WHAT IT IS A classic stage magic stunt
WHY YOU WON’T DO IT The consequences of a slip of the hand are unthinkable
Legend has it that this popular illusion was first performed by a magician named Torrini in 1809 for the delight of Pope Pius VII. Fortunately, no humans need be injured in the making of this dazzling spectacle. A foot model who is willing to maintain their anonymity, however, may come in handy …
Nice though the story is, there is sadly no contemporary evidence for the tale of Torrini performing his trick for dubious papal pleasure. The first properly documented performance took place at St George’s Hall in London as recently as 1920, when one P.T. Selbit entertained an invited audience by locking his assistant in a large wooden case. The coffin-like cabinet was then lifted onto a set of trestles, with Selbit seemingly sawing through the assistant’s midriff, before pulling the sections of the box apart. The assistant was then released from the box and, to everyone’s delight, was shown to be unharmed.
The next great development came in 1921, when an American magician called Horace Goldin worked out how to keep the assistant’s head and feet visible for the duration. Blessed with a well-developed business brain, Goldin secured a patent for his technology and effectively blocked other illusionists from practising the trick in the USA for several years. But unfortunately for him, by applying for the patent he necessarily put his technology into the public domain, allowing anyone interested enough to read all about it. In subsequent decades, the trick has been performed in ever slicker and more impressive forms, but you can still turn heads (and perhaps a few stomachs) with the Goldin method described below.
Most importantly, you need a pair of assistants. Tradition says that they should be pretty, female and quite scantily clad (though in this age of equal opportunities, there’s no reason not to bisect men if you so choose). You’ll also need a specially designed wooden cabinet, and a deeper-than-normal table with a hollowed-out top. At the midpoint of the box, there needs to be a footrest that stops about halfway down the cabinet’s depth. The bottom half of the cabinet has a discreet trap door that exactly aligns with a similar trap door in the top of the table, plus two holes from which the feet appear. The top half of the cabinet has a hole big enough so that a head may stick out of it.
Before your audience arrives, one of your assistants (let’s assume you’re a traditionalist, and call her Assistant Two) needs to secrete herself in the hollowed out table top.
With the audience in place and yearning to be amazed, introduce Assistant One. Over-the-top hand gestures and other signs of flamboyance are not essential but they always go down well and can help distract the audience from thinking too much about what else is going on. Now open the sturdy locks on the lid of the cabinet and swing it open, allowing Assistant One to slip gracefully into the cabinet.
Now comes the ‘magic’. As Assistant One takes up position, spin the table so that the audience can see her head at one end and feet at the other. While the feet end is out of sight for the audience, Assistant One contorts herself so that her own feet are nestling on the footrest, while Assistant Two pokes her feet through the trap doors and pops them out through the holes at the bottom of the cabinet (giving the toes a flamboyant wiggle for good measure as they come back into the audience’s view).
Using whatever sawing device you prefer, cut through the middle of the cabinet, just along from the underside of the footrest. You’re effectively cutting through thin air inside the cabinet but Assistant One might like to crank up the tension by giving a blood-curdling scream or two. Now insert a couple of metal plates to hide the cabinet’s interior from view – your audience should believe this is to protect them from the terrible, bloody mess held therein. Finally, pull the top half of the cabinet away from the bottom, and enjoy the gasps of the enraptured crowd.
After milking the applause for as long as you feel comfortable, put the two halves of the cabinet back together again. Remove the metal plates and give the cabinet a tap so that Assistant Two knows she should hide her feet back in the table top. Assistant One can now emerge completely unscathed from the cabinet to yet more applause and general adulation.
