In the 90’s I was a “close-up” magician at Magic Island in Houston. It was a fun job but grueling when it got busy. I had a small theatre that seated 28, and I would perform up to 15 shows in one evening. I worked mainly on weekend nights, and as the evening wore on the attendees would get more and more intoxicated. This could be good and bad!

One night around Midnight I walked into a packed room to begin my show, and there were three young women sitting in the front row with drinks in their hand. They were obviously celebrating a girls night out, and they were drunk out of their minds. I mean BLASTED. Swaying, and yelling and high-fiving. One of the women had gotten up and was lying on my close-up magic table singing as loud as she could. The rest of the audience was simultaneously amused and annoyed. Many of them had waited in line for a long time to get into the show and didn’t want their experience ruined. After about five minutes of effort I was able to get the singing woman back to her seat in the front, and I began my show. Or at least tried to begin. The three women were getting more and more loud and obnoxious, and they were killing the show. I tried all of my usual techniques to get them to calm down, including getting in their personal space and involving them directly. Nothing worked. The audience was getting annoyed, and the show was going nowhere. It became clear to me that these women had to go.

I had never kicked anyone out of my show before, but I’d seen other magicians do it, and it was always a disaster in my opinion. It always changed the tone of the show in a negative way and made it hard for the performer to recover. I decided to try a different method. I stopped my act. I picked up my handcuffs (from a Houdini routine I sometimes do) and approached the women. I helped one of the ladies to her feet and told her that she was going to be the star of the next trick! She squealed in delight. I informed her that these handcuffs were going to disappear from my wrists and reappear on hers. More squealing. She was excited.

I said, “It gets better! To make it even more impossible the handcuffs will pass right through the wall!” She was jumping up and down and loving it! As I was selling her on this great idea I was backing her closer and closer toward the door. I kept on talking and backing her up until she was standing in the hall. I said, “Are you ready??!!” She squealed, “YES!” and with that I shut the door and locked it. I threw out my arms in the applause position and the crowd went wild. They knew she was not coming back. I started back into my show, and one of the other drunk ladies said, “HEY, WHERE’S MY FRIEND?” I said, “Oh no, I forgot about her. Let’s go find her. I escorted her into the hall and closed the door again. The crowd went crazy again.

I walked up to the third woman and said, calmly, “We’re going to be very good, aren’t wet we?” She nodded her head and sat quietly for the rest of the show!

The next crowd that came in had witnessed this from the other side of the wall and figured out what had happened. I walked in to the next show and said, “Who wants to get kicked out?”