist. I've published numerous books spanning the field of psychotherapy, exploring the mechanics of attention, suggestion, and the strange truth that we're all unreliable witnesses to our own experience.

But here's what makes my work unique: I never abandoned magic. Instead, I brought four decades of psychological expertise back to the art form that first captured my imagination. I understand how to read a room's collective unconscious, build rapport that feels like recognition rather than introduction, and craft moments where wonder and existential dread dance together in perfect balance. I know the switches that control human choice, the subtle shifts in breath and posture that reveal unspoken thoughts, and the precise moments when reality becomes negotiable.

Between the Possible and the Impossible: Where My Work Lives
I weave close-up magic and mentalism through stories crafted with psychological truths and philosophical mysteries. My background gives me access to something most performers never touch—the invisible mechanics of belief, perception, and memory. I don't just create illusions. I create experiences that linger in the mind long after the moment passes, blurring the boundaries between what seems impossible and what might actually be real.

This is entertainment that doesn't end when I leave. It begins when I do. Your guests won't just remember what happened. They'll question whether it happened at all. They'll become unreliable narrators of their own impossible memories, telling stories that sound absurd even as they insist every word is true.

Max Maven once said that mentalism is "the art of thinking creatively with another person's mind." Eugene Burger taught that magic creates "a moment of astonishment in the theater of the mind." Alan Watts reminded us that "the menu is not the meal." I bring all three perspectives. Your guests won't get the menu. They'll get the feast.

# Where I Can Perform: Complete Flexibility for Your Event

## No Technical Requirements - I Bring Everything

One of the greatest advantages of working with me is complete simplicity: I arrive with everything needed to create an unforgettable experience. My own tables, equipment, sound, lights, and music mean you have zero technical requirements to worry about. No stage to build, no sound system to rent, no complicated setup. Just the space and your guests.

## Intimate Table Performances

**Small Groups at a Single Table**

Perfect for dinner parties, executive gatherings, or intimate celebrations where 6-15 guests are seated together. I work directly at your table, creating impossibilities that unfold in your guests' hands. The proximity amplifies every moment—they see everything, control everything, and yet experience the impossible. These are ideal for:

- Private dinner parties in homes
- Restaurant private dining rooms
- Hotel suites and hospitality rooms
- Executive board meetings
- VIP experiences
- Anniversary or milestone celebrations

## Larger Room Performances

**Seated Audiences of Any Size**

I can perform for larger groups where guests are seated throughout a room—whether that's 20 people or 100. These performances maintain the intimacy and psychological depth of my work while reaching everyone in the space. My portable sound and lighting create the right atmosphere in any environment. Perfect for:

- Corporate events and conferences
- Holiday parties and celebrations
- Private event spaces and ballrooms
- Hotel conference rooms
- Country clubs and social clubs
- Fundraisers and galas

## Strolling Magic

**Interactive Engagement for Socializing Guests**

Perhaps you want entertainment woven throughout your event rather than a single performance moment. I provide strolling magic where I move between small groups, creating intimate impossibilities for clusters of 3-6 guests at a time. This works beautifully when people are:

- Mingling during cocktail hour
- Networking at corporate functions
- Socializing at receptions
- Moving between different areas of your venue
- Engaged in other activities (dining, drinking, conversing)

Each group receives a personalized experience—something just for them—while I circulate throughout your event, leaving a trail of astonishment and conversation in my wake.

My Needs Are Flexible - I Work With You
Every venue is different. Every event has its own rhythm and requirements. I've performed in living rooms, boardrooms, ballrooms, hotel suites, restaurants, and everywhere in between. What matters isn't the technical specifications—it's the people and the experience you want to create.

Whether you have a formal event space or simply want to transform your home for an evening, we can make it work. Let's discuss your specific situation, your venue, and your vision. Together, we'll design the perfect approach for your gathering.

**The only thing I need is the opportunity to create something impossible for your guests.**