The first time I performed a show with genuine variety — card tricks, mentalism, visual effects, a display of skill — I was proud. The energy had not plateaued. The audience had stayed engaged throughout. Each new piece had created that precious moment of surprise where the audience realized they could not predict what was coming next.
And then a friend of mine, a theater director in Vienna who had come to watch, said something that took the wind right out of me.
“It felt like a sampler platter. Delicious. But a sampler platter.”
I knew immediately what she meant. The show had variety. It had different kinds of impossibility, different emotional registers, different visual textures. But it did not feel unified. It felt like a collection of good things, not a single composed experience. The pieces were strong individually, but they existed side by side rather than together. There was no thread running through the show that made the audience feel like they were on a journey with a beginning, middle, and end. They were watching a playlist of singles, not an album.
This was a problem I did not know how to solve. I had spent months learning about variety, about the eight categories of effects, about structural blueprints and modular construction. Nobody had told me about the thread.
Find Your Fig Newton
When I encountered Scott Alexander’s concept of callbacks and running gags in Standing Up On Stage, I found the missing piece. His advice is vivid and specific: “Find your Fig Newton.” By which he means, find a recurring element — a prop, a gag, a phrase, a theme — that ties the show together. Something that appears early, reappears unexpectedly in the middle, and pays off at the end.
Alexander identifies Mac King as a “Jedi Master” of callbacks. King plants elements at the beginning of his show that seem incidental or random, and then brings them back later in ways that the audience did not expect but immediately recognizes. Other performers he mentions use recurring sound effects, running prop gags, or visual motifs that weave through the entire performance.
The principle behind all of these techniques is the same: a recurring element creates the perception of coherence. When the audience encounters something they recognize from earlier in the show, their brain makes a connection. “Oh, that is from before.” That connection transforms the show from a collection of separate pieces into a single unified experience. The audience feels like the performer planned the whole thing, like every element was placed with intention, like the show has a design rather than just a sequence.
And here is the kicker: this feeling of coherence makes the individual pieces land harder. When the show feels unified, each piece benefits from the cumulative emotional investment of everything that came before. The audience is not starting fresh with each effect. They are building on an experience. And a built experience is always more powerful than a sequence of isolated moments.
The Anatomy of a Callback
A callback has three parts: the plant, the reminder, and the payoff.
The plant is the first appearance of the element. It needs to be memorable enough that the audience will recognize it later, but it does not need to seem important. In fact, the best plants seem almost throwaway — a casual comment, a small prop, an offhand reaction. The audience registers it without flagging it as significant.
The reminder is the second appearance. This is where the audience recognizes the element and experiences the pleasure of connection. “Oh, that thing from before.” The reminder typically gets a laugh or a reaction because the audience enjoys the pattern. They feel like they are in on something. They feel like insiders.
The payoff is the final appearance, usually near the end of the show. This is where the recurring element reaches its fullest expression. The prop that seemed incidental turns out to be central. The joke that seemed casual turns out to be a theme. The payoff gets the biggest reaction because the audience has been primed by the plant and the reminder, and the resolution of the pattern creates a satisfaction that goes beyond the individual moment.
This three-part structure — plant, reminder, payoff — is not unique to magic. It is the structure of a running gag in comedy. It is the structure of a motif in music. It is the structure of foreshadowing in fiction. It is how human brains process recurring patterns in narrative, and it works in every performance art form because it works in our cognitive architecture.
My First Running Thread
After reading Alexander’s advice, I spent a week in a hotel room in Graz trying to figure out my Fig Newton. What recurring element could I weave through my show?
The first attempt was terrible. I tried using a specific phrase as a running joke — a line I would repeat at key moments with slightly different emphasis. The problem was that the phrase was not connected to anything. It was grafted onto the show rather than growing out of it. The audience smiled politely, but it did not create the coherence I was looking for.
The second attempt was better but still forced. I used a small prop that appeared in the first effect and then returned in the last effect. But the prop had no significance. It was just an object that showed up twice. The callback registered, but it had no emotional weight.
The breakthrough came when I stopped thinking about what to repeat and started thinking about what the show was about.
My show, at that point, was about surprise. About the audience’s expectations being wrong. About things not being what they seem. That was the theme, even though I had never articulated it. Every effect I performed was, at its core, about the gap between what the audience expected and what actually happened.
