by Meta Machulis

The popular children’s board game “Mouse Trap” has reached a grand scale and is amusing audiences across the country, thanks to a 1984 graduate of Dwight Township High School.

For the past 15 years, Mark Nelson – under the stage name Mark Perez – has been creating “The Lifesize Mousetrap” and demonstrating the contraption as a “vaudevillian-style road show” at fairs and conventions across the United States.

The original Mouse Trap board game debuted in 1963 and features a Rube Goldberg set-up. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a Rube Goldberg as “a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation.” In the game, chain reactions involving items such as a miniature boot that kicks a ball out of a bucket, which then rolls down a slide, eventually causes a net to come down over a small mouse game piece.

Nelson’s version mostly mirrors the original game, but in a much larger form. For example, instead of a miniature plastic bathtub, a real bathtub is mounted high on a post to catch a ball and let it roll to its next point in the route. And instead of a net trapping a mouse at the end, a safe is dropped on a junk vehicle or other object. Nelson built the 30-foot-tall crane that lifts the two-ton safe. The entire contraption weighs 25 tons.

In regard to why he decided to make “The Lifesize Mousetrap,” Nelson said, “Playing the game as a kid was the start, and then moving to San Francisco where there is an unspoken rule on who can make the craziest art!”

Nelson’s sister, Lisa Koehler of Reddick, along with her parents and husband, Troy, recently attended a demonstration of “The Lifesize Mousetrap” in Detroit during the Maker Faire, held July 31 through August 1. She explained the performance, which includes Nelson and his wife, Rose, a professional belly dancer.

“They   start    out    with ‘Esmeralda Strange’ singing a song about how the project started, to get the crowd into it, and then she introduces Rose and Mark,” Koehler said. “Then he takes off as the emcee, telling jokes and getting the crowd to participate with a lot of enthusiasm.” She said Nelson tells everyone that the game runs on enthusiasm.

Koehler continued, “They then go through each step how the trap works, where he got the parts and how he created every little piece in his blacksmith shop.” She said Nelson tells the audience that the safe weighs two tons and the bathtub weighs 350 pounds. The show lasts about 20 minutes until the safe smashes the vehicle.

The show crew also includes performers who portray tap-dancing mice and clown engineers.

Nelson said the audience’s reaction is “very positive.” He added, “Parents like it because it teaches kids about simple physics and art as well as accomplishment.”

The next performances will be September 25 and 26 at the Maker Faire in New York.

Koehler said showbusiness comes naturally to Nelson.

“Our grandfather, Nick Nelson, all of his life ran theaters from Fairbury to Watseka and of course, the Dwight Blackstone,” she said. “So I guess you can say Mark has picked up the bug for the entertainment business!”

Koehler said that after high school, her brother enlisted in the Army and served in Korea, then San Francisco, Calif. After being discharged, he stayed in San Francisco.

“He would later on suffer a broken neck due to a motorcycle accident,” Koeh-ler said. “After that, he lives like there is no tomorrow, with no regrets!”

Nelson married Rose Harden in May. She teaches, choreographs and performs belly dancing routines around the world. Koehler said the couple enjoys working together on “The Lifesize Mousetrap.”

Nelson said his purpose for “The Lifesize Mouse-trap” is “to make people smile and to show that the impossible can be done.”

To learn more about the contraption and crew, visit www.lifesizemousetrap.org