The Illusionists bring magic, mind-reading, escape to Little Rock

Jonathan Goodwin has learned that he can't escape from being buried alive when there is too much dirt piled on top of him.

He unearthed this fact when he was doing an experiment for a show with the Discovery Channel.

"It's really not possible to escape from a coffin buried six feet under the ground," Goodwin says. "What is above you weighs between five and seven tons. There's no air, and you can't breathe."

Goodwin is a part of a five-person team touring the country as a part of a two-hour magic show called "The Illusionists -- Live From Broadway" which will stop in Little Rock this Saturday. Though the Illusionists have been performing together for four years, this is their first time in Arkansas.

Goodwin, 37, is the only performer in the show who is not a magician.

Jeff Hobson, known as The Trickster, adds comedy to his magic tricks in the show. Kevin James, The Inventor, is a visual artist whose act has included sawing people in half or making them levitate.

The Manipulator, An Ha Lim, is an expert at handling cards, often pulling them out of thin air. The Deductionist, Colin Cloud, can seemingly read audience members' minds, guessing things like what they had for lunch or the kind of cars they drive.

Goodwin, known as The Daredevil, has experience with extreme escapes that is not limited to the carcasses of farm animals. He has been buried alive, burned at the stake and hung by his toes from a helicopter.

Goodwin says, "I read a book about [Harry] Houdini when I was 7 years old, and I guess like any 7-year-old kid, I was fascinated with the character of superheroes but Houdini was real. ...Once I realized that that was a job, I never wanted to do anything else."

He says he has one big escape in the Little Rock show. He will try to get out of handcuffs dangling 25 feet in the air before a circular saw swings to slice the rope. The catch is that he will be hanging onto the rope using only his teeth.

Not all of Goodwin's stunts have worked out, he says. For one trick, he was trying to disentangle himself from cords that held him to a bed. A hot iron was resting on a sheet suspended above him, and the goal was to escape before it burned through the sheet.

He wasn't out in time, and the iron smacked onto his bare chest.

"It was the iron that launched a career," he says.

Weekend on 02/01/2018