Vitaly Beckman, a Vancouver-based illusionist, recently accomplished something only four other performers have ever done: stump famed American magicians Penn and Teller with an illusion… for the third time.
Beckman wowed the legendary duo in an episode of their long-running reality TV series, Penn & Teller: Fool Us, at the Las Vegas theatre bearing their name. They awarded him a trophy before inviting him back to perform on April 26 as the closing act for their own live show.
Beckman has been pursing magic and illusion for nearly three decades, ever since he got hooked by watching David Copperfield on his parents’ television while growing up in Haifa. But like many Jewish immigrant families, his Soviet-born parents wanted their son to go into a more stable and respectable profession, so Beckman did a mechanical engineering degree at the Technion, Israel’s university specializing in science and engineering, before coming to Canada and pursuing his passion for fine art, painting and illusion.
And after performances in Times Square and off-Broadway—including a benefit for Ukrainian Jewish orphans with actor Sylvester Stallone—Beckman is back home in Canada these days, testing out some new material. As he tells Ellin Bessner on The CJN Daily, illusion and magic may be just the thing to help heal divisions and strife during our turbulent times.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: That’s what it sounded like on a recent episode of the long-running American reality TV show called Penn & Teller: Fool Us when Vancouver illusionist Vitaly Beckman stumped the entertainers and the judges for the third time in his career. He won a trophy and an invitation to perform the same trick on stage a couple of weeks later on April 26 in Las Vegas as the closing act for Penn & Teller’s very popular live show. Now, it’s hard to describe what Beckman did in a podcast, but I’ll try. He was on the stage; he carried in a painting of sorts, covered by a canvas so we couldn’t see what was in it. And on a table, there were some pieces of fruit and an old clock.
Brooke Burke: How’s that?
Vitaly Beckman: It’s up to you. Sure. Okay. Now, interesting. You did not have 10 o’clock in mind when you came to help me.
Brooke Burke: No.
Vitaly Beckman: You didn’t think of any time at all when you came to help me, let alone 10:04. So, this will be our moment. 10:04 will be the moment when time stands still, and we’re creating a still life. So please stand behind this table.
Ellin Bessner: The emcee, Brooke Burke, is a former Dancing with the Stars winner. He asked her to wind up the clock to whatever time she wanted and then arrange the fruit wherever she liked and make a still life model. And then, to the amazement of the studio audience, and more importantly, the judges and the hosts, Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller, Beckman unveiled the canvas he’d brought in, and it showed the clock and the fruit in the exact positions which the emcee had placed, with the same time she’d chosen.
Vitaly Beckman: And this painting was sitting here the entire time, nobody came close to it. It’s a painting I’ve done years ago. And now you will see what makes this work a true masterpiece. They say that art imitates life, but on rare occasions, it is life that imitates art. Because right here, a painting of a watermelon. And then we got a clock. What was the time? 10:04. Exactly 10:04.
Ellin Bessner: Although he assured me he’d never met her before that moment, and so she couldn’t have been in cahoots with him to help with the trick. For Beckman, beating the veteran Las Vegas magicians for a third time in less than 10 years is an important milestone, to say the least. And he’s also one of only four other people who have accomplished this in the 11 seasons of the reality show.
Beckman, though, has been performing for nearly 30 years, weaving illusion and his passion for fine art and science—to please his parents. When he was growing up in Israel, he agreed to take an engineering degree at the Technion University in Haifa first, before he moved to Vancouver, where his brother already lived, and began pursuing his stage career full-time.
I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Wednesday, May 28, 2025. Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News and made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Vitaly Beckman was born in the Soviet Union, today it’s Belarus, and his family emigrated to Israel when he was 8. He jokes that when he began painting as a young boy, his parents painted over his paintings with whitewash. These days, he says they’re proud of his success. He’s been based in Canada for nearly 20 years and he goes home to visit his parents in Israel regularly.
