LINCOLN SQUARE — Inside the barrel loft of Dovetail Brewery on the North Side, a magician named Brielle holds out a lock and asks, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much faith do you have in my ability to influence a choice that you make?”
If you catch her monthly show at Dovetail, 1800 W. Belle Plaine Ave., Brielle might ask you to lock away a personal item and trust her to help you retrieve it. She’ll place three keys in your hands, instruct you to move them around behind your back and choose one at a time. Moments later, she’ll ask you to open the lock with the middle key — the one you picked at random and the only one that clicks open the lock.
To watch Brielle — whose full name is Brielle Kawalek — perform mentalism is to feel two instincts rise at once: the flickering delight of a child who wants to believe — and the adult skepticism that insists there must be an explanation.
“I think a misconception about magic is it’s meant to fool you and trick you,” Brielle said. “I really see it as a way of connecting with our inner whimsy and having a good time together.”
Brielle, 34, grew up in Bunker Hill, West Virginia, following curiosity wherever it led. She studied psychology and German at West Virginia University, then spent five years in Germany, where she worked a range of jobs, including teaching English and assisting at a clinic for people with obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias.
At one point, Brielle even considered becoming a professor. But it wasn’t until her late 20s that she imagined herself performing magic at bachelorette parties and bars or reading strangers’ minds with a deck of cards and everyday objects.
“I think a lot of magicians get interested in magic when they’re children. They’ll get a kit and it just kind of takes off,” Brielle said. “But as a kid, magicians didn’t look like me. They were all men.”
In summer 2022, when Brielle landed a tech job for a language-learning company in Chicago, she sat at a magic show among strangers. After years studying the human mind, she was struck by how the performance slowed down time in the room.
“I was just sitting there looking around and in awe of everyone,” she said. “They weren’t thinking about their grocery list or what they had to do when they got home. They were just in the moment.”
Brielle’s first brush with magic arrived at 28, while she was substitute teaching in her hometown. It followed a particularly grueling day in the classroom — one that left her distraught after a student screamed in her face. As she sat there, shaken, a colleague and local magician named Michael T. Myers suggested a different way to engage the students.
“He saw me after school and was like, ‘You know, I show the kids a magic trick to keep their attention. Let’s go to McDonald’s and I’ll teach you some magic,’” Brielle said.
While Myers planted the mystic seed in a McDonalds booth, Brielle described later seeing magic in Chicago as feeling like “love at second sight.”
“I went up to the magician after the show, and I said, ‘I want to be a magician. Take my money,’ and he was like, ‘What is wrong with you?’” she said. “It was just this knowing moment. I had gone through all these other things where it felt kind of right but not fully my thing.”
Shortly after, Brielle quit her tech job and saved six months of rent to pursue magic full time. She began cutting her teeth at bars, restaurants and birthday parties across Chicago — a journey that eventually led her to the stage of the nationally televised magic competition show “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” in 2024.
“There are 700 people, all these studio cameras in your face and you’re meeting Penn and Teller on stage for the first time,” Brielle said. “I had been watching them since I was a kid, so it was just terrifying. But I was also just so happy to be there, and looking back now, it doesn’t feel real.”
While Brielle didn’t fool the magicians, the opportunity led her to monthly residencies at North Side venues such as Dovetail; Beard & Belly, 6157 N. Broadway; Hop Butcher for the World, 4257 N. Lincoln Ave.; and Hexe Coffee, 2000 W. Diversey Parkway. She’s stepping into a long-standing tradition of Chicago-style tavern magic, a close-up sleight-of-hand table magic born in the city’s German bar scene.
Steve Quartell, Dovetail’s taproom manager, said bringing Brielle in for a tavern magic event last year was a way to “bring that history back to life.”
“Seeing how engaged everyone was at that event, it seemed like a no-brainer to go on showcasing such a distinctive and uniquely Chicago style of magic every month in our taproom,” Quartell said.
Brielle’s residency is bringing back “that sense of wonder we all had before we started taking ourselves so seriously all the time,” he said.
Brielle’s next performances are 6-9 p.m. May 5 at Dovetail; 6-9 p.m. May 6 at Beard & Belly; 6-9 p.m. May 7 at Hop Butcher For The World and 3-6 p.m. May 15 at Hexe Coffee.
While she respects the history of the craft, Brielle isn’t interested in cliches.
“Please stop asking me if I can bring my rabbit to your party,” Brielle said with a laugh. “I don’t use animals in my magic.”
For those waiting for the “perfect” moment to follow a similar spark, Brielle’s advice is simple: don’t wait.
“There’s never a right time to do something,” she said. “If you feel deep down, ‘I really want to do this,’ do it. Do it terrified.”
Chicago-based magician Brielle Kawalek poses for a picture at Dovetail Brewery on Thursday, Apr. 9, 2026. Kawalek’s monthly residency at the brewery aims to revive the city’s historic tradition of tavern magic. Credit: Kimberly Rosette
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