This is post one hundred and thirty, and it is the last post in the Six Pillars of Entertainment series.
I want to sit with that for a moment. Sixty-five posts ago, in post sixty-six, I wrote about opening Ken Weber’s Maximum Entertainment and feeling like someone had finally given me a map for a territory I had been stumbling through in the dark. I have spent the posts between then and now exploring that map — the six pillars, the frameworks, the principles, the hard-won lessons of a lifetime of performance distilled into something I could study and apply.
Now I need to talk about the thing that makes all of it work. The thing without which every pillar, every technique, every principle remains theoretical. The thing that separates the performer who studies from the performer who improves.
You need to become your own director.
Why Every Performer Needs a Director
Weber is emphatic on this point: every performer needs a director. Not wants. Needs. The reason is simple and brutal: you cannot see yourself perform. You experience the performance from inside your own head, inside your own body, inside your own emotional reality. The audience experiences the performance from outside — from the seats, from across the room, from the perspective of someone who does not know your intentions, your script, your preparation, or your internal state.
These two experiences are so fundamentally different that they might as well be describing different events. What you feel from the inside — the smoothness of a transition, the power of a reveal, the warmth of your eye contact — may look completely different from the outside. I have written about this extensively in the video review post earlier in this section. What feels dramatic from the inside can look ordinary from the outside. What feels perfectly paced from the inside can look rushed from the outside. What feels warm and connected from the inside can look distant and mechanical from the outside.
A director bridges this gap. A director sits where the audience sits and tells you what they see. Not what you intended. Not what you think you are projecting. What they actually, empirically see and hear and feel. The gap between intention and perception is where all the most impactful improvements live, and you cannot access that gap alone.
The problem, of course, is that most of us do not have a director. We do not have a David Mamet or a staging professional or even a trusted mentor who can attend our shows and give us honest feedback. We are working alone, often literally alone — in hotel rooms, in home offices, in front of bathroom mirrors. And the question becomes: in the absence of someone else to serve as the director’s eye, how do you develop that eye yourself?
The Director’s Eye Is a Skill
The first thing I want to establish is that the director’s eye is not a personality trait. It is not something some people are born with and others are not. It is a skill. It can be developed. And, like any skill, it has specific techniques and practices that build it.
The core of the director’s eye is the ability to see yourself from the outside while you are on the inside. To be performing — fully in the moment, fully committed to the show — and simultaneously maintaining a small, quiet part of your awareness that is watching from the audience’s perspective. Not evaluating. Not judging. Just watching.
This sounds like a contradiction. How can you be fully immersed in a performance and also observing it from the outside? The answer is that you cannot, not completely. There is always a tension between the performer’s experience and the director’s perspective. But you can develop the ability to toggle between them, to shift your awareness briefly to the outside view, register what you notice, and shift back. The more you practice this, the faster and more natural the toggle becomes.
Athletes call this meta-awareness. Coaches call it game sense. In consulting, we would call it reading the room while presenting. Whatever the label, it is the ability to operate on two levels simultaneously: the level of execution and the level of observation.
Weber’s Framework: The Practical Method
Here is the practical method I have built, drawn primarily from Weber’s framework, supplemented by what I have learned from Fitzkee, Ortiz, Derren Brown, and the cross-disciplinary sources I have studied.
Step One: Record and Review.
This is the foundation. Everything else builds on it. Record your performances regularly. Review them using the five-viewing protocol I described in an earlier post. Document specific observations — not general impressions, not “I need to be better at transitions,” but “Transition between routine two and three: twelve seconds, weight shift to left foot, hand touches ear, eye contact breaks to floor, verbal filler ‘so, um.’”
The recording is your substitute for a director’s eyes. It cannot give you the nuance a human director would provide, but it gives you something almost as valuable: an objective record of what actually happened versus what you thought happened.
Step Two: Apply the Big Three Filter.
Weber identifies three reactions that matter in entertainment: rapt attention, laughter, and astonishment. Plus a fourth category — necessary instructions and explanations — that should be minimized.
Watch your recording with this filter. For every moment of your performance, ask: which reaction is this moment targeting? If the answer is “rapt attention,” is the audience actually giving rapt attention? If the answer is “laughter,” are they actually laughing? If the answer is “astonishment,” are they actually astonished?
