I.B.M. Ring 362
The Maine Mystics
Bangor, Maine

Ring Event Report
June 9, 2007

Threepenny Magic Show

Professor Miller and Dr. Wilson celebrated the return of magic to Mount Desert Island at noon on Saturday, June 9, with an old-fashioned magic show on a most unusual stage: the ocean floor. The Threepenny Magic Show took place at low tide on the sand bar between Bar Harbor and Bar Island. The show was a fundraiser for the Town Hill Playground being planned by the West Eden Village Improvement Society, with audience members being asked to donate at least three cents to the penny drive. The pennies will be used in a World Record Attempt to break the current time for laying a mile of pennies, scheduled for September 9 at The Jackson Laboratory. Donations in excess of three cents were also accepted.

Miller and Wilson are no strangers to the sand bar in Frenchman Bay. In 2006, the two were joined on the sand bar by a crew of three other magicians for The Perilous Garden, in which Dr. Wilson walked barefoot and blindfolded through a path of bone-crushing animal traps. In 2004, Dr. Wilson staged Against the Tide, in which he was chained to the ocean floor with borrowed padlocks as the tide came in. He escaped.

The Threepenny Magic Show marks a substantial change in tone from these earlier performances, with no fire, chains, or animal traps being used. Instead, Miller and Wilson seek a greater challenge: raising funds for the Town Hill Playground fund using magic. "Eating fire, escaping from chains, and avoiding animal traps is easy for us," Dr. Wilson explains. "It's much harder raising money to build a playground."