For the first two years after I started performing, I thought extraordinary moments were a function of the effect. Pick the right trick, perform it cleanly, and the extraordinary moment would emerge naturally from the impossibility itself.
I was wrong. And the proof was sitting in my own performance recordings, if I had been willing to watch them honestly.
I had effects in my repertoire that were, objectively, strong. Predictions that matched. Thoughts that were divined. Objects that behaved in ways they should not. The impossibilities were real, the methods were clean, and the audience understood what had happened. But the reactions, while positive, were rarely extraordinary. They were the reactions of people who had seen something impressive — not the reactions of people who had just witnessed something that broke their understanding of how reality works.
The extraordinary moment was in the material. I was sure of it. But I was not finding it. Or more accurately, I was not creating the conditions for it to emerge.
When I read Ken Weber’s framework and combined it with Darwin Ortiz’s analytical approach from Strong Magic, I realized that the extraordinary moment is not something you hope for. It is something you hunt. You stalk it through your material, you identify where it lives, and you build everything around it so that when it arrives, it arrives with maximum force.
This is how I learned to stalk the extraordinary moment. And the methodology is more systematic than you might expect.
Step One: Identify the Impossibility Peak
Every effect has a moment of maximum impossibility. Not the climax of the performance, necessarily — the climax might be dramatic or emotional or comedic. I mean the specific instant where the gap between what the audience expected and what actually happened is widest.
In a prediction effect, it is the moment the prediction is revealed and matches. Not the moment you seal the envelope. Not the moment the audience makes their choices. The moment the two things are shown to be identical.
In a card revelation, it is the instant the chosen card appears in an impossible location. Not the selection process. Not the shuffle. The appearance.
In a mentalism piece, it is the moment you name the thing the spectator was thinking of. Not the buildup, not the “I’m getting something,” not the narrowing down. The moment you say the word and it is correct.
These are the impossibility peaks. They are the raw material from which extraordinary moments are made. And the first step in stalking the extraordinary moment is to identify, with precision, exactly where each impossibility peak lives in each of your routines.
I went through my entire repertoire with a notebook and marked the impossibility peak of every effect. For some, it was obvious. For others, I had to think carefully about what the audience actually experienced versus what I, as the performer, considered the impressive part.
This distinction matters enormously. As a performer, I was often most impressed by the technical difficulty of a certain phase of the routine, or by the cleverness of a particular method. But the audience does not know about technical difficulty or method cleverness. The audience experiences the impossibility. And the point of maximum impossibility is not always where the performer thinks it is.
One of my mentalism routines had a phase that I considered the climax — a final reveal that was technically the most complex part of the performance. But when I watched audience reactions frame by frame on video, I discovered that the strongest reaction actually occurred earlier, during a simpler phase where I casually revealed something the spectator had not even been asked about. That offhand reveal, which I had treated as a throwaway beat on the way to the “real” climax, was producing the most visceral audience response.
The impossibility peak was not where I thought it was. And because I did not know where it was, I was not treating it with the attention it deserved.
Step Two: Clear the Approach
Once you have identified the impossibility peak, the next question is: what is the audience experiencing in the thirty seconds before that peak arrives?
This is the approach — the path the audience walks before they reach the moment of maximum impact. And in most routines, including many of mine, the approach was cluttered.
Cluttered with unnecessary procedure. Cluttered with verbal filler. Cluttered with setup actions that served the method but distracted from the emotional trajectory. Cluttered with the performer’s own energy, which was often pitched too high or too uniform, leaving no room for the peak to stand above the surrounding terrain.
The analogy I find most useful is a mountain. The extraordinary moment is the summit. But if the terrain around the summit is also high — if you have been operating at a consistently elevated energy level throughout the routine — then the summit does not feel like a summit. It feels like just another ridge in a generally elevated landscape.
For the summit to feel like a summit, there must be a valley before it. A deliberate reduction in energy, pace, volume, and intensity in the moments before the peak. This is not about being boring. It is about creating contrast. The valley makes the summit.
I started editing the approach to each impossibility peak in my repertoire. In practical terms, this meant:
Removing unnecessary words from the thirty seconds before the peak. Every sentence that did not directly serve the buildup to the impossible moment was cut.
Slowing down. Not dramatically — audiences sense artificial pace changes and they feel manipulative. But a subtle deceleration that creates space for the audience to lean in rather than keep up.
Reducing physical movement. Standing more still in the moments before the peak. Letting my hands settle. Letting my body communicate that something is converging, that the routine is arriving somewhere.
Lowering my voice. Not to a whisper — that is theatrical and obvious. But enough that the audience has to invest a fraction more attention. That slight increase in their investment pays enormous dividends when the peak arrives.
Step Three: Frame the Peak
The impossibility peak, once identified and approached properly, needs to be framed. The audience needs to understand that this is the moment. Not because you announce it — announcing the climax is crass and actually reduces its impact. But because everything about your behavior signals that the routine has arrived at its destination.
Weber talks about this through the concept of the magic moment and the exaggerated pause. Just before the reveal, stop. Let silence fill the space. Let the audience’s anticipation build without releasing it. Hold the envelope without opening it. Look at the spectator without speaking. Let the moment elongate until the silence itself becomes part of the experience.
This is extremely difficult to do. Every instinct tells you to keep going, to maintain momentum, to deliver the payoff before the audience gets restless. But audiences do not get restless in the pause before a climax. They get more invested. The pause is not dead time. It is the loading of a spring. When the reveal finally comes, the spring releases and the reaction is proportional to how much tension was stored.
I experimented with different pause lengths in rehearsal and found my personal sweet spot was between three and five seconds of full silence before the major reveal. Less than three seconds and the pause barely registers. More than five and it starts to feel forced. Between three and five, the silence does its work — the audience leans forward, holds their breath, and meets the reveal in a state of heightened receptivity.
Step Four: Protect the Aftermath
This is the step I had been getting wrong most consistently, and it is the step that made the biggest difference when I fixed it.
After the impossibility peak — after the prediction matches, after the thought is revealed, after the impossible thing happens — there is a window of time where the extraordinary moment either solidifies or dissolves. What happens in that window determines whether the audience walks away with a memory