We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sher’ril & Samantha Knox. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sher’ril & Samantha below.
Sher’ril & Samantha, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
Ten years ago, when Sher’ril was turning 14 and Samantha, 10, we had our first performance of “The Great Snuggie Escape” in our parents’ living room. We had strung Christmas lights along the floor and laid out red and blue toy lightsabers for accent lighting. Sher’ril was wrapped in a Snuggie and bound with as many scarves and belts as we could find. At that point, we weren’t really considering a career in anything. We were just two sisters having fun being kids and showing off a new “talent” that we’d acquired. However, our parents seemed genuinely impressed with the performance of the Snuggie Escape, as silly as it was, and, encouraged by their enthusiasm, we began to really consider a career in magic and escapology.
The next day, we began choosing a name for our act. We chose the name “Sher’ril & Samantha: Escape Artists Extraordinaire” to highlight the specific area of magic that we most often perform and for Sher’ril, who’s first name is Michal, to avoid being called “Michal the Magician” or “Magic Mike.”
We knew we had to perform more impressive escapes and illusions than “The Great Snuggie Escape,” so we began brainstorming and listing all the illusions and escapes we’d like to either create or learn. Magicians guard the secrets to their best illusions extremely well, so finding good learning resources was, and at times still is, incredibly difficult. To this day, we’ve had very little professional training. We still create the majority of our illusions, escapes, and routines.
Starting out, we had grand ideas and hopes of emulating our biggest influences in magic: Harry Houdini, David Copperfield, and Penn and Teller, so a lot of the escapes we dreamed up in those early days are very large, very dramatic, and still haven’t been used. Every now and then, we’ll go through our folder that holds all of these ideas and say “Wow, we should totally perform this one day!” Maybe when we find the right stage and situation for those ideas, we will. We certainly hope to.
After creating a name, expanding our repertoire, and practicing, we had our first professional performance on Oct. 31st, 2012. Our father worked as a teacher at the local middle school and arranged a show of magic and escapes for the fifth and sixth grade classes in the school auditorium. Performing our first show on the 86th anniversary of Houdini’s death was a dream come true! We’re pleased to say that it went very well, considering it was our first time in front of an audience of over 200 people. Buzzing with excitement from the success of our first professional performance, we felt invincible!
Since then, we’ve continued to repeat the process of expanding our repertoire, practicing, and performing, always improving our acts and shows.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We perform magic and escapes with a classic storytelling style. Oftentimes, we’ll take a classic illusion or escape that has been performed for years upon years and incorporate it into a choreographed routine, changing it and reworking it to fit our personalities and the story we’re telling onstage. When we learn a new illusion or “trick,” we hardly ever use the script that’s included in the instruction book. As mentioned before, many of our illusions and escapes are original to us and created by ourselves and our team. Sometimes they’re large effects or escapes and very easy for our audiences to notice, such as Sher’ril’s signature “Triple Layer Escape.” And sometimes they’re small, “filler” illusions that we insert into our routines to help the story of each act move forward. Often, the “filler” illusions are the hardest to create, since there’s always a very specific need for them and the illusions that follow.
Each show is designed to have routines that flow into each other, alternating between the comedic and serious, the solo acts and team routines, acts with audience participation and dramatic, theatrical illusions. We like to create smooth transitions in our shows that build into our grand finale, instead of having choppy transitions where we switch from one “trick” and escape to the next, with little to no introduction or context.
Our shows are always family-friendly and appropriate for all ages. Some people believe that means our shows are only entertaining for small children, but we really don’t perform for any particular age group. Our performances are safe for small children as there’s no foul language, indecency, or adult humor, but still very entertaining for teens and adults as well. We’ve had both adults and teens laughing at our jokes, staring open mouthed, and sitting on the edges of their seats in almost every show. We’re pleased to say that we’ve befuddled, bewildered, and blown the minds of more than several teens and adults in our time.
One of our favorite things about performing together is how well we work as a team. Our skills and performance styles compliment each other perfectly. Sher’ril is best at performing the physically taxing escapes and magic routines that require a witty and playful script, while Samantha is best at sleight of hand and routines that rely heavily on physical comedy. This helps us give our audiences plenty of variety in our shows and it helps us to make things move smoothly. While one sister is onstage performing, the other is backstage preparing.
It’s no secret that most magicians and illusionists are men, so just by being female, we stand out a little from the majority of our performing peers. Another thing that sets us apart is that we’re both accomplished escape artists. Samantha wows our audiences with her unique performance of “Tom Horn’s Belt” and Sher’ril performs several of Houdini’s classic escapes as well as her “Triple Layer Escape.”
We love working together, building on each other’s strengths, making the perfect show that everyone can enjoy.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
We love reading and listening to books on finance, entrepreneurship, and self improvement in general. Some of our favorites so far are “The Art of Money Getting” by P.T. Barnum, “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss, “Psycho-Cybernetics” by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale, and books in the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series by Robert Kiyosaki. These books have fantastic nuggets of financial and life wisdom that can positively impact anyone’s life, whether a business owner, performer, artist, or general employee. “The Art of Money Getting” by P. T. Barnum is particularly inspiring as much of the advice within is still valuable and useable in today’s world, though it was published in 1880. It also holds special meaning for us as magicians and performers since it’s advice written by the world’s most famous showman.
For us, reading the personal histories of classic magicians such as Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Chung Ling Soo, and Robert Houdin is a great way to learn how they succeeded in their performance careers. Though the world of magic and escapology was different than it is today, we can relate personally to some of their struggles, unexpected setbacks, and triumphs. Learning about the great magicians of the past has given us the needed boost to keep performing when the going (inevitably) gets tough.
In any business, it’s important to keep your goals in the forefront of your mind, observe competition, and learn strategies for success. The way we do all of these is through entertainment. We enjoy watching movies and TV shows about magicians such as “Houdini” 1953, “The Illusionist” 2006, and “The Magician” 1973-1974. Watching Paul Daniels, Penn and Teller, David Copperfield TV specials often sparks our creativity and we get new ideas of how to better emulate our influences in our performances or how we can perform a classic illusion differently than how we see on the screen. We watch, not only to be entertained, but to observe, learn, dissect, and create.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
There are lots of ways for performers, magicians in particular, to find new clients. In our experience, some of the best sources of new clientele are charity performances and volunteer work. We’ve performed for retirement homes and rehab facilities, charity fundraisers, events for special needs groups, and more. It’s a great way to help out in the community and be involved in a good cause. And being involved in a good cause is a great way to meet people and become connected with potential clients. When you perform at charity events you can make connections with your audience members, their families, and fellow volunteers. All of these people may later be working at an event, hosting an event, or know of someone needing entertainment. If the connection is strong enough and they consider your act to be a good fit for the occasion, they’ll reach out. We’ve gotten several shows that way.
Doing charity performances is a great opportunity to try new material as well. You really get to see which routines audiences enjoy the most and you can make any necessary adjustments to improve your act.
The best thing about doing volunteer and charity work, though, is that you’re putting smiles on people’s faces. You’re doing something that can actually help them and you’re creating a memory for them that will last forever.
You may not get paid for a charity gig, most times you don’t. You may not immediately notice your phone ringing off the hook with new clients begging for you to perform, but that’s not the reason why you should be doing charity work. The new clients and the benefit of testing and improving your acts are just bonuses.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sherrilandsamantha.wixsite.com/escape-artists/home
- Instagram: @sherrilandsamantha
- Facebook: @sherrilandsamantha
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCE2lsWoXoBvEhO-Iq55BQMg