Kent Family Magic Circus Daily Blog: Spring Update: Shows, New Stuff and More

A couple of months back I published a picture of Victor Junior standing in his new escape, the 55 gallon drum escape. At that time we were thinking of having him just escape from the sealed drum. The problem is that it would not really be an escape because there was no way he could reach the locks to pick them. Sure he would have to pick the leg and hand cuffs then manage to dematerialize and somehow reappear outside the sealed drum. The first thing the modern audience would think is "Trick drum". We actually went through ideas of gimmicking-up the drum somehow to allow that to happen. It would be like Houdini's Milk Can Escape that has been revealed by multiple people on TV and is all over the internet and in books. A Houdini biographer, Walter Gibson, even described how it was done over 60 years ago. In fact, we actually thought of buying one for thousands of dollars when my kids asked me what a Milk Can was. Oh, yeah, outside magicdom and old farm equipment collectors nobody knows what a Milk Can is. And truth be told no milk can was ever made big enough to hold an adult. That is why we went with oil drum. But instead of trying to gimmick it up to facilitate a magic trick we decided to make it a full tilt escape. Victor's hands come up out of two 3 1/2" holes and are cuffed with real police handcuffs that can be fully inspected by the audience. The drum likewise, the whole thing...lid, locks, clasps, top bottom, dolly, etc can be inspected to the audience's content. Victor wears a skin tight bike-tard (a leotard with bike shorts cut, like in wrestling). He is fully inspected for keys. Even if he had one his hands are chained outside the barrel so he couldn't reach it anyways. I give him a hair pin. That is all. He will attempt the escape by picking the cuffs then the locks, which are barely within reach through the holes...all while trying to hold his breath with that hair pin.

So you can see this is going to be an exciting stunt. He will present it without the water this coming week end at the Colusa Family Fair at the Colusa County fairgrounds.

That segues us into the up coming shows. We perform tomorrow 10 am -2pm at the Colusa County Fairgrounds at the Family fair in conjunction with Western Days.
We will be at San Rafael's Trinity Lutheran Church on the morning of April 7th and at Stockton's First Baptist Church Easter Sunday Morning for two big shows.

To celebrate World Circus Day on April 21 we will be at Oroville's Feather River and Recreation's Gymnastic academy to perform our circus stunts and have hands on demonstrations and activities. It's Free.

May 11 at 5:30pm after the Feather Fiesta Day's Kiddie Parade we will have our Big Theater Show at the Historic State Theater. Guest strolling magician JC Dunn will perform strolling magic in the lobby prior to the show. Tickets are $10 for adults and $6 for kids.