After taking a few “breath holds,” a middle-age mom of three gets help putting steel shackles around her ankles and wrists and wrapping multiple chains around her body. Counting a 15-pound lead belt and nine padlocks, she straps on 55 pounds of weight in all.
She stands on the edge of a 12-foot-deep pool, steadies herself, and jumps in, sinking to the bottom.
She stays underwater for 50.91 seconds, air bubbles floating upwards, before freeing herself and returning to the surface.
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Want to See Alexanderia’s Act?
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Alexanderia the Great – real name, Donna Purnell – has only one more day to train before her first escape show this weekend. Purnell, a Dedham native and Medway resident, will perform in “The Girls of Magic” at the Dedham High School pool Saturday night as part of the Worldwide Escape Artist Relay 2009.
Donna Purnell says she is motivated to do her risky act by the challenge – “and something that shows people older girls can do things, not just younger girls.”
Sporting bruises on her arms from the chains, she says it’s taboo for women to do such escapes, but it shouldn’t be.
“We can be just as daring as men out there, and I think we’re cooler at it,” she says.
Her husband and coach, Bill Purnell, says their escapades go back to high school. Donna Purnell says she doesn’t have formal training in underwater escapes. Instead she started with simple rope escapes in her pool and moved up from there.
“We’d go back and forth and challenge each other, and she’s a hell of a lot better than I am,” he says.
Worldwide Escape Artist Relay 2009 is a coordinated performance by escape artists on at least four continents. This year it will feature acts including a rope challenge by Wolflock in Thailand, an “extreme fire escape” by Santini in Toronto, and the frightening-sounding “Lobotomy Chair” by Gwyd the Unusual in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Donna Purnell said she first thought about performing in the escape artist relay in 2005, but was anxious about what people would think. This time around, Donna Purnell said she had a change of heart, deciding almost at the last minute to participate. A prominent Boston snake-charmer and fire dancer, Zehara Nachash, quickly offered to be Alexanderia the Great’s first act, and “The Girls of Magic” show came together very quickly.
“Within 24 hours she went from not doing this, to being a participant in Worldwide Escape Artist Relay, and she’s one of only three women in the world doing this event, and she’s the only one doing an open-water escape,” to landing big roles in two of Zehara’s “Odditorium” shows in Cambridge next year, Bill Purnell says. “Our heads were spinning.”
Going public meant Donna Purnell needed to tell her brother and parents about her unusual hobby – an indication, she says, of “how closed I was about this.”
“They’ve been awesome. They’ve been so supportive about this,” she says.
Bill Purnell notes that you don’t hear much about escape artists, citing their somewhat freakish reputations.
“And then you’ve got a mother of three, who’s a CCD teacher, who says, ‘You know what, I want to give this a try,’” he says.
Understandably, their kids were somewhat worried, pointing out that “if something doesn’t go right, something will happen,” as Donna Purnell recounts. But, she replied, “Nothing will happen. I’ve been doing this long enough.”
Inspired by Houdini, she has worked with rope, chains and shackles underwater, and plans to venture soon into standard straitjackets. But her 55-pound open-water escape is even more dangerous than the great master’s “water torture cell” act, according to the Purnells.
At the training session, Donna Purnell jumps in the pool for her first breath hold – staying below, unshackled, for one minute and 20 seconds. While she is down there, Bill Purnell muses that panicking could cost her three-quarters of her air.
“If all of a sudden she freaks out and loses her focus…once she loses her air, then it becomes a real danger,” he says. “Panic will eat you up. That’s what’s really scary.”
He adds that she does some yoga breathing, and is working with a female bodybuilder to get in better shape for her escapes.
She pulls through on her main jump, despite taking what Bill Purnell calls a “crappy breath” before her plunge.
They say that she frees herself through struggling and force. “It’s basically a lot of determination and a lot of pain. It’s really tough on her arms and her hands,” Bill Purnell says.
On the pool deck, Donna Purnell shows new marks on both wrists.
“It was difficult,” she says.
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
