We’ve all seen it before. A magician comes out on stage with a box in front of him. He has his lovely (why are they always lovely?) assistant step into the long horizontal box, lying flat on her back. To the horror of the audience, the magician uses a massive saw to cut her body in half, then pulling the halves of her apart as proof this woman is now in two! Once put back together, the woman steps out, without a single scar or anything (magicians would make great plastic surgeons).
This has become such a well-known trick, performers rarely use it. Some magician broke the code many years ago and now the secret is almost common knowledge. But if you don’t know it, you’re in for treat. If you do, I promise to go into the history of the trick and still make this post at least a little interesting.
I actually find the history very funny. It is rumored (though it’s probably not true; I like to believe) the trick was first performed by a magician named Torrini in front of Pope Pius VII in 1809. I like to picture His Holy Excellency staring wide mouth at this magician who’s face probably looks like
and then the Pope promptly has him executed for witch craft.
Anyways….
The trick uses flexibility as its main source of amazement. The other key is the number of people involved in the trick. It appears there are only two people, the magician and his lovely helper, but there is a third person involved, one you never even see. There is a second female inside of the box who has been there since the beginning of the trick. Take a look at this lovely diagram which illustrates how the other person plays a role.
As you can imagine, person number two gets a little cramped after a while.
When the lovely assistant steps into the box, the other lady sticks her legs out the other end, creating the clever illusion that only one person is in the box.
As you may be getting this impression from my blog, the most crucial part of a great magic trick is a believable illusion. Any person can play off an illusion, but what makes a true magician is the presentation of an act! When was the last time you saw a magician with a monotone voice and an unenthusiastic attitude? Never! There is always dramatic music, loud noises, and unnecessary sound effects.
You should try this in your own life, it really makes for an exciting afternoon.
Back to the trick, there are actually many variations of this trick. Sometimes people use a buzz saw or really tiny boxes, but often the fundamental of the trick remains the same.
Hope you found this trick interesting!
“Sawing A Woman In Half.” American Heritage. Published March 23, 2007. http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1994/3/1994_3_34.shtml.
I agree with everyone that going into more detail with the history would’ve been very interesting. Additionally, since we all know how this trick works, it would’ve been a lot better for this post specifically. I still like your first post best so far because it was a big, clever trick I never heard of that I got to learn about. See if you can find more tricks like that that we probably don’t know.
I really liked the history part with the pope, I feel like you could’ve talked about that even a little more though. Even going forward, I think it would be really cool for you to cover the evolution of a particular trick in each post so we can see how magic has changed over time.
HAHA Great piece this week. Even though I knew(obviously) that they used 3 people, you still kept my attention. Good use of humor, you had the perfect amount in the right places. Can’t wait to read what you write next week!
Loved that bit about the pope. I do feel that maybe you could have touched on more details about the history, like what tools he used and how this trick evolved over time however I can understand that it might have been difficult to gather this information since some of the historical facts are only rumors.