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modern performance object
An Actual Escape Garment
Listen to the story
Narrated by Dominic
This is not a photograph of a straightjacket. The garment itself is mounted inside the frame, which rather improves the stakes.
01
Unlike the printed works in the tour, this is a three-dimensional performance object. The white canvas garment is folded against a dark backing so its sleeves, straps, buckles, and signs of use remain visible. The frame turns working apparatus into an artifact without disguising what it was built to do.
Straightjackets have a painful association with psychiatric institutions and the coercive restraint of people in distress. Their history belongs to a wider record of treatment that could be dehumanizing and, at times, barbaric. Modern mental health care places strict limits on restraint and favors safer, less restrictive responses. In popular culture, the straightjacket now survives most visibly as escape apparatus, where a consenting performer chooses the danger and controls the presentation.
The framed object is an authentic, used performance straightjacket donated by Scott Hitchcock.
02
This straightjacket was donated to Poe’s Magic Theatre by Scott Hitchcock, the Las Vegas magician who performed escapes in the actual garment. It is not a replica made for display and not a picture standing in for the object.
Hitchcock remains an active performer. By preserving the used garment, the theatre can recognize both the ingenuity of the escape act and the more difficult institutional history from which its imagery was borrowed.
“An escape prop with a history beyond the stage”
Welcome to the Magic Poster Tour at Poe’s Magic Theatre, inside the historic Lord Baltimore Hotel.
This stop features Scott Hitchcock’s Performance Straightjacket, a modern performance object piece billed as “An Actual Escape Garment.”
Unlike the printed works in the tour, this is a three-dimensional performance object. The white canvas garment is folded against a dark backing so its sleeves, straps, buckles, and signs of use remain visible. The frame turns working apparatus into an artifact without disguising what it was built to do.
Straightjackets have a painful association with psychiatric institutions and the coercive restraint of people in distress. Their history belongs to a wider record of treatment that could be dehumanizing and, at times, barbaric. Modern mental health care places strict limits on restraint and favors safer, less restrictive responses. In popular culture, the straightjacket now survives most visibly as escape apparatus, where a consenting performer chooses the danger and controls the presentation.
The framed object is an authentic, used performance straightjacket donated by Scott Hitchcock.
This straightjacket was donated to Poe’s Magic Theatre by Scott Hitchcock, the Las Vegas magician who performed escapes in the actual garment. It is not a replica made for display and not a picture standing in for the object.
Hitchcock remains an active performer. By preserving the used garment, the theatre can recognize both the ingenuity of the escape act and the more difficult institutional history from which its imagery was borrowed.