I was watching a video of one of my early performances — the kind of footage you keep because it’s useful, not because it’s flattering — when I noticed something that stopped me cold.
It wasn’t during a routine. It wasn’t during a moment of supposed difficulty. It was at the very beginning of my set, in the first thirty seconds, in the most basic action imaginable: I was opening a card box.
On the video, I could see myself reach for the box, fumble slightly with the tuck flap, pull the cards halfway out, realize I was holding the box at an odd angle, adjust my grip, slide the cards out the rest of the way, and then — not knowing what to do with the now-empty box — tuck it awkwardly into my back pocket while the audience waited.
The whole sequence took maybe eight seconds. It wasn’t a disaster. Nobody gasped or looked away. But watching it from the audience’s perspective, something was unmistakable: this person was not fully in control. Not because of the routines — those would come later and be fine — but because of this one small, unrehearsed, supposedly simple action.
That eight seconds told the audience more about my preparedness than the next twenty minutes of practiced material.
The Things You Don’t Think to Practice
When I started learning magic, I practiced the things that seemed like they needed practicing. The sleight work. The handling sequences. The routines from beginning to end. These were the “hard” things — the things that required repetition, refinement, and deliberate effort.
What I didn’t practice were the “easy” things. Opening a card box. Setting a prop on the table. Picking up a pen. Walking from one position to another. Putting something in my pocket. Taking something out of a pocket. Placing a glass of water on a surface. Handing something to an audience member.
These actions seemed so basic that practicing them felt absurd. They were things I did every day. I didn’t need to practice picking up a pen — I’d been picking up pens my entire adult life.
But picking up a pen in the course of a normal day is fundamentally different from picking up a pen in front of fifty people who are watching you. In normal life, you pick up a pen with your conscious mind elsewhere — you’re thinking about what you’re going to write, not about how your hand moves toward the object. The action is incidental, unobserved, and it doesn’t matter how it looks.
In performance, every action is observed. And when an action is observed, it communicates. A smooth, confident pickup says: this person is in command of their physical space. A fumbled, uncertain pickup says: this person is nervous, distracted, or unprepared. The audience doesn’t consciously analyze your pen-retrieval technique. But their subconscious registers the difference between practiced ease and untrained awkwardness.
The Video That Changed Everything
After seeing the card box incident on video, I went back through all my performance footage — every clip I had — and watched specifically for the simple actions. Not the routines. Not the moments of difficulty. The moments of supposed simplicity.
What I found was humbling.
I saw myself set a glass of water on a table and nearly knock it over because I wasn’t looking at the table surface. I saw myself hand a card to an audience member and have to reach twice because my first extension was too short. I saw myself walk from one side of the performance area to the other with the uncertain, slightly rushed gait of someone who hadn’t decided exactly where they were going. I saw myself put a prop in my pocket and then, seconds later, subtly pat the pocket to confirm the prop was there — a tell that screamed “I’m not sure I did that right.”
Each of these moments was tiny. Individually, not one of them would register as a problem. But collectively, they formed a pattern. The routines themselves were clean — I’d practiced those. Everything around the routines was unpolished, unrehearsed, and visibly amateur.
It was like watching a musician play a difficult piece flawlessly and then fumble the page turn. The music was excellent. The infrastructure was a mess.
Fitzkee’s Principle of Exact Placement
Reading Dariel Fitzkee’s Showmanship for Magicians, I encountered a passage that crystallized what I’d seen on those videos. Fitzkee insists that proper routining requires determining the “exact place where each property will be BEFORE its use” and the “exact location it will occupy AFTER the trick is done.”
Not the approximate place. The exact place. Where does the card box go after you remove the cards? Not “somewhere on the table” — where, exactly? Which spot? At what angle? How do you set it down — placed or dropped? Do you look at the table when you place it, or do you know the spot so well that your hand goes there without visual guidance?
This level of specificity initially struck me as excessive. But then I thought about what it looks like when a performer doesn’t have these answers. It looks like what I saw on my own videos: micro-moments of hesitation while the performer figures out, in real time, where to put something. Tiny pauses while the brain makes decisions that should have been automated through rehearsal. Small adjustments that signal uncertainty.
The audience reads all of this. Not consciously, not analytically, but through the same social-perception apparatus we all use to evaluate confidence and competence in everyday life. We’re wired to detect uncertainty in other people’s movements. It’s a survival mechanism — if someone moves hesitantly, our brain flags it as potential instability. And an audience member’s brain doesn’t turn off that mechanism just because they’re watching entertainment.
