Tag: escape artist

100 Foot Chain Escape

I don’t really do escapes in my show, except for my Straight Suit routine. Years ago I did a 100 foot chain escape, and I recently did it again at a street show at a fair.

This routine really builds a huge crowd. The nice thing about it is that it’s easy to understand what’s happening if you just walk up. You see someone being wrapped up in a lot of chain, you know they are going to get out.

My routine starts with a wrist restraint and ends with me getting out of it that restraint. The reason for that is I have a lot more control of how long the routine lasts and what the ending looks like than with just the chain. Also the starting position with my wrists secured and held out in front of my body allows me to more naturally hold the chain up, if gravity starts to loosen it too quickly before the escape starts.

It’s been probably 5 years since I’ve done the chain escape and I think I may be done with it. I might have aged out out it…or more realistically I’m too fat to do it. I can still escape from the chain, but it’s not believable when someone over weight does physical escapes. If I drop about 20 pounds, I think it would work better in the show and I’d reconsider doing it.

-Louie

Dead Spots…

One thing that I try to do in my show is eliminate dead spots. Places where nothing really interesting is happening. This is something that’s important to me, it gives the show a tight feel. Personally I really dislike it when nothing is happening in a show. Last week I saw went out to see … Continue reading “Dead Spots…”

One thing that I try to do in my show is eliminate dead spots. Places where nothing really interesting is happening. This is something that’s important to me, it gives the show a tight feel. Personally I really dislike it when nothing is happening in a show.


Last week I saw went out to see a show that was a bunch of side show acts. One thing I noticed was that in many of the acts there was a lot of dead time. For example someone did a strait jacket escape and during the locking in procedure, not much happened.

strait jacket escape

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it’s your artistic choice to have spaces where nothing is going on. You could do it to build tension, or whatever. Whenever I find these dead spots, I try to add a joke, music or bit to fill the space. I think it really helps to move the show along.