I want to tell you about a performance I did in Innsbruck, about a year ago, that taught me something I should have learned much earlier.
I was sick. Not dramatically sick — no fever, no collapsing backstage. Just a grinding head cold that had been building for two days and that, by the evening of the show, had settled into my sinuses with the kind of dull persistence that makes everything slightly harder. My voice was slightly hoarse. My energy was lower than usual. My head felt like it was packed with wet cotton.
The show was a corporate dinner, about fifty people, part of a company retreat. I had been booked months in advance and was not going to cancel over a head cold. So I took some cold medicine, did my pre-show routine, and walked out.
And the first thing I did was apologize.
“Good evening, everyone. I have to warn you, I’m fighting a bit of a cold tonight, so if my voice sounds a little rough, that’s why. Bear with me.”
I said it with a smile. I said it lightly, self-deprecatingly. I thought I was being honest and charming — acknowledging a minor issue so the audience would understand if the performance was not quite at full power.
What I was actually doing was sabotaging my own show before it had begun.
The Weber Rule
Ken Weber states the principle with characteristic bluntness in Maximum Entertainment: never apologize for your personal problems. The audience does not care.
The first time I read that, I resisted it. It seemed harsh. Even a little arrogant. Surely audiences appreciate honesty? Surely they respect a performer who acknowledges imperfection? Surely a small moment of vulnerability at the top of a show creates connection?
No. It does not. What it creates is a frame. And the frame it creates is: the performance you are about to see is going to be subpar. I am setting your expectations low so that you will grade me on a curve. Please be lenient with me because I am not at my best.
The audience does not think these words consciously. But they register the frame. They walked in expecting to be entertained. Now they have been told, by the entertainer himself, that the entertainment might not be up to standard. Their anticipation has been deflated before a single effect has been performed. They are no longer leaning forward in excitement. They are leaning back in accommodation.
Weber’s reasoning is simple and, once you accept it, irrefutable. The audience has come to have an experience. They have given you their time, their attention, and in many cases their money. They are not your friends. They are not your therapist. They are not your support system. They are an audience, and their only contract with you is this: you provide an extraordinary experience, and they provide their attention and appreciation.
Your head cold is not part of that contract. Your bad day is not part of that contract. Your argument with the venue manager, your delayed flight, your malfunctioning equipment, your personal problems of any kind — none of these are part of the audience’s experience, and introducing them serves only one person: you.
That is the key insight. When a performer apologizes for a personal problem, they are not serving the audience. They are serving themselves. They are managing their own anxiety by setting a lower bar. They are seeking sympathy because they feel vulnerable. They are asking the audience to take care of them, which is the exact opposite of the performer’s job. The performer’s job is to take care of the audience.
The Exceptions
Weber is not completely inflexible on this. He identifies two legitimate reasons to apologize to an audience.
The first is when a genuine apology is warranted — when the audience has been genuinely inconvenienced by something that was the performer’s responsibility. If the show started twenty minutes late because you were not ready, and the audience has been sitting in their seats waiting, an acknowledgment is appropriate. Not an elaborate story about why you were late. A brief, sincere “I apologize for the delay, and I appreciate your patience.” Then move on. Do not dwell. Do not explain. Acknowledge, and proceed.
The second exception is when the apology serves the performance — when it is part of a joke, a bit, a deliberate comedic device. Some performers use a self-deprecating opening as a strategic choice. “I apologize in advance for what you’re about to see” can be funny if it is clearly a joke, delivered with confidence, and followed by a performance that contradicts it completely. But this is not a real apology. It is a setup. And it only works if the audience understands that the performer is not actually apologizing but playing with the form.
Outside of these two cases, the rule is absolute: do not apologize. Do not explain. Do not share your problems.
The Backstage Story Trap
The apology problem extends beyond personal ailments. There is a broader version of it that I call the backstage story trap, and I have fallen into it more times than I care to admit.
The backstage story trap works like this. Something goes wrong before the show — equipment issue, scheduling conflict, a miscommunication with the venue. The performer deals with it, solves the problem, and gets on stage. But then, during the performance, they reference the issue. “You wouldn’t believe what happened backstage.” “The sound system was giving us trouble earlier, so if things sound a little off…” “We had a bit of a situation with the setup, so we’re running a slightly modified version of the show.”
Every one of these statements does the same thing as the head cold apology: it introduces backstage reality into the audience’s experience. And the audience does not want backstage reality. They want the show. They want to believe that everything they are seeing is intentional, prepared, and under control. The moment you reveal that the sausage-making was messy, you diminish the sausage.
I learned this the hard way at a venue in Vienna where the lighting was significantly worse than what I had been promised. The event coordinator had assured me of a specific setup, and what I got was flat fluorescent overhead lighting that eliminated every shadow and made close-up work visible from angles I did not want. I adapted. Changed some effects, adjusted my positioning, made it work.
