As my title suggests, May has been a month of mysterious, dangerous and dark things! It's been very unusual and lots of fun!
The month began with an unusual gig- a client who wanted two snake charmers, so I was lucky enough to borrow Cinders for the night and go and look glamorous with our stunning snake charmer Arielle Firecracker for the opening night of a new restaurant. It was an unusual gig but lots of fun and working with Arielle and the girls (two huge pythons) was lovely!
This was followed by another outdoor event, the British weather was kind and it was an amazingly sunny day- this time for Escapes with Dr Diablo at Sheffield park. It was a huge event and we performed two twenty minute escape shows on the day. Jon Marshall was there with his flea circus and Sam the scam with his bunco booth as well as various walkabout performers to mingle with the crowds. As the photo gives away we played the escapes in a 'cops n robbers' theme, no matter how many ways I restrain him the Dr always manages to free himself, In our indoor show we finish on a double escape where we switch places and roles- its a great finale. For this one, I was actually rather nervous.... The finale of this show used the rigging. Dr Diablo performed the upside down straitjacket escape- one of Houdini's signature acts. It was an incredibly hot day and I was concerned about him possibly fainting. Its a genuinely dangerous act- he is tied in the straitjacket by an audience member then his feet are placed through a rope loop and he is winched up. At this position the sheer drop could kill him should anything go wrong, but there are extra risks, being upside causes the blood to rush to the head- this can result in dizziness and eventually passing out. His legs must remain rigid and flexed at all times, if he relaxes his legs the ropes could slip over his boots and he would fall, obviously if he faints, lack of leg control makes this inevitable... Then as if thats not impressive enough the daredevil puts a trolley up upright metal blades beneath him. The escape lasted approximately 2 minutes and I feel like I held my breath the whole duration. Safe to say the crowd loved it!
Johnny Strange and myself then got to work alongside Dr Diablo again at the end of the month when he invited us to the final Doomsday convention to be held at Castle Sneaton in Whitby . It was the fourth time I had performed there and the event will be moving to a new location next year so I hope to be. back again in the future. Whitby is such a cool little town, it has a strange old feel about it and though we didn't get time to explore because we went straight to the venue it was lovely to be back. The show was the Carnival Macabre and the three of us did a whole host of weird and unusual stunts in a full evening show. The show included many acts, some highlights were fire, razorblade swallowing, walking on broken glass, sword and dagger balancing, tennis racquet contortion, sword swallowing, the human blockhead, the blade box, strong man feats and an explosive escape. The audience at Doomsday are always amazing and were super responsive! This year we saw many regular attendees, friends, and made new ones. We spotted the super talented Reece Shearsmith in the audience who writes and acts in TV series for the BBC, Johnny couldn't resist a photo. He also got one with fellow multiple Guinness World Record Holder Stuart Burrell who is a professional strongman! Check out his records online!
Next month I'm off on an adventure again, this time I'm taking Johnny!
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