Now in his early 40s, he weaves his art and also the world of nature into his illusions, which he dreams up by himself. Sometimes in his shows, he makes photographs move like video. He has paintbrushes travel through the air by themselves, real plant leaves appear magically on an artist’s canvas, and he’s known for taking driver’s licenses from audience members and making their photos jump onto other people’s ID cards.
Beckman was relatively unknown when he first appeared on Penn & Teller in 2016. This series is considered one of the premier TV showcases for illusionists on the international stage and attracts millions of viewers. He has since had sold-out shows off-Broadway and in New York’s Times Square. I caught up with Vitaly Beckman a few days ago, fresh off his recent gig in Las Vegas.
Vitaly Beckman: Thanks so much for having me, Ellin.
Ellin Bessner: Well, it’s an honour to meet you, and congratulations on the major news a couple of weeks ago. And you were the third time fooling Penn and Teller on their show on The CW network. Amazing, amazing illusion.
Vitaly Beckman: Thank you.
Ellin Bessner: And I know, are we allowed to call it a trick or is it better to say illusion? I don’t want to insult.
Vitaly Beckman: I like the word illusion, but you’re allowed to call it a trick. You know, I’m not offended, but you know, I just think, you know, the word ‘trick’ generally cheapens it. If you just call it a trick,
Ellin Bessner: You know, I apologize.Let’s start the proper way. It takes more months and years of training, not just to pull a coin out.
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, yeah, but, you know, trick is fine.
Ellin Bessner: I just ruined the whole interview! Okay, here we go on the wrong foot. But how does it actually work to be asked to be on, or do you have to apply?
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, well, you know, this was my third time, so the producers know me, but the very first time, which was like years. How many years? I don’t know. Seven years, maybe eight years ago, was the first time I appeared on their show. I applied, I emailed them, and I actually, I didn’t even know how to get on the show. So I found a company that’s like the parent company of that production, and I sent them my video, and they forwarded it to the right people, and then I was invited back. I didn’t even know who to send the email to. Now, it’s no secret, they’re seeking people to apply all the time. And they have an Instagram page and they constantly say, “Send us your tricks.” Right? And so nowadays, you know, they know me, so it’s very easy for me to get on the show. It’s just that I actually, after the first time, I never thought I’d go again. But then the pandemic happened, and I heard that they were going to do online season, virtual season, and I thought, well, why don’t I? Now I suddenly… I had the time, I stopped touring, so I did the second time. But the thing is, once you do a second time, then you know, you kind of want to do a third time now because, you know, three is a better number. I wanted to do it live again, so. Yeah, so it’s nice to do it three times.
Ellin Bessner: What’s the time sort of frame for that when you were accepted?How did that work this time?
Vitaly Beckman: This season was unusually long time. It wasn’t like that before, but this specific season, we filmed it in the summer last July, and they aired it only in March.
Ellin Bessner: So you had to like the NDA. You couldn’t say anything at all until… Oh, yeah, yeah, it was on that. That’s a long time to keep quiet.
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, I’m a magician, so I’m good at keeping secrets. Right. I don’t have a problem with that. Obviously, my wife knew, my parents knew, my closest friends that I can trust knew, but otherwise, I was keeping my mouth shut.
Ellin Bessner: I know that there’s been controversy with Penn and Teller not being… And I’m going to read it to you: this magician sort of membership of this special group because they reveal how they do their tricks. Is that… That’s right. Right?
Vitaly Beckman: There is. There was. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but there was some controversy, I think, especially with the Magic Circle in England. If I’m not mistaken, they were revealing some magic in the past, and they wouldn’t accept them as members. That said, you know, most of what Penn and Teller revealed are not really major secrets because most people are disappointed if you tell them how magic works.
Ellin Bessner: You didn’t have to do that after you won, to show how the sausage is made, right?
