14-Year-Old “Houdini” to Risk Life for Variety ShowInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Our Least Favorite Escape Picture

The Norwich
Evening News related the disturbing promotion of a 14-year-old magician
hoping to make a name for himself in his first show. We hope it is not young
Joshua Patient’s last show.

The paper described the trick thusly:

“The 14-year-old will be handcuffed, tied up and placed in an
airtight box with a bag belted around his neck. The box will be covered up and
then Joshua has only two minutes of breathing time in which to escape.

“It will be the first time that I’ve done it in front of a live audience, but
I’ve been practicing the act for ages,” said Joshua. “We wanted something that
people would remember, so we thought ‘escapology.’

“The rehearsals have been going quite well – we’ve been doing them for a
couple of months – but the escapology trick did go a bit wrong once. I did
manage to get out of it though.”

The Evening News reports the first half of the show will feature “mime, dance
and traditional magic from Joshua, a member of the Young Magic Club, involving
silks and water. The second half of the show will be completely different as
Joshua takes on a more modern magic phenomenon – mentalism. He will be doing
mind-reading, controlling people’s actions, predict random numbers, memorizing
every word in a book and much more.”

We’re not experts in the world of statistics and actuarial estimations
(although we did write a book in 1967 for an education publisher, The Benefic
Press titled Statistics and Actuarial Estimations – The Complete Subject. (New
York: Benefic Press 1967)) but we’re willing to guess a disastrous rehearsal
should be considered a substantial factor in predicting the outcome of a
performance in one’s first “big show.”

Good Luck to Master Patient.

Years from now, he will look back as all of us
have, and think “What the heck was I doing? I could have been killed!”
Spectacular Escape Expert Mark Cannon shared with us
his “Holy Cow!” moment for an article on Inside Magic. We recall almost drowning
at the bottom of a swimming pool and learning that knots are tougher to work
when wet and one’s ability to control fine motor movement diminishes directly
with the lack of oxygen available to the brain.

Our Least Favorite Escape Picture

The Norwich
Evening News related the disturbing promotion of a 14-year-old magician
hoping to make a name for himself in his first show. We hope it is not young
Joshua Patient’s last show.

The paper described the trick thusly:

“The 14-year-old will be handcuffed, tied up and placed in an
airtight box with a bag belted around his neck. The box will be covered up and
then Joshua has only two minutes of breathing time in which to escape.

“It will be the first time that I’ve done it in front of a live audience, but
I’ve been practicing the act for ages,” said Joshua. “We wanted something that
people would remember, so we thought ‘escapology.’

“The rehearsals have been going quite well – we’ve been doing them for a
couple of months – but the escapology trick did go a bit wrong once. I did
manage to get out of it though.”