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 joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?
Our first paying performance was back in 2013 at The Maury County Fair. We were thrilled to be performing for “My Day at The Fair” for a group of students from the Kings Daughters School, which offers special educational opportunities for children and young adults with special needs. We hoped it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to bring some joy and magic into this special day for our audience. Unfortunately, it was the middle of August in Middle TN, extremely hot, and our stage, aside from being far out of the way of the rest of the fair, was in full sun. There was no shade for us and absolutely none for our audience. Our performance area was also not provided with chairs for our audience to sit in, and though we did our best to put on a good show despite these conditions, we noticed that our audience was really struggling to bear the heat and glare from the sun. As performers, you know something is terribly wrong when you can notice this from the stage. What our audience needed wasn’t a magic show. They needed to get to a place to sit down in the shade with a bottle of water, and as long as we were performing, that couldn’t happen. We cut our show short, skipped to the finale, thanked everyone for coming, and when the show was over, we talked to the event coordinator responsible for hiring us and explained the situation.
She agreed that the original situation was not the best, so she moved us to a tent with shade. We were grateful to be in the shade, where our audience wouldn’t be fainting from heat exhaustion, but the tent drastically shrunk our performance area. Now, our audience for the next show would have seats and tables, but there was no stage. Not only was there no stage, the grass under the tent hadn’t been mowed in a while and the grass, which was covered in bugs, came up to our knees. This severely limited the illusions and escapes we could perform and we had to rearrange our show on the spot. While in the middle of rearranging the show, the winner of the “Fairest of the Fair” beauty contest stopped by with her entourage for a quick interview and some pictures. The pictures and the interview went by in a blur, we were so overwhelmed and distracted. Everyone’s makeup was melting off our faces, needing constant touch ups. However, the “Fairest of Fair”seemed like a lovely and genuinely sweet person, and we hope she’s had a great measure of success since that day.
We have to pause and laugh about it now, because if we had had more “sense” we might have quit our magic career that day, but we pressed on. And we were excited about it!
Our Aunt and little cousins came to see our next show that day, and they brought us a beautiful bouquet of roses. Looking back, the roses must have seemed terribly out of place, considering our new situation. Still, it was such a sweet gesture and we were (and still are) grateful for their support.
For the performers reading this, if all that doesn’t sound bad enough, as we were in the middle of our final performance that day (there were three), the event coordinator who had hired us, repeatedly interrupted our show using a microphone and loudspeaker. It should probably be noted that we didn’t have microphones and our speaker that played our music, wasn’t nearly as loud as hers. Our set was already shortened, we were wading through the knee-high grass, it was swelteringly hot, and because the fair rides and the surrounding bands were so loud, our audiences dwindled each show and we struggled to hold their attention. The interruptions broke our own attention and made our performance even more difficult to hold together, but we survived.
We were paid $100 for the ordeal, plus free tickets to the fair and unlimited rides. We enjoyed those immensely, and though we were already tired and somewhat dehydrated, we rode ourselves silly on those brightly colored, twinkling fair rides.
We had a great time until we rode a ride called the “Fireball,” a small coaster that repeatedly turned its riders upside down in a circle. We went on that ride as one of the last rides of the day and as we were having a blast, the key ring in Sher’ril’s pocket seemed to float into the air, inside the coaster’s cart. The key ring held all our keys to our locks and it was floating in front of Sher’ril’s face in slow motion. When Sher’ril reached to grab the keys, the coaster turned right side up and they dropped with a terrifying clank.
From the ground, our parents couldn’t see the keys floating in the cart, but they could see Sher’ril’s happy face suddenly look pale and terrified. In addition to the prior events of the day, our keys were nearly lost forever. Thankfully though, the keys were found underneath the seat of the cart and our keys were safe.
To this day, we’re not exactly sure what kept up our determination to continue our career. That entire day was a crazy fever dream that even now, doesn’t seem real. We are so grateful that we did keep performing and have had many better show experiences.