Once I saw the theme, the running thread became obvious. I did not need a repeated prop or a repeated phrase. I needed to make the theme explicit. I started planting a specific idea early in the show — the idea that our assumptions are unreliable. I mentioned it casually, almost as a throwaway, during my personality piece. Then, partway through the show, after an effect that dramatically proved the point, I called back to the earlier comment. “Remember when I said…” The audience laughed because they recognized the connection. And at the end of the show, the closer brought the theme to its fullest expression, creating a moment where the audience felt the entire show had been building toward this insight.
The first time I performed the show with this thematic thread in place, the response was different. Not just bigger reactions. A different quality. People came up afterward and talked about the show as a whole, not about individual tricks. “The thing about assumptions was so clever.” They were not describing an effect. They were describing the thread. They had experienced the show as a unified statement, not a collection of pieces.
That told me everything.
Why Callbacks Work Psychologically
I think about why callbacks are so powerful, and I keep coming back to a concept from my consulting work: pattern recognition as pleasure.
Human brains are pattern-detection machines. We constantly scan our environment for patterns, connections, and repetitions. When we find one, we get a small neurochemical reward — a hit of satisfaction that says “you figured something out.” This is why crossword puzzles are satisfying, why inside jokes make us feel good. The recognition itself is the reward.
A callback triggers this recognition. The audience encounters an element they remember from earlier, and their brains fire the pattern-recognition reward. They feel clever. They feel connected. They feel like they are experiencing something designed rather than random.
But there is a deeper layer. Callbacks create a shared reference. The audience becomes a community of people who share a specific memory. They were all there when the element first appeared. They all recognize it now. The callback turns them from a collection of individuals into a group that has shared an experience. This is why callbacks get bigger reactions in larger audiences — the communal recognition is amplified by numbers.
Practical Architecture
After experimenting for over a year, I have settled on a structure for weaving threads through my show that works reliably. Here is how I think about it.
The thread needs to be introduced early and lightly. The first appearance should feel natural, not planted. If the audience senses setup, the eventual payoff feels manipulative rather than satisfying. My goal with the first appearance is that it seems like an organic part of the show rather than a setup for something later.
The second appearance should be surprising. The audience should not expect the element to return. When it does, the surprise of recognition is what creates the laugh or the reaction. If the audience is waiting for the callback, it loses its power. The art is in making the plant memorable enough to be recognized but casual enough that the audience does not anticipate its return.
The third appearance should feel inevitable. This is the paradox of a great callback: the first time you see it, you are surprised. But immediately after the surprise, it feels like it was always going to happen. The payoff should feel like it was built into the show’s DNA from the beginning. The audience should think, “Of course. That is what this was all about.”
I have also learned that less is more. One strong running thread is better than three weak ones. Multiple callbacks competing for the audience’s attention dilute each other. One clear thread that runs cleanly through the show creates a stronger sense of unity than several threads that tangle into noise.
Beyond Gags: The Thematic Thread
Running gags and recurring props are the most visible form of the thread. But I have come to believe that the most powerful threads are thematic — an idea that recurs and deepens throughout the show.
My current show has a thematic thread about perception. It starts with a light comment about how our eyes lie to us, moves through effects that demonstrate how wrong our assumptions can be, and ends with a piece that reframes everything the audience thought they had figured out. I do not lecture about perception. I let the effects do the talking, and I use the callbacks to connect the dots.
The result is a show that feels like it is about something. Not just tricks. Not just entertainment. An idea. And an audience that has experienced a show about an idea carries it with them. The show lives longer in their memory because it has a conceptual anchor, not just a series of sensory experiences.
This is what Alexander means by finding your Fig Newton. The DNA of your show. The thing that makes it yours, that ties everything together, that transforms a collection of effects into a statement.
The Thread Is the Show
Here is what I have come to believe after years of working on this problem. The thread is not a decoration you add to a show. The thread is the show. The effects are the vehicle. The variety is the architecture. But the thread is the experience.
An audience that watches a show without a thread remembers moments. An audience that watches a show with a thread remembers a journey. And journeys are what people talk about. Journeys are what people come back for. Journeys are what make the difference between a performer who entertains and a performer who matters.
Find your Fig Newton. Find the thing that makes your show a single, unified, inevitable experience rather than a collection of impressive things. The effects are the bones. The variety is the muscle. But the thread is the heartbeat.
Without it, you have a sampler platter. With it, you have a meal they will remember.