Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Two LV magicians add safety features to shows

Two Las Vegas magicians who use tigers onstage are changing their shows to make sure the audience is protected from the animals.

Stardust entertainer Rick Thomas said Tuesday the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked him in April to take steps to improve safety. "The solution comes from us, and then the USDA OKs it," he said.

Thomas said that he devised a way to attach wire cables to the collars of uncaged tigers and that he will run a wire mesh curtain across the stage for one sequence.

"We're almost a week away from installing everything," he said. "We don't have a problem with it. We're pleased to do it. But it's something totally new, and it takes a little time."

David Saxe, producer of "Xtreme Magic Starring Dirk Arthur" at the Tropicana, said Arthur planned to have cables attached to his stage animals by Friday.

A USDA report obtained by The Associated Press said "Siegfried & Roy at The Mirage" failed to protect the audience. The federal agency oversees exotic animal licensing for performers.

After Roy Horn was bitten by a show tiger in October 2003, a USDA official who had attended a show that April wrote in a letter to investigators that no barriers were present between the tigers and the audience.

"The big cats could have easily jumped off the stage and into the audience," USDA official Robert M. Gibbens wrote.

MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said Tuesday that no USDA officials or anyone else had previously raised the concern or suggested erecting a fence for audience protection.

"It certainly has the appearance of 20/20 hindsight to it," Feldman said.

Thomas defended his fellow illusionists: "I'm telling you right now that Siegfried and Roy did nothing against USDA regulations when they were onstage."

He said that USDA guidelines have never been specific and that inspectors preferred to work with licensees individually to address guidelines such as "a safe distance" between animal and audience. But after Horn's injury, department officials "asked us to do other things," he said.

The magician said he devised a "cat run" system that runs a dark cable from a tiger's collar to an overhead rigging, giving the animal only lateral movement.

"If I walked offstage, he could walk all over the stage but could not go toward the audience."

The wire curtain will be used for a climactic illusion in which four tigers appear at the same time.

Thomas disputed the idea that a tiger would run into the audience.

"It's foreign territory to them," Thomas said. Trainers deliberately keep tigers out of the public seating area. "Their comfort zone is back in that travel area backstage."

Review-Journal staff writer J.M. Kalil contributed to this story.