Sawing a lady in half!
Many years ago when I was first getting serious about performing professionally I built a “saw a lady in half” trick. It’s kind of cheesy and not really that much of a trick because I don’t even pull the lady apart. Just run the saw through her and she magically gets restored. But there’s a lot of comedy and I can use a lady from the audience that has no idea what’s going on.
One of the first times I did it a guy hired me to do a dinner show at the Bloomington Country Club. He asked about the tricks I was going to do and I mentioned the sawing trick. He said “oh man what if you sawed me in half and I pretended that you really hurt me! That could be a blast!” I wasn’t too thrilled about using a guy, or trying to make this look real, but he was the guy writing the check so I said OK. When the time came I had him come up and did the normal jokes and stuff, then sawed him in half. He had some kind of fake blood pill in his mouth that he bit and made blood come out of his mouth. I swear there was a lady on the front row that about passed out, and another one next to her that almost barfed. This guy thought it would be a real joke but it was a little too real for a few moments.
So I never will do that again. Not a great reputation builder for a comedy magician when you kill a guy. Although a few years later I performed in a “dinner mystery theatre” show at the Bumbleberry playhouse and they had me “kill” a girl with my sawing trick as part of the mystery for the evening. Worked great in this setting, someone was supposed to die. Just not at a nice dinner at the country club.
