The Return of the Escape Artist

I really thought by now I'd be out of the escape business. A health issue that started about 10 years ago really put a damper on it so I pretty much dropped all escapes. But the recent request by AtlasObscura.com to participate in their Houdini Escapes DC event, changed all that.

I decided to do a 30 minute escape act with chains, locks, handcuffs, ropes and more. And I jumped in full force, which was a mistake. After the first couple days of rehearsing a serious problem crept up. My wrists and arms were turning black and blue. It was my own fault. I was trying to put on cuffs that were just too tight. This then caused them to swell and I continued to put them on and then they bruised. All the vintage cuffs got dropped because they were too tight. I was really upset about this, but it was unavoidable. However....

I remembered a ploy that Houdini used on cuffs he wasn't sure about. He would have them put onto other cuffs and not on his own wrists. They were still among the mix of cuffs and looked really dramatic, but were not a problem when it came to escaping. So I used a pair of darbies in the middle of several pair of Smith and Wesson and Peerless cuffs. I finished it off with a pair of thumbscrews which can be held in place with a padlock. It made an impressive looking escape.

Houdini used his 'ghost house' to escape from. This was a small black curtained cabinet that he would

kneel into to escape from his cuffs. I used a hooped curtain from a sub-trunk routine. The cuffs came off one at a time and were thrown from the curtain enclosure. The last thing to come off were the thumbscrews which I did in the open.

OH, I almost forgot, the OPENING number! This involved several escapes back to back to back. A chain/lock escape, an escape from a pair of Hamburg 8s, and then a reverse escape. I tossed a 2 foot length of rope into a sack, reached in and came out a moment later with my hands securely tied. It got a good laugh from the audience!

The final escape in the show was the 100 foot rope tie escape which I have not done in ages. I found two people in the audience to tie me up. It took them about 3 minutes to do the tying. The escape took  about 2 minutes. The 100 foot rope tie escape is fun because it's never the same no matter how many times it's done. Everyone takes a different approach to the tying. Some people are very serious about it and do a very firm job. Others don't quite have the knack and I'll need to give them suggestions along the way, like KEEP IT TIGHT and tie it around the wrists, or don't forget this or that. The two people who tied me during the Houdini event did a pretty good job.

So is that it? Have I put the escape stuff back in the closet for good? Actually no. I decided to keep it out and put it back into my show. It's going to be a regular feature. I'll be adding several other escapes as well with the addition of something dangerous to escape from. I already have a couple dangers escapes I can add, so we'll see if I use one of those or get something different. Keep watching!!!!!