Culture Festival Rejects

After another successful Stuyvesant Culture Festival, we here at The Spectator are looking back at some of the *less* successful auditions that didn’t quite make the cut this year. Here are a few of our honorable mentions:

Iron Maiden Magic Trick (German)

Based on the classic “saw a person in half” magic trick, German III students decided to put a cultural twist on the trick by switching out the basic metal box for the post-medieval torture device known as the iron maiden, an eight-foot tall spiked metal coffin of death. As they didn’t have an actual replica of the historical device, students resorted to making their own out of their classroom’s closet, lining the interior with untwisted paper clips and rusty screws. When the students were performing a demo of their routine, the student being sawed in half accidentally sneezed and trapped himself inside before the performers could open the secret hatch and was promptly killed by the device.

Indoor Fireworks (Chinese)

Though originally meant to be the finale of the show, the performance was scrapped during the final rehearsal when a random performer accidentally tripped over the fireworks’ fuse line as the act was being set up. While the original idea was to have the fireworks shoot outward and explode above the audience, the unnamed performer accidentally redirected all of them toward the ceiling, where they shot straight up through the building. As the fireworks disappeared, so did most of the stage itself, buried under a pile of rubble of what was once the ceiling and part of the second floor bathroom.

Singing (Multicultural)

It just didn’t work out.