BEAT

MIND GAMES

Mentalist Brett Barry performs mind-blowing entertainment at corporate events

In 2012, Brett Barry quit his job in residential real estate to pursue a second career as a professional mentalist. He performs at high-end corporate and private events throughout the country. As a mentalist, he seemingly reads a stranger’s thoughts or impossibly guesses complex information using “secrets” in the mystery arts. For instance, whether he’s breaking into a fully locked iPhone or knowing the name and details about your first kiss (OK, not too many details), mentalism is more hard-hitting and personal, and something that most people have never experienced in person. “I don’t do tricks – I do extraordinary things with ordinary objects,” he says. He doesn’t claim psychic abilities and avoids doing anything that feels like magic or a trick, but in most cases, Barry knows impossible things that he should not know. But he does. “My goal is to lead folks into a gray area – that on the drive home, people will wonder if what they experienced might be real – or not?” he says. He dabbled in entertainment as a child. “Magic had been my lifetime hobby since age 10,” he says. “I performed for my kids and their classmates when they were growing up.” One day a fellow parent asked Barry to perform at a holiday party and that kicked off his reinvention into a full-time performer. “Having that 25-year sales background helped me enormously and still does in terms of understating people and reading minds,” Barry says. From mingling and mind-reading at cocktail parties and trade shows to large venues for 500 plus audience members, Barry performs a variety of shows. He’s often at resorts including The Phoenician, The Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale, The Royal Palms, the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess and has worked with hundreds of companies including The Arizona Cardinals, Microsoft, APS, AT&T and Clorox. Above all, Barry considers bringing people together to be a big part of his job. “To connect people who might not know each other, to act like the host at the party in introducing people and giving them a group experience,” he says. “After all we’ve been through, people are hungry for experiences and reconnection.” Learn more at www.PhoenixMentalist.com.

BY MANDY HOLMES / PHOTO BY CLAUDIA JOHNSTONE