Tomorrow marks 100 years since the sawing-a-woman-in-half magic trick was first performed. As a UK magic club virtually celebrates the occasion, PC Sorcar Jr and daughter, Maneka, recall the act’s richer history in India
Maneka Sorcar. Pic Courtesy/Getty
The audience at London’s Finsbury Park Empire was left aghast on January 17, 1921, when British magician PT Selbit sawed his attendant in half, and then revived her unharmed. Selbit’s performance which inspired several dismembering acts - mostly involving women - was regarded as the first documented instance of the sawing-in-half act. And this Sunday, a London-based magicians’ club, The Magic Circle, is set to tip its hat to the trick with an online event.
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PC Sorcar Sr getting ready to cut a woman in half in London in 1956. Pic Courtesy/ Getty
London magic
Michael J Fitch, the magician hosting the show, reveals that iconic sorcerers will give viewers a lowdown on what it’s like to be outside, and inside the box. “David Copperfield will show various versions and his own original development - [with] his Death Saw,” he informs via an email interaction. Fitch adds that Debbie McGee, wife and onstage partner of British TV star-magician Paul Daniels, “who was probably sliced and diced more than anyone else on the planet” will speak about her experience. The line-up also includes entertainer Richard Caddell and his puppet Sooty.
PC Sorcar Jr. Pic/Facebook
Big Indian moment
Among the countless illusions that followed Selbit’s first performance, is the iconic moment when PC Sorcar Sr, who redefined the art of magic in India, sliced his assistant during a live BBC telecast in 1956. His son, PC Sorcar Jr, a Merlin Award recipient, shares that while Selbit’s act involved sawing his assistant locked in a wooden box, PC Sorcar Sr’s genius lay in exposing his assistant, without any cover.
“During the rehearsals, he sawed through the woman and patched her up just fine. But during the live show, the moment he split her in half, BBC’s time ran out, leaving the audience tongue-tied in suspense. Viewers forgot all about the ensuing news bulletin; phone lines were jammed with inquiries if the assistant was alive!” reminisces Sorcar Jr, a third-grader then.
Kolkata-based Sorcar Jr, who has performed technologically advanced versions of the same, tells us although Selbit’s performance is completing 100 years, the concept’s history in India dates back thousands of years: “The act of dismembering a person’s body and putting the pieces back together through magic has existed since the madaris, who performed magic on the streets. It’s inspired by the rasa, or the desire to revive dear injured ones. As madaris didn’t wear suits, and weren’t British, they didn’t make it to history books.” In fact, the madaris’ excellence lay in performing the trick without any access to stage comforts, surrounded by the public’s gaze, points out Sorcar’s magician daughter Maneka, whose recent act in Paris was a tribute to the street magicians. “It involved covering a man with a cloth, plunging a dagger into him, pulling out his head five feet away, and then, restoring him,” she claims.
Role of women assistants
In the line-up for The Magic Circle’s online event, Dr Naomi Paxton, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer, is set to explore the trick’s ties with the suffrage movement, which was all the rage then. When we ask why it’s mostly women who’ve served as assistants for the act, Maneka notes that in India, however, women didn’t really have a place in showbiz back then. “When madaris performed, their assistants were mostly boys. In the West, though, they preferred to leverage a woman’s sex appeal to distract the audience - that’s still the norm of the day. But in the Indian Indrajal, the focus was on the illusion as it was aimed at the entertainment of the masses,” she elaborates, adding in one act, her mother has sawed through Sorcar Jr, too. Talk about casting a spell.
On: January 17, 11.30 pm IST
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