Linz. Corporate awards dinner. Roughly a hundred and fifty people at round tables, three courses deep into the evening, wine flowing freely. I was there to do a twenty-minute set between the main course and dessert. The organizer had warned me that this was a tough crowd — senior executives, not easily impressed, and by this point in the evening, thoroughly relaxed.
I opened strong. Good reactions. The first five minutes went well. Then I needed someone on stage for a mentalism piece, and I said the words that every performer says when they haven’t thought it through.
“I need a volunteer.”
Three things happened simultaneously, all of them bad.
First, about eighty percent of the room immediately broke eye contact with me. Heads tilted down toward wine glasses. Hands found napkins to fold. The universal body language of “please don’t pick me” rippled through the ballroom like a wave. In three seconds, I’d transformed a hundred and fifty engaged audience members into a hundred and twenty people pretending to be invisible and thirty people wondering if they should raise their hand.
Second, the thirty people who did consider volunteering now had to make a public decision. Raising your hand in front of your colleagues and bosses is a statement. It says “I’m comfortable being the center of attention.” Some people genuinely are. But for many, that hand-raise requires overcoming a non-trivial amount of social anxiety. And the people who do raise their hands aren’t necessarily the best volunteers — they’re the most extroverted, the most confident, or occasionally the most intoxicated.
Third, several hands went up at once, and I had to choose among them. This created an instant hierarchy. One person was selected, and the others were rejected. The chosen one felt validated. The unchosen ones felt the sting of public non-selection. It’s a tiny sting, barely conscious, but it subtly shifts their relationship with me for the rest of the performance. I asked, they offered, and I said no. That’s not a great foundation for engagement.
The whole sequence took maybe fifteen seconds, but by the time the volunteer reached the stage, the room’s energy had changed. It had gone from “we’re all watching something together” to “one person is doing something and the rest of us are relieved it’s not us.”
The Anxiety Engine
Scott Alexander writes about audience participation with the kind of directness that comes from decades of performing. His fundamental principle is that volunteers are doing you a favor, and everything about how you handle them should reflect that.
But before you can handle a volunteer, you have to get one. And “I need a volunteer” is the least effective way because it triggers anxiety before participation even begins.
Think about what goes through an audience member’s head when they hear those words. They’re not thinking “Oh, how exciting.” They’re thinking: “What will I have to do? Will I look stupid? What if everyone laughs at me?”
These aren’t irrational fears. We’ve all seen performers embarrass their volunteers. We’ve all cringed on behalf of someone brought up and made to look foolish. The phrase “I need a volunteer” carries all of that cultural baggage.
For corporate audiences — which is most of my performing context — the anxiety is even more acute. These people have professional reputations to protect. They’re sitting with their bosses and clients. Asking them to volunteer is asking them to take a career risk for your entertainment.
The Competition Problem
Even when people do volunteer, the process of selecting from multiple raised hands creates problems.
If you pick the person closest to you, it looks like convenience. If you pick the most enthusiastic hand-raiser, you might get someone who’s volunteering for the wrong reasons — attention-seeking, intoxication, a desire to disrupt. If you pick someone who raised their hand hesitantly, you might get someone who immediately regrets the decision and spends the entire time on stage radiating discomfort.
And there’s no graceful way to evaluate volunteers from a distance. You can’t interview them. You can’t ask “are you going to be cooperative and pleasant?” You’re making a judgment call based on nothing but a raised hand and a facial expression, in front of an audience that’s watching you choose.
I’ve had the experience of picking the wrong volunteer. More than once. A person who seemed enthusiastic from their seat but turned surly on stage. A person who decided the best strategy was to try to “out-perform” me. A person who froze completely and couldn’t follow simple instructions. Each of these situations was my fault — not because the volunteer was bad, but because my selection method was essentially random.
The Direct Selection Method
The alternative is simple, and it changed my performing life: don’t ask for volunteers. Choose them.
The shift happened after I spent time thinking about what makes great performers’ audience interactions feel so effortless. They never seem to struggle to get people on stage. They never stand there with an empty hand, waiting for someone to step forward. Their volunteers appear as if by magic — not because they’re luckier with audiences, but because they’ve removed the asking step entirely.
Here’s what I do now. During the early portion of any set, while I’m performing pieces that don’t require volunteers, I’m watching the audience. I’m noting who laughs easily. Who makes eye contact. Who leans forward. Who turns to whisper something to their neighbor during an astonishing moment. These are the people who are engaged, comfortable, and receptive. These are my volunteers.