Sher’ril & Samantha, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
For those who’ve never heard or read of us, we are Sher’ril & Samantha: Escape Artists Extraordinaire. We’ve been performing classic magic and escapes as well as out our own original illusions and escapes since 2012. We primarily perform in the Middle TN area, however, we’ve had a few performances in other states such as PA, KY, AL, VA, and WV. We’re honored to be talking with the wonderful people here at Canvas Rebel and have thoroughly enjoyed our previous interviews with them as well as with the people at Nashville Voyager, and The Chainletter, a specific publication for escape artists. As our online presence has grown, we’ve been blessed to gather a few fans from all over the world. We have some wonderful fans and followers on the East Coast, the West Coast, in the UK, and the Netherlands. The kindness and encouragement shown to us by our fans and followers in their messages, the fan art, memes, fan fiction, and the TikTok fan page have been amazing to us and we’re so grateful for all their support. One of our fans, Patrick, has actually bought tickets to two of our shows, despite living too far to travel and experience the magic in person. It’s an act of kindness he doesn’t have to do, but it’s always greatly appreciated.
Though we’re proud of each successful performance, especially the ones that sell out, it’s the ability to connect and interact with our fans and followers that we’re really proud of. Performing magic isn’t about sleight of hand, flashy costumes, and straitjackets. For us, it’s about bringing fun and joy to others, watching faces light up with wonder, and making meaningful connections.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Last year, we had an amazing turn out to our Christmas show, “Magic at the Cabin.” Our show had sold out and the venue was bursting at the seams with excited people. What most people don’t know, however, is that “Magic at the Cabin” almost didn’t happen. We were originally scheduled to perform that show in September. We thought we were doing a fantastic job of advertising and were posting and practicing almost daily. Unfortunately, one week before the show, Brad, the owner of the venue, contacted us and said we had only sold about 10-11 tickets. If we failed to sell one more ticket, the show would either be rescheduled, or it would be called off completely.
We were going through a difficult time, enduring a bit of burnout, and this news did nothing to encourage us. We we’re actually seriously considering just calling the show off, but Samantha suggested that we let Brad decide. We gave him the option to reschedule, but also said we understood if he wanted to cancel the show. No worries either way. And that’s when the real magic started happening.
Brad decided to reschedule and looking back, we’re so grateful that he did. The show was rescheduled for December and we had to figure out what happened with our original plan and why we had sold so few tickets. Turns out, despite our very best uneducated efforts, our advertising was only mediocre. We started doing some research, reading articles, watching YouTube videos on how to advertise events, what turns an online audience into a group of in-person attendees, etc.
Our minds were blown. With each new piece of information, we realized that for ten years, the entirety of our career, we had been doing advertising all wrong. We took notes, made a new plan, and went all out with our new advertising strategies. To be honest, it was exhausting. Neither of us consider social media advertising to be our passion or our strong suit. But the work paid off. We went from only selling 10 tickets, to selling out the entire show with just a few months’ time and newly acquired knowledge.
Since then, we’ve learned even more about advertising events and have come up with ways to make the social media advertising easier and simpler, so that it’s still effective, but not as mentally exhausting or distracting from our real work of practicing and performing.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Seeing as Houdini is one of our biggest influences, it’s likely not a surprise that we find ourselves envying his era of entertainment. Houdini lived during the “Golden Age” of Magic, when magicians were more than performers for children’s birthday parties and their tricks weren’t being revealed on TV shows or YouTube videos. Houdini’s time was a time of legend and one of our dreams is to see the beginning of a new “Golden Age” of Magic and Theater.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sherrilandsamantha.wixsite.com/escape-artists
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sherrilandsamantha?igshid=NzZlODBkYWE4Ng==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SherrilAndSamantha?mibextid=PzaGJu
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@sherrilandsamantha-escapea3446?si=BTwr0rKb49KljNUx