And if a moment is not targeting any of those three reactions — if it is dead time, filler, transition without purpose — then it is a weak spot. Mark it. It needs to be cut, compressed, or restructured.
This filter is ruthless. When I first applied it to a full thirty-minute recording, I found that roughly forty percent of my performance was not clearly targeting any of the Big Three reactions. Forty percent. Nearly half of my show was connective tissue that was not serving the audience’s experience. Some of that tissue was necessary — setup, context, transitions — but a significant portion was simply habit. Words I said because I had always said them. Actions I performed because I had always performed them. Dead spots that existed not because they served the show but because I had never questioned their existence.
Step Three: Check Against the Six Pillars.
This is where Weber’s framework becomes most powerful as a self-evaluation tool. For each routine, for each segment, for each moment that is not delivering one of the Big Three reactions, ask:
Is this a Pillar One problem? Am I not technically proficient enough, and the audience can see the effort? Am I fumbling, hesitating, or showing visible strain?
Is this a Pillar Two problem? Am I not communicating my humanity? Does the audience know who I am? Am I hiding behind the magic rather than connecting through it?
Is this a Pillar Three problem? Am I failing to capture the excitement? Am I treating my own magic as trivial, as routine, as something I have done a thousand times? If I am not excited by it, why would the audience be?
Is this a Pillar Four problem? Have I lost control of the moment? Is there dead air, visible problem-solving, a loss of rhythm that the audience can feel?
Is this a Pillar Five problem? Is there a weak spot I have not eliminated? An unnecessary line, an excess movement, a tangent that breaks forward momentum? Something that exists in the show because I have not had the courage to cut it?
Is this a Pillar Six problem? Am I failing to build to a climax? Is the routine flat, proceeding on the same level rather than rising? Have I structured the show so that it builds, intensifies, and culminates in a moment of maximum impact?
Each pillar provides a specific diagnostic lens. Together, they cover virtually every category of performance problem you are likely to encounter. When something is not working and you do not know why, running it through the six pillars will almost always identify the issue.
Step Four: Edit Ruthlessly.
This is the hardest step, and it is the essence of Pillar Five. Once you have identified the weak spots, you must eliminate them. Not soften them. Not work around them. Eliminate them.
Cut unnecessary words. Fitzkee’s golden rule applies: “Not too much; but just a bit too little.” Every word in your performance should be doing work. Every line should be advancing the routine toward its climax. If a sentence does not target one of the Big Three reactions, it needs to justify its existence or be removed.
Cut unnecessary actions. Every gesture, every movement, every physical beat should serve a purpose. Fitzkee identified three faults that destroy entertainment value: delays and fumblings, excess movements or lines, and blind by-paths. These are your enemies. Hunt them with the disciplined eye of a director who has no emotional attachment to the material and cares only about the audience’s experience.
Cut entire routines if necessary. This is the hardest cut. You love a routine. You spent months developing it. It has a clever method, an elegant structure, a satisfying climax. But when you watch the recording, the audience is not with you during that routine. Their energy drops. Their attention wanders. The routine is not bad, exactly, but it is the weakest link in the chain, and the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Weber is clear: if a routine does not deliver, it goes. No matter how much you love it. No matter how much time you invested. No matter how clever the method. If it is not working for the audience, it is a weak spot, and weak spots must be eliminated.
Step Five: Test and Re-evaluate.
After editing, perform the revised material. Record it. Watch it again. Apply the same filters. Look for new weak spots that emerged when the old ones were removed. This is an iterative process. It does not end. Every performance is data. Every recording is an opportunity for evaluation. Every evaluation reveals something that can be improved.
The performers who improve fastest are the ones who make this cycle habitual. Record, review, filter, edit, perform, repeat. It is not glamorous. It is not the romantic image of the artist swept up in creative inspiration. It is systematic, methodical, occasionally tedious work. But it is the work that produces results.
The Subjective Eye vs. The Objective Eye
The fundamental challenge of being your own director is the constant battle between the subjective eye and the objective eye.
The subjective eye is the performer’s eye. It sees intention, effort, aspiration. It feels the internal experience of the performance and assumes that experience is visible to the audience. It is protective of the work, resistant to criticism, and deeply invested in the belief that what you are doing is good.
