A Deck, A Dream, and a Tuesday Night Bet on the Future of Magic

WINDHAM — On a quiet stretch of Route 23, where the Catskills still trade in equal parts memory and reinvention, a small room above Main Street has become something of an improbable proving ground. Inside Magic On Main, proprietor Sean Doolan has built a reputation not on spectacle, but on proximity — the kind of close-up magic where the miracle happens inches from your hands, and disbelief has nowhere to hide.

Next Tuesday, April 21, that room will host something rarer than a trick: a test.

For one night only, Brazilian card virtuoso Bernardo Sedlacek will take the table at Doolan’s personal invitation, bringing with him a résumé that stretches across nearly 40 countries and into the orbit of modern magic’s biggest names. Sedlacek has fooled audiences — and notably the hosts of Penn & Teller: Fool Us — and has worked behind the scenes as a consultant to David Blaine on projects with National Geographic. In 2023, he earned the Milbourne Christopher Award for Close-Up Magic, one of the field’s highest honors.

But in Windham, the stakes are different.

“This is a proof of concept,” Doolan said, speaking between shows at a venue that has quietly amassed 542 performances and a No. 1 ranking on TripAdvisor for the area. “If this works, it opens the door to something bigger.”

Bigger, in this case, means a new chapter for Magic On Main — a larger venue, longer residencies, and a rotating cast of elite performers who could spend a week in the mountains instead of a night passing through Manhattan. For a town better known for ski runs and summer rentals, it’s an ambitious pitch: that world-class magic might take root here, not as a novelty, but as a fixture.

Doolan himself is no stranger to reinvention. He arrived in Windham in 1998 from the Bronx, leaving behind a career as a prosecutor and trial lawyer for one that relies on a different kind of persuasion. “Either way,” he jokes, “I lie for a living.” The line lands, but it also hints at the throughline — a lifelong obsession with sleight of hand, particularly card magic, which he calls his favorite discipline.

It’s also what drew him to Sedlacek.

Trained in the rigorous traditions of the Spanish school of card magic — a style known for its technical precision and deceptive elegance — Sedlacek represents, in Doolan’s estimation, the next wave. “He is the future of card magic,” Doolan said plainly.

Sedlacek, for his part, seems eager to test that future in an unlikely corner of Greene County. Asked about performing in the Catskills, he offered a simple reply: he is “excited to be there.”

The show itself will be as intimate as anything Magic On Main has staged — a single 7 p.m. performance, limited seating, no walk-ins. Tickets are set at $100, reservations required, the kind of scarcity that has become part of the venue’s quiet appeal.

And that may be the real trick.

In an era of infinite content and endless screens, Doolan has built something deliberately finite — a room, a table, a deck of cards, and a handful of witnesses. For one night, at least, that formula will be pushed to its limits by a magician who has fooled millions elsewhere.

If it works, Windham may find itself holding more than just a good hand.