Mentalism is a branch of magic performance where the entertainer appears to read minds, predict decisions, and influence choices.

Instead of card tricks or props, a mentalist works with the audience's own thoughts: names they're thinking of, drawings they've made, choices they haven't said out loud. It's interactive, adult, and consistently described as the most talked-about entertainment guests have seen.

A magician performs visual magic with objects: cards, coins, borrowed rings. A mentalist performs magic of the mind: predictions, mind reading, and influence.

Mentalism tends to feel more adult and more impossible, because the "prop" is the audience's own thoughts. Toronto Magic Company offers both, and many events combine them.

It’s often the preferred entertainment for corporate events with intelligent audiences like doctors, lawyers, and engineers.

Ben Train is a Toronto mentalist, co-founder of Toronto Magic Company, and one of Canada's top corporate entertainers. He has appeared on Penn & Teller's Fool Us twice, along with CTV, Apple TV, Breakfast Television, and The Marilyn Denis Show. His corporate clients include CIBC, TD, KPMG, Deloitte, Rogers, and Telus.

No psychic powers involved, and we'd never claim otherwise. Mentalism combines psychology, suggestion, showmanship, and technique honed over thousands of performances to create the illusion of mind reading.

The honest answer is that it's a skill, and that's exactly what makes it fun: your guests know it can't be real, and they still can't explain what they just saw.

Audience members think of names, make choices, and create drawings, and the mentalist reveals them in ways that shouldn't be possible

Ben's signature closer: two audience members create a completely unique drawing together, then discover their exact drawing has been sitting framed on stage the entire time, predicted before the show began.

It's one of the strongest corporate entertainment choices there is. Mentalism plays perfectly to smart, skeptical professional audiences, requires no language of cards or props, and puts your colleagues at the centre of the show. Banks, law firms, and tech companies book it specifically because it holds a sharp room.

Yes, participation is the show. Audience members make the choices, think of the words, and create the drawings that drive every routine. Nobody is ever embarrassed or made the butt of a joke: participants are always the stars of the moment.

A band plays in the background and a comedian performs at your audience, but a mentalist makes your guests the show. Every routine is built from their thoughts and choices, which means the room isn't just watching, they're in it. It's also the entertainment people argue about on the drive home, and that's the real goal: an event nobody stops talking about.