The Card Box Protocol
After that round of video analysis, I developed what I somewhat jokingly call the Card Box Protocol. It’s a practice approach for rehearsing every simple action in a performance until it’s as smooth and automatic as the complex ones.
The protocol is simple in concept and boring in execution: I list every non-trick action in my performance, and I practice each one individually until it’s fluid.
Opening the card box. I know exactly how my fingers approach the tuck flap. I know the angle at which I hold the box. I know the speed at which the cards emerge. I know where the box goes afterward — and I know how my hand moves to place it there. The entire action takes about two seconds, and every fraction of those two seconds is rehearsed.
Setting down a prop. I know the exact spot on my table where each item goes. I’ve practiced the placement enough that I can do it without looking — my hand knows the distance and the surface. The audience sees a prop appear and disappear from the performance space with no interruption to the flow. They don’t see decisions being made, because no decisions are being made. They were all made in rehearsal.
Walking to a new position. I know how many steps it takes. I know the path. I know the speed. I know where I’ll be looking while I walk — at the audience, not at my feet, not at my destination. The walk itself communicates confidence and purpose. It does not communicate “I’m heading roughly in that direction and I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
Handing something to a spectator. I know which hand I’ll use, how far I’ll extend my arm, and where the exchange point will be. I’ve practiced the handoff so that the spectator receives the item cleanly, without fumbling, without either of us reaching too far or not far enough.
None of this is difficult. That’s precisely the point. These are not hard things to do. They’re hard things to remember to practice, because our brains categorize them as “easy” and therefore “not worth rehearsing.”
The Corporate Presentation Parallel
In my consulting life, I’ve watched hundreds of business presentations, and the pattern is identical. The presenter practices the content — the slides, the key messages, the data. What they don’t practice is the infrastructure: how to advance slides without fumbling. How to use a pointer naturally. How to move from behind the podium to the front of the room. How to take a sip of water without breaking their flow. How to handle the Q&A transition.
The best presenters I’ve worked with rehearse everything. Not just the content, but the physical choreography of being in front of a room. They know where they’ll stand for each section. They know how to handle the remote. They’ve practiced the water sip. They’ve timed the walk from the screen to the front.
The worst presenters practice only the content and then improvise the rest. And you can see it. Not because they make dramatic mistakes, but because the micro-moments of uncertainty accumulate into a general impression of someone who is not quite in command of their space.
It’s the same effect I saw in my own performance videos. Technical competence undermined by logistical unpreparedness.
The Standard You’re Actually Being Measured Against
Here’s what makes this matter: the audience’s standard for “simple” actions is themselves. Everyone in your audience opens boxes, picks up glasses, walks across rooms, and hands things to people. They do these things every day, smoothly and without thought. That’s their baseline.
When a performer does these things less smoothly than the audience does them in everyday life, it registers. Not as “that was a mistake” but as “something is slightly off about this person.” It creates a faint but persistent sense that the performer is working harder than they should be. That things aren’t quite under control. That behind the polished routines, there’s someone who hasn’t fully figured out what they’re doing.
Conversely, when a performer handles simple actions with visible ease and authority, it elevates everything. The audience’s subconscious reads it as competence, as control, as someone who belongs in front of a room. And that reading colors their perception of everything that follows.
The routines are where you show what you can do. The simple actions are where you show who you are.
What I Practice Now
My practice sessions now include a dedicated segment for simple actions. After I run through the technical elements of a routine, I run through the performance elements — every transition, every pickup, every placement, every walk, every handoff. I practice the opening sequence from the moment I appear until the first routine begins. I practice the closing sequence from the final effect through the exit. I practice the moments between routines that are, structurally, the most invisible parts of the show.
I also practice responding to common disruptions with physical composure. If I drop something, how do I pick it up? Not the content of what I say — the physical action of bending down, retrieving the object, and continuing. If a prop doesn’t cooperate immediately, how do my hands respond? Not with the rushed, slightly panicked movement of someone troubleshooting in real time, but with the calm, measured adjustment of someone who has been here before.
This is not glamorous work. There is nothing exciting about practicing how to pick up a pen. There is nothing creatively fulfilling about rehearsing the exact spot where a card box goes after you’ve removed the cards. This is the unglamorous foundation of professional performance, and it’s the work that separates the person who looks like a performer from the person who looks like a person doing tricks.
The card box is a test. Not of skill, not of technique, not of creativity. A test of thoroughness. A test of whether you’ve committed to rehearsing everything the audience sees, or only the parts you consider important.
Everything the audience sees is important. Including — especially — the parts you think are too simple to practice.