But during the show, I said something like “the lighting tonight is a bit different from what I usually work with, so I’m improvising a little.” I said it casually, almost as an aside. I thought I was being charmingly transparent.
What I was actually telling the audience was: this is not the show I planned. What you are seeing is a compromise. The real show would have been better.
Why would I tell them that? What possible benefit did that information provide to their experience? None. It benefited only me, because it pre-excused any imperfections they might notice. It was insurance. It was a safety net. And safety nets, by their very nature, tell the audience that falling is a possibility.
The Corporate Parallel
My consulting background gives me an interesting lens on this, because the corporate world has its own version of the apology problem.
I have sat in countless presentations where a consultant or executive opens with some variation of: “I know these slides aren’t great, but…” Or: “I didn’t have as much time to prepare as I would have liked, so bear with me.” Or: “This is still a work in progress, so don’t judge the formatting.”
Every time, the same thing happens. The audience adjusts their expectations downward. The presenter has told them, before showing a single slide, that what follows will be imperfect. And now the audience is primed to notice imperfections — imperfections they might never have spotted if the presenter had simply presented with confidence.
This is not hypothetical. I have watched the same deck presented twice: once with an apology at the top, and once without. The deck without the apology was received significantly better. Same slides, same data, same conclusions. The only difference was that one version came with a permission slip for the audience to be critical, and the other did not.
The principle is identical in performance. Your material is your material. Present it with confidence, and the audience will evaluate it through the lens of confidence. Apologize for it, and they will evaluate it through the lens of your apology.
The Emotional Discipline
I want to be honest about why this rule is hard to follow. It is hard because performing while not at your best is genuinely stressful, and the apology is a relief valve.
When I stood up in Innsbruck with that head cold, I was anxious. I was worried that my voice would crack, that my energy would flag, that the audience would notice something was off. The apology relieved that anxiety. It gave me permission to be imperfect. It lowered the stakes.
But here is the thing about relief valves: they release pressure in both directions. The apology relieved my anxiety, but it also released the audience’s engagement. The pressure that I was feeling — the need to deliver despite not feeling great — was actually productive pressure. It was the pressure that would have pushed me to project more energy, to be more precise with my words, to compensate with craft for what I lacked in physical comfort. By apologizing, I released that pressure and replaced it with the audience’s lowered expectations, which meant I did not need to push as hard, which meant the performance was less energized than it would have been if I had simply kept my mouth shut and performed through the cold.
The discipline of not apologizing is, at its core, the discipline of bearing your own discomfort without transferring it to the audience. You are sick. You are tired. You are having a terrible day. The audience does not know this, and they should never know this, because the moment they know it, your problem becomes their problem. And they did not buy a ticket to deal with your problems.
This is the performer’s burden, and it is a real burden. There is a loneliness to it. Everyone in the room gets to have a good time except you, because you are the one creating the good time while quietly managing whatever internal challenge you are facing. But that is the job. That is what it means to be the person on stage rather than the person in the seat.
What I Do Now
Since the Innsbruck lesson, I have adopted a strict personal policy. No apologies. No backstage stories. No references to anything the audience does not need to know.
If I am sick, I take medicine and perform. If equipment malfunctions, I adapt and perform. If the venue is different from what I expected, I adjust and perform. The audience sees a confident performer delivering a strong show. That is all they see.
On the inside, I might be managing six different problems simultaneously. I might be compensating for a sore throat by projecting more carefully, adjusting for bad lighting by changing my angles, recovering from a mishandled prop by rerouting to an alternate sequence. The internal experience might be chaotic.
But the external presentation is calm. Confident. In control.
This is what Weber means by Pillar Four — controlling every moment. The audience’s experience is curated. Every word they hear, every gesture they see, every moment of silence or action has been chosen. And the things that have not been chosen — the accidents, the problems, the personal difficulties — are invisible. Not because they do not exist, but because the performer has the discipline to keep them invisible.
I think about the performers I admire most, the ones who seem to exist in a state of effortless command. I wonder how many of them are managing invisible problems on any given night. A sore back. A personal crisis. A prop that is not working right. A heckler they spotted in the front row. A venue that is too hot, too cold, too loud, too dark.
The answer is probably: all of them. Every night. The difference is that they have internalized the rule. The audience does not care about your problems. The audience cares about their experience. And the performer’s job — the entire job, the only job — is to make that experience extraordinary, regardless of what it costs.
No apologies. No explanations. No backstage stories. Just the show. The best show you can give, with whatever you have, on the night you have it.
The Innsbruck audience never knew I had a cold. They had a great evening. And that, in the end, is the only metric that matters.