The objective eye is the director’s eye. It sees only what is visible from the outside. It does not care about intention — it cares about result. It does not care about effort — it cares about effect. It is not protective of the work. It is protective of the audience’s experience, which is not the same thing.
Developing the objective eye requires a deliberate practice of dissociation. When you watch your recording, you must watch it not as yourself but as a stranger. A stranger who paid to see this show. A stranger who has no knowledge of your preparation, your method, your intentions, or your feelings. A stranger who is evaluating one thing only: am I entertained?
Derren Brown articulates this powerfully: “A performer who cannot view or criticise himself from external perspectives probably has no business performing professionally.” That is harsh. But it reflects the reality that performing is a communication art, and in communication, the only thing that matters is what the receiver receives, not what the sender sends.
The View from Here: Looking Back at the Six Pillars
Sixty-five posts. Six pillars. The entire arc of Weber’s framework, from the first principle — master your craft — to this final principle — become your own director.
Let me be honest about where I am. I am not a master. I am not a polished, seasoned professional with decades of stage time and a perfectly refined act. I am an entrepreneur, a strategy consultant, and a startup founder who discovered magic as an adult and has been working, with serious intent, to become a competent and eventually excellent performer. I co-founded Vulpine Creations with Adam Wilber. I perform at corporate events and private shows, mostly in Austria and occasionally beyond. I am still learning. I expect to be still learning for the rest of my performing life.
But the framework has changed me. Not in the abstract, not as a set of ideas I find intellectually interesting. In the specific. In the measurable. In the observable reality of what my performances look like from the outside.
Pillar One taught me that technical mastery is not optional. That the shortcuts I was tempted to take in the early days would have crippled me in the long run. That the hard way is actually the easy way, as Bob Cassidy put it via Weber.
Pillar Two taught me that the audience needs to know who I am. That the magic is not enough on its own. That my humanity — my stories, my warmth, my willingness to be a real person in front of other real people — is what transforms a demonstration into an experience.
Pillar Three taught me to capture the excitement. To treat my own magic with the awe it deserves. To stop being casual about the impossible and start being the first person in the room who is amazed.
Pillar Four taught me to control every moment. To eliminate dead air, filler, and hesitation. To maintain the illusion of control even when — especially when — things go wrong. To understand that every second of a performance is either building the audience’s trust or eroding it.
Pillar Five taught me to edit ruthlessly. To record myself and face what I see. To cut the unnecessary, slow down the necessary, and hold myself to the standard of an audience that deserves my best, not my habits.
And Pillar Six — which I have not yet explored in depth, but which will be the subject of the next section of this blog — teaches that every show must build to a climax. That it is not enough to be good throughout. You must be good in a way that escalates, that rises, that arrives at a peak so high and so powerful that the audience leaves changed.
What Comes Next
The Six Pillars series is complete. But the journey is not. In the posts ahead, I am going to shift from Weber’s framework to the practical application of show structure — how you design a set that builds, how you order your material for maximum impact, how you create the roller-coaster experience that takes an audience from their seats to the mountaintop and brings them back transformed.
The pillars gave me the principles. The next section will be about building with them.
But before I move on, I want to say something to anyone who has been reading along through these sixty-five posts. Thank you. Writing this has been as much for me as for you — perhaps more. The act of articulating what I have learned has forced me to understand it more deeply than I would have by simply applying it. Teaching, even in the modest form of blog posts, is one of the most powerful learning tools I have discovered.
Weber’s framework is not the only way to think about performance. There are other models, other philosophies, other approaches that may resonate more strongly with your specific temperament and goals. But it is a rigorous, practical, comprehensive framework that has given me — a person with no performance background, no childhood training, no intuitive grasp of what makes entertainment work — a structured path from confusion to competence.
The work continues. The recording keeps rolling. The notebook keeps filling. The objective eye keeps watching.
That is what it means to be your own director. Not to arrive at a destination. To commit to a process. To accept that the gap between what you think you are doing and what you are actually doing is permanent, and that the work of closing it is the work of a lifetime.
Weber was right. Every performer needs a director. And if the only director available is you, then you had better develop the skill of seeing yourself clearly.
Because the audience already sees you clearly. The question is whether you have the courage to see what they see.
I am still working on that courage. One hundred and thirty posts in, and I am still working on it.
But I am closer than I was sixty-five posts ago. And that, for now, is enough.