Vitaly Beckman: I didn’t have to, but you have to tell the judge and the producers how you do it so they have criteria to judge by. Because otherwise, you can just say, well, that’s not how I did it, but how do you prove it? I think the judges knew. Maybe they did not know all the details, and maybe that’s why they were struggling because they didn’t know all the nuances. But I actually, I did show Teller because I was just performing there in Vegas, and I just said, hey, if you want to, I’ll show you exactly how it works. And he was absolutely floored. His jaw hit the floor because he didn’t believe how it actually worked.
Ellin Bessner: Because you won that third award, you get to do a live show in Vegas with them. That was just like after Pesach, right? April 26th.
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, yeah, it was just a few weeks ago.
Ellin Bessner: Did you have to perform the same…
Vitaly Beckman: Yes, the same act. So they’re so nice. They let you close their show and they introduce me as the closer. So, you know, in a way, they laugh that they’re my opening act. And then I got, you know, you get to hang out with them a bit. I was backstage, we were chatting and sharing ideas, and it was a lot of fun. And see Teller, his parents, as he told me, were painters
Ellin Bessner: and also Jewish.
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, yeah. And so his whole house was full of still-life paintings. So he was absolutely impressed, and he said a lot of such nice things. I wish I could remember them, but he said a lot of great things about the act and the painting that I revealed at the end.
Ellin Bessner: And the pomegranate, I was watching that saying, “It’s Rosh Hashanah, that’s our new fruit!” I was looking for all the Jewish sort of nuances there.
Vitaly Beckman: I just thought these fruits look very artistic and I like their colour.
Ellin Bessner: And you know, you said you were down there in Vegas. Have you ever had a chance to meet, of course, your idol or the person who inspired you, David Copperfield?
Vitaly Beckman: I never met him in person, no, but I got a lot of also inspiration from outside of magic, from various artists, painters, movie stars, comedians. And the last 10, 20 years, I try not to see too much magic because you get to be influenced and I don’t want to be influenced.
Ellin Bessner: What’s the most challenging issue you had with that last third win?
Vitaly Beckman: It’s a very complex illusion. And so when I went to appear on the show, I had to really look like I don’t do anything technically, and yet I have to do so much both in terms of mental memorization and physical work. When you know that Teller, and Penn and Teller, are watching you so closely, then you have to stay calm, like nothing really. Like I’m not doing anything. You cannot telegraph with your body language that you’re doing something because they are so good at reading your body language. And so that was a very big challenge. And then just before I was going to appear, something was malfunctioning and I had to fix it like 2, 3 minutes before I was up on stage.
Ellin Bessner: We won’t be able to tell, right when we watch.
Vitaly Beckman: No, no, it actually worked out really well at the end.
Ellin Bessner: Do you get to practice, like a warm-up before they come on, or do you just have to do it cold behind the scenes, do the practicing, and then you just do it live?
Vitaly Beckman: You need to do a rehearsal, dress rehearsal, because they need to know how to film. When you come for the show, they hide you. You go through a different path to the theatre, to the stage, so there’s no chance to encounter Penn and Teller. So they’re not even aware of who’s on the show that day because otherwise, they can look them up and see, you know. And also Brooke, the host, she wasn’t there as well. So it’s very, very honest. There’s no pre-arrangement of any kind. You know, a lot of people, if you read the funny comments under the YouTube video, there are like hundreds of comments where people say she staged it or that the painting is a screen or electronic ink or all kinds of people. Today they try to explain everything with technology and some high-tech, impossible technology. It’s so funny.
Ellin Bessner: Well, I’m sure ChatGPT will figure it out at some point what you do, right?
Vitaly Beckman: I don’t know. Good luck.
Ellin Bessner: Good luck. Tell me a bit about… There’s a clock there which you mentioned about your family’s clock and I’ve seen, and our producer also noticed, that you bring a lot of your family nostalgic stories into it. So tell me about why that’s important to you and some of the other objects maybe, that you like people to know about.
Vitaly Beckman: Well, you know, I was… Before I did magic, I used to paint, and my parents were encouraging me. They thought maybe one day I’ll even be a painter. As a kid, before I went to do magic. So now every time I do some kind of a new illusion, perhaps subconsciously, I draw something from my childhood or from the days I used to paint, paint, or, you know, did stuff like that, and I tried to incorporate it.
Ellin Bessner: A lot of people who would be growing up in a Jewish family, as happened, I think, to you, want you to go into medicine or they want you to be engineering, of course. So you did that. How do your parents now feel that you’re, you know, successful and on off-Broadway and…
Vitaly Beckman: Right.
Ellin Bessner: Are they finally coming around to the idea?
Vitaly Beckman: You know, I have Jewish parents; they will never come around. I think the words of my parents were that we… We really were against you doing this, and we were hoping you’d pursue engineering. But when we saw your billboards on Times Square, we realized that what’s happening to our family. I think they came around after seeing those huge billboards. I think they felt better.
Ellin Bessner: Speaking about parents, though, and about your growing up in Israel, you know, I noticed that you talk a lot about growing up in the Soviet Union and then you don’t really mention a lot about Israel too much. And I’m wondering if that’s something on purpose, because how things are for Jewish performers now, it’s a tough time to be Israeli and Jewish in the art world.
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, I think it’s always a tough time to be Jewish or Israeli, no matter the time.
Ellin Bessner: True. But a lot of artists have been canceled or there have been protests, and I’m wondering how that has impacted your last 18, 19 months, if you’ve noticed it at all or not.
Vitaly Beckman: Well, at least the people who hire me, they’re not very vocal politically, for or against Israel, at least not that I’ve noticed. But, you know, people in general, of course. But as far as your comment that I do bring out the Soviet Union, but not so much Israel, I think possibly it might be, now that I think about it, maybe it is related that… You see, there was a time before the war with Ukraine that it was okay to be Russian, but Israel, you were kind of like you were risking perhaps being not so well accepted. But after the war with Ukraine, it was better to be Israeli than Russian or Belarusian or whatever. And now, it’s better just not to be anyone. Because, you know, every time there is a period where it’s not good to be this or it’s not good to be that.
I’m a proud Israeli Jewish person. I was never hiding. See, the first time I was on Penn and Teller: Fool Us, I did say I was born in the Soviet Union, and for some reason, they took it as if I’m Russian and they even put, like, a Siberia map behind me. I was kind of disappointed with that. So after that, I realized I probably shouldn’t have said it that way because it sends the wrong message. So since then, if somebody asks me, “Where are you from?” I say I grew up in Israel,
Ellin Bessner: But I’m just wondering. so you’ve never had, in the last few months, any problems being an Israeli Jewish artist in the field? Because a lot of people are getting pushed back, canceled. It’s hard. So I’m just curious.
Vitaly Beckman: But yeah, I’m also kind of careful where I go. For instance, I did have an offer to perform in Toronto to do, like, a six-week run in Toronto this summer. Anyway, it didn’t happen for different reasons. But I did have concerns, seeing what’s happening in Toronto to the Jewish community. One of my thoughts was, do I really want to be in an environment like that? I mean, I don’t know, I don’t live in Toronto. Maybe it’s okay.
Ellin Bessner: But you’re in Vancouver. You have similar problems too?
Vitaly Beckman: I mean, we do, but what’s her name?
Ellin Bessner: But what’s her name? Miriam Libicki, got canceled from her show, you know her? She’s the artist, comic artist.
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah. You know, but maybe to me, it seems that Toronto is so much worse and again, maybe it’s because it just seems… I don’t, my goodness, I don’t know how people live in Toronto, the Jewish people living there. So I feel like Vancouver is a bit less. There is like, I feel like there’s less of it.
Ellin Bessner: Hello you had a synagogue that got firebombed!
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, no, but I don’t see marches like what I see in Toronto though. You know, in Vancouver,
Ellin Bessner: people need a…Break from this horrible, what’s been happening in the world in Ukraine, Belarus too. All the politics, Trump, everything… I mean, but how can magic and illusion and your work solve these problems? Even if maybe temporarily?
Vitaly Beckman: It may sound pompous, but I think art is the solution to today’s problems, because the problem is the division. And everybody is in their own camp, an echo chamber. Art brings out all the people. When I perform for an audience, I don’t ask what your political opinion is. They’re all humans, and for a moment, for an hour, two hours, they don’t even realize that somebody that sits next to them, they maybe would fight with them otherwise. That’s, I think, the solution.
Ellin Bessner: So you have to get all the warring sides to come and, like, have, I guess, peace by illusion. You’ll get Putin and Trump and Zelensky and the Hamas and Netanyahu, all in your theatre.
Vitaly Beckman: No, no, no. I think, look, obviously this whole hate division in politics, it trickles down from, like, politicians to regular people. But if we can uplift the regular people, you know, then the trickling down aspect won’t. And, like, you know, I think social media also escalates that. And I think art is also an antidote to social media in general because it forces people to be, to look at each other in the eye and be, you know, in person. When you’re on social media, I think it encourages kind of a less civil discourse.
Ellin Bessner: Yeah. Because there’s no threat in yelling at someone if you’re in your basement and no one can see you, right?
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, yeah.
Ellin Bessner: Behind your computer.
Vitaly Beckman: Exactly, exactly.
Ellin Bessner: And you mentioned Toronto. What are some of the other projects, maybe, that we’ll be seeing you do now that you’re done in Las Vegas for the next few months? What’s on the horizon? You’re allowed to tell us?
Vitaly Beckman: I’m working on several things already for a year. We’re working on a TV series with a couple of producers, but it’s a slow process and right now, Hollywood and all the TV industry are a little bit down, but we keep working it. We’re hoping that might pick up. I’m also working on a new live show, all kinds of projects like that. New magic.
Ellin Bessner: You do corporate stuff though, I read.
Vitaly Beckman: Yes, yes.
Ellin Bessner: What was it like performing together a few years ago for Sylvester Stallone and the Tikva orphanage in Ukraine? where you were supporting that.
Vitaly Beckman: Oh, they were so wonderful. I remember. That was such a nice event.
Ellin Bessner: Let’s go back to the beginning, when we talked about the last episode. On Reddit, there’s a whole list, somebody made a list of all the people who fooled Penn and Teller over the 11 years. I don’t know if you’ve seen this list. I can send it to you. Correct me if I’m wrong. There’s a couple of people, one person that fooled them six times, Helen Coughlin. One person that fooled them five times named Jandro. And then, thank you. And then there’s nobody for four, and then there’s you guys. And you’re at the top of the list. So basically, there’s only two people ahead of you that have ever fooled them more. Yeah, that’s a huge thing. How does that fit with you now? And you’re still… like, it’s, you know, almost a year that happened. But we only found out about it recently, right?
Vitaly Beckman: No, it’s great. And like I said, when we started talking, I never intended to go three times. I never thought that magic’s main focus is about fooling people. Like I said, my philosophy about magic is that it’s a form of art and it should inspire people. It should make people feel like they want to do something great with their life, you know, because that’s what watching art did for me.
Ellin Bessner: Is there anything that you want to tell our listeners that they should be watching for, how they find your stuff so that they can support you and see what you do next?
Vitaly Beckman: Yeah, my website is eveningofwonders.com, and you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram. So, Illusionist Vitaly, V-I-T-A-L-Y, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and apparently the person who does my social media says I should also open a TikTok. So we’re gonna do that as well.
Ellin Bessner: So nice to have met you. Such a pleasure and I really enjoyed talking to you. And let’s see you do your next show. You’ll let us know when?
Vitaly Beckman: Absolutely, absolutely.
Show Notes
Related links
- Watch Beckman fool the magicians for the third time on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, on the episode that aired on March 28, 2025.
- Check out Vitaly Beckman’s website for news, future tour dates and bookings.
- Learn how Toronto magicians Ben Train and Jonah Babins pivoted during the pandemic to entertain their audiences online, on The CJN Daily.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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