When the moment comes, I don’t announce “I need a volunteer.” I walk toward the person I’ve already identified, make eye contact, and say something like: “I need someone who considers themselves a good judge of character. You — I can tell. You’re perfect for this. Stand up for me.”
Notice what’s happening. There’s no question. There’s no decision to be made. There’s a compliment (“you’re perfect for this”), an instruction (“stand up for me”), and an implicit promise that I’ve chosen them for a good reason. The anxiety of volunteering is eliminated because they didn’t volunteer. They were selected. And being selected feels different from volunteering — it feels like recognition rather than risk.
The Warm-Up Ladder
For situations where I can’t scout ahead of time — maybe it’s a fast-paced set, or I’m performing for people I can’t see well due to lighting — I use what I think of as a warm-up ladder.
The idea is simple: you don’t jump from “everyone sitting passively” to “someone standing on stage” in a single leap. You create intermediate steps that gradually increase the level of participation.
Step one: ask the whole audience to do something together. “Everyone think of a color. Got it? Good.” No one is singled out. No one is at risk. But everyone has participated.
Step two: ask a specific section. “This side of the room — you all thought of blue, didn’t you?” Laughter. Slight engagement. Still safe.
Step three: address an individual with a low-stakes question. “Sir, what color did you think of?” He answers from his seat. The interaction is brief, public, and easy. He’s had a positive micro-experience of participation.
Step four: now you can invite someone to join you. By this point, the audience has been warmed up through progressively increasing involvement. The person you choose has seen others participate safely. The social proof is established. Coming on stage feels like a natural next step, not a terrifying leap.
The whole ladder might take ninety seconds. But those ninety seconds prevent the awkward dead air of “I need a volunteer” followed by scanning a room full of averted eyes.
The Implicit Invitation
There’s an even subtler method that works beautifully for close-up and small group situations: the implicit invitation.
Instead of asking for help, you create a situation where helping is the natural response. You hold out an object. You extend a deck of cards. You place something on the table in front of someone. The physical action communicates the invitation without words.
Holding a deck of cards toward someone while making eye contact and smiling gets a hand reaching for the deck about ninety-five percent of the time. No words needed. The gesture says “this is for you.” The smile says “this will be enjoyable.”
When the person takes the deck, they’ve participated without ever agreeing to participate. There was no decision, no risk assessment, no anxiety. The interaction happened the way conversations happen — naturally, without a formal invitation or acceptance.
Treating the Chosen Person Right
Getting someone to come up is only half the challenge. The other half is making sure they’re glad they did.
Once someone is on stage, everything you do and say communicates to the rest of the audience how you treat the people who help you. If you make the volunteer look foolish, every future request for participation will be met with resistance. If you make the volunteer look good — clever, funny, brave, important — every future request will be met with eagerness.
I always learn my volunteer’s name. Always. The moment they reach me, before anything else happens, I ask their name and I use it. “What’s your name? Maria? Maria, thank you for coming up. The audience is going to love this.” Two sentences. Takes four seconds. But it transforms the dynamic from “random person on stage” to “Maria is having a moment.”
The name matters because it makes the volunteer a person rather than a prop. The audience sees Maria, not “the volunteer.” They empathize with her. They root for her. They care about what happens to her. And when something amazing happens in her hands, the reaction is stronger because it happened to someone they now feel connected to, not to an anonymous participant.
I also make sure the volunteer gets a moment at the end. A thank you. A handshake. A round of applause specifically for them. The audience watches this. They see that participation was rewarded with respect. And the next time I need someone, the calculation in people’s heads shifts from “what if I look stupid?” to “that looked like fun.”
The Deeper Principle
The reason “I need a volunteer” fails is the same reason “would you mind helping me?” fails, and “raise your hand if…” fails. All three phrases shift the burden of engagement from the performer to the audience. They ask the audience to do something — volunteer, agree, respond — when the audience came to watch someone else do something for them.
The burden of creating engagement always belongs to the performer. Always. If you need a person on stage, it’s your job to make that happen smoothly, confidently, and without putting anyone in an uncomfortable position. The audience’s only job is to show up and be entertained. Everything else is on you.
I still occasionally get a reluctant volunteer. Someone who shakes their head when I approach them. Someone whose body language says “not me.” When that happens, I smile, say “no problem,” and move to someone else without missing a beat. No awkwardness. No pressure. No dwelling. The transition is so smooth that most of the audience doesn’t even register the refusal.
Because here’s the truth: if your method for getting volunteers creates anxiety, you don’t have a volunteer problem. You have a method problem. Fix the method, and the volunteers appear.
They were there all along. They just needed you to stop scaring them away.