As a professional magician, Charlotte native Chris Hannibal does more than just pull a rabbit out of a hat. With over 20 years of performance experience, Hannibal has travelled all over the world, performing shows that have a unique motivational element for audiences. And with his upcoming show “Parlour Magic: An Evening of Intimate Astonishment” at CenterStage at NoDa, Hannibal hopes to make a personal impact on a hometown audience that he holds a little more dearly to his heart.

Creative Loafing: How would you describe your type of performance?

Hannibal: The magic that I do is more close-up and parlour style. It is a very intimate form of magic. It’s not big stage boxes and big bright lights and dancing girls and stuff like that; it’s a very old vaudeville style performance. It’s not just a magic show; it’s a one-man play about the storytelling aspect of what my grandpa taught me, and he taught me most of what I know. He was in the circus back in the 1930s and he learned sleight of hand from con artists and street hustlers, so he taught me basic sleight of hand and it kind of stuck. And I was good at it.

Sue and I didn’t come down to Charleston until six days after The Rapture was scheduled, so we never suspected. But surely the End of Days has come to Spoleto Festival USA. The evidence is everywhere, and Charlotte banks are part of the grand design:

• Wells Fargo Jazz has gone to church. Yes, there are still outdoor concerts at Cistern Yard on the College of Charleston campus and, right across St. Philip Street, indoor gigs at C of C’s Simons Center Recital Hall. Dianne Reeves and Karrin Allyson are the big names so far, and Trombone Shorty is still to come. But for the first time, the series formerly known as Wachovia Jazz had a series of concerts by Norwegian pianist/composer Ketil Bjørnstad, making his U.S. debut at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul. One more Ketil concert today at 6 p.m.

• Spoleto and Gian Carlo Menotti are reconciled after death. The founder of both the Italian and American Spoleto Festivals had a rather messy divorce in an earlier decade with the younger Charleston sibling, but now she’s celebrating Menotti’s 100^th birthday in with a production of the composer’s best opera, The Medium, with four more performances at Dock Street Theatre through June 10. Other music theater events worth checking out are The Gospel at Colonus and The Magic Flute.

• Spoleto Festival USA is reviving a production that closed off-Broadway two seasons ago after getting a four-star review in the Loaf from Perry Tannenbaum. Sue and I saw the Druid Theatre production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan when it played at the Atlantic Theatre Company in December 2008. It’s time-sharing with The Medium at Dock Street Theatre through June 12.

• If all these signs and portents aren’t enough, let it be known that the Bank of America Chamber Music series is publishing their programs in advance! Not only has the veil been lifted from the contents of each concert (though the traditional chalkboard remains in the Dock Street Theatre lobby), you can now find out who will be playing every piece in all 11 programs – 33 lunchtime concerts in all through June 12. The info is printed in the Festival’s comprehensive program book, and it’s also online ! The cloud list does omit the players, so that’s Beethoven’s Cello Sonata #5 today at 11am and 1pm.

All of these events are recommended. We’ll have a more detailed rundown on Spoleto 2011 next week.

It’s a touchy business messing around with our legends in America, where we cherish our villains as much as our heroes. Concocting alternate histories is a popular sport nevertheless, targeting with especial gusto those public figures who leave us sensationally: JFK, Elvis and Osama, for example. The speed at which people were saying Bin Laden lives – seemingly while the Prez was announcing his death – was particularly impressive.

Before he more famously messed with history in A Walk in the Woods (1988) and Cobb (1989), Lee Blessing wrote the play he now calls The Authentic Life of Billy The Kid, currently running at Tate Hall, upstairs from the Halton Theater on the CP campus. The playwright not only gives The Kid an afterlife, bringing him back to New Mexico 27 years after he was gunned down, he meticulously deconstructs the whole Wild Western mythmaking process. The title of Blessing’s play is exactly the same as the book Sheriff Pat Garrett wrote after killing Billy, partly to cash in on his celebrity and partly to refute the evidence that his adversary was unarmed.

Ah, but Blessing knows that Garrett wasn’t the true author of his book, so the Sheriff’s ghostwriter, Ash Upson, becomes the engine that drives his non-authenticated plot. Upson finds Garrett in bad financial straits – for he truly did squander his chances for fame, wealth and glory in his later years – and proposes that the old Sheriff go on tour and re-enact his famous showdown with The Kid. To make it all the more believable, Ash has The Kid – or a brash imposter – waiting outside Garrett’s shambling ranch house.