FIREBALL : Paul Kozak Knows How to Get Your Attention

Comic-magician Paul Kozak really knows how to make an entrance.

Walking out onto the stage with a flaming stick, he laughs boisterously, says, “Close your eyes,” and tosses the stick into the air, producing a large puff of smoke.

As the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” begins blaring from the sound system, he announces, “Folks, it’s going to get hot in here”--and proceeds to hurl fireballs into the audience.

“That really gets their attention.

“I couldn’t think of anything better to do--other than to get naked,” says Kozak, who’s at the Improv in Brea this weekend. “I have to do that, to establish up front that this isn’t rubber chicken magic they’re going to be seeing.”

Indeed. The high-energy, 6-foot-4 performer with the gelled-back hair and diamond-stud earring calls his brand of entertainment “rock and roll comedy magic.” He likens it to “live MTV,” complete with choreographed visuals and musical special effects.

He is adept at both comedy and magic, having won the 1981 International Brotherhood of Magicians Sleight of Hand Competition and having been a semifinalist in the 1987 San Francisco Comedy Competition. It’s a winning combination that resulted in a command performance for Prince Charles and Princess Diana as part of the Prince’s Royal Trust Gala at the London Palladium two years ago.

So why does he feel so compelled to grab people’s attention?

“A lot of people hate magic, you know,” he explained. He said a lot of magicians who work in comedy clubs either make fun of magic, or they reveal how tricks are done. Not him.

“I really try to do good magic, good sleight of hand,” he said, “magic dependent on my skill--of my hands and the psychology of misdirection--rather than those large illusions where the assistant actually does all the work. And I try real hard not to do magic that people might see other magicians do. I try to be totally original and different.”

He intersperses his magic with straight stand-up comedy (as opposed to the customary magician’s patter), everything from current events to “some observational stuff” as seen through his eyes as a magician.

In one routine, he talks about the ways magic used to get him into trouble as a kid. He says, for example, that he only lasted one day as an altar boy: Instead of burning incense and lighting the candles on the altar, he used his smoke and fireball. And then he disappeared from the altar, reappeared up in the choir loft and came running down the aisle wearing a different-colored robe.

Actually, the Pittsburgh native didn’t pick up his first magic book until he was 23 and about to be discharged from the Navy.

It was love at first sleight.

“It’s hard to explain without sounding mystical about it, but when I looked into the book I literally felt I was looking into destiny: I thought I was born to do magic,” he recalls.

Not wanting to return to his job in a steel mill, he started performing as a street magician, then moved up to birthday parties, Cub Scout shows, the holiday banquet circuit and finally comedy clubs.

Kozak combined comedy with his magic right from the first. “I was always a wise guy, so it just blended in naturally with magic.” His goal, he added, is to make an audience laugh and be mystified at the same time, “but given one over the other, I’d rather make you laugh than mystify you. I always go for the laugh first.”

Besides, given the age we live in, “the mystical, wonderful side of magic is very hard to achieve anymore.”

Who: Paul Kozak.

When: Friday, Nov. 29, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 30, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 1, at 8:30 p.m.

Where: The Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Brea.

Whereabouts: Take the Lambert Road exit off the Orange Freeway and go west. Turn left onto State College Boulevard and right onto Birch Street. The Improv is in the Brea Marketplace, across from the Brea Mall.

Wherewithal: $7 to $10.

Where to call: (714) 529-7878.