A Mentalism Show for Nearly 500 Guests at EvenUp’s Montreal Company Offsite

Entertainment for the Last Night of a Company Offsite

A company offsite has one evening that matters more than the others: the last one. The work sessions are done, the awards have been handed out, and everyone who flew in is in the same room for the final time before they scatter back to their home offices. Whatever happens on that stage is what the week gets remembered by.

In August 2026, EvenUp, an AI company serving personal injury law firms, brought its team to Montreal for a four-day offsite. Their event planner at Flok reached out with a clear brief: nearly 500 guests, seated for dinner in a ballroom at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal, and a closing night that needed a single focal point rather than background entertainment.

The planner said it plainly on our first call: they wanted a show, not a party. So we built the evening in two parts. Close-up magic during the cocktail hour to bring people together, then a 45-minute mentalism show on the main stage after dinner and awards, with the bars closed and every chair turned toward the front.

Cocktail Hour: Close-Up Magic, Group to Group

EvenUp is based in San Francisco and Toronto, with team members spread across North America. Over the night I met people from Kingston, Chicago, Miami and many other cities. For most of the year these are colleagues who know each other from a video window. The cocktail hour is where that changes, and it is where close-up magic earns its place at a corporate retreat.

For about an hour I moved group to group through the foyer while guests collected drinks and food. The format is simple on purpose. 5 or 6 people standing together, something impossible happening a few inches from their faces, and a shared reaction that gives two strangers from different offices a reason to keep talking after I have moved on.

It also does quiet work for the stage show later. By the time the room sits down for dinner, a good number of guests have already seen me up close and know what kind of evening they are in for.

Building a Stage Show for Nearly 500 Seated Guests

A room this size changes how a mentalism show has to be built. The ballroom at the Sheraton is wide, with the stage on the long wall and roughly 50 round tables wrapping around it. The first tables sat about 5 feet from the stage. The furthest sat 40 feet away, at an angle.

Mentalism plays well in a large room. Its best moments are still small ones, though: a face when a thought is read, a word written on a card, a hand going up. To keep the entire room engaged for 45 minutes, so that nobody at a far table disconnects, I strongly recommended IMAG, a live camera feed projected on screens flanking the stage, run by the hotel AV team. With it, the back of the room sees exactly what the front row sees.

We arrive early for every event, with or without a camera feed, to run a proper soundcheck and walk through every detail before doors. Here that meant testing the camera and screen feed alongside the audio. A member of my team manages everything technical behind the scenes, from the music cues to the coordination with the venue’s AV team, so that I can stay entirely with the audience.

If you are planning a stage show for a room above roughly 200 guests, this is the detail to ask your venue about first. A stage and a good sound system are expected. A camera feed is what makes the show work from every seat.

Writing the Show for EvenUp

Every corporate show I perform is built from a repertoire I know inside out, but the script is written fresh for the room. Before this one, I researched EvenUp: the company, what it does, the offsite theme, and the cities represented in the ballroom. Several pieces were tailored from that research, and the script was adjusted to the audience in front of me.

The offsite theme was growing and scaling together. The guests who joined me on stage were chosen with that in mind, so that a team that spends most of the year in different cities saw itself in the show.

None of this requires a company to hand over confidential material. It needs a short tech call with the planner, the evening agenda, the floor plan, and the theme the team has already been living with for days. The sooner these arrive, the more the show can be shaped around them.

The Finale

The show closed with two pieces built to feel completely different from each other, and the final one involved every table in the ballroom.

The room stood. After the show, a group of guests who wanted to see more found me by the stage, so I stayed and performed close-up for them until the night wound down.

What the Planner Said

★★★★★

I booked Bao Magic for a corporate event I planned in Montreal. He was extremely professional throughout the entire process, from the initial kick-off call, to the performance. He checked in with me multiple times before the show began and I was never worried that he would be where he was supposed to be (which is so helpful for an event planner!). The show was a hit and he added a magical touch to the event. He even stayed later after the show performing close-up magic for some eager fans. So thoughtful! I’d recommend Bao for any party or event!

Event Planner, Flok · Google review

What Offsite and Retreat Planners Can Take Away

Company offsites and corporate retreats in Montreal tend to share the same shape: a hotel ballroom, a seated dinner, a program that runs late, and a crowd that has spent 3 days together and is ready to be surprised. Here is what worked at EvenUp and transfers to almost any offsite of this scale.

• Put the show after dinner and awards, with the bars closed. A seated, undistracted room is the best audience a mentalist can ask for.
• Use the cocktail hour to mix the offices. Close-up magic gives people from different cities a shared moment before the program starts.
• Ask the venue for a camera feed to screens once you pass about 200 guests. It is the difference between a show the front tables enjoy and a show the whole room enjoys.
• Book one performer for both parts of the night. The guests who met me during cocktails are the same ones who come up on stage later, and the room feels it.
• Share the theme and the floor plan as early as you can. The show is written for your team from those, without asking anyone to disclose anything sensitive.

If you want to see the same approach at a different kind of event, read how it worked for RBC’s Lunar New Year gala with nearly 600 guests, or why close-up magic is the right call for a cocktail hour in the first place.