The Illusionist pulls forward a stand made
of PVC pipes, or metal or wooden pipes or dowels. Between the two
side poles he places a cross pole that has a curtain on it. He
lowers the curtain.
The Illusionist goes behind the curtain and
suddenly two large life-size (or larger) puppet witches make
their appearance on either side of the curtain. The Illusionist
comes out and hangs them from the sidebars sticking out left and
right. They have metal rings in the tops of their hats for this
purpose.
At first the Illusionist is operating the
witches using rod puppetry techniques, but suddenly the rods are
taken away from him and the witches seem to have taken on a life
of their own.
They get into a squabble with one another.
I won’t give away my exact routine and lines here, just the
general effect, so you can use your imaginations to come up with
your own original routines and patter. But the gist of the
argument is that one of the witches is fat and the other one
skinny, and they make jokes at one another’s expense and
each one tries to top the other.
The two witches finally come off the side
rings and begin moving about the stage, squeezing the Illusionist
between them until suddenly the curtain drops to the floor and
the witches back away. The Illusionist has disappeared!
Each witch blames the other for vanishing
the Illusionist. They decide they do not wish to entertain the
audience all alone, so they decide to sneak off the stage and
maybe no one will notice the Illusionist is missing. Before they
go, they raise the curtain back up on the poles the way it was,
then each witch begins moving towards the sides of the stage.
Suddenly the curtain drops to the floor
revealing the Illusionist who commands the witches to
“Freeze!” They suddenly stop all movement and just
remain as still as statues, one on each side.
The Illusionist moves the pipe frame and
curtain to the background and comes back with a water gun in each
hand. He squirts water on each of the witches, and they begin
writhing and collapsing to the floor (as in the original
“Wizard of Oz” movie). “I’m melting! What a
world! Etc.”
The Illusionist scoops up the empty witch
costumes from the floor and yells, “Send these out to be dry
cleaned!” tossing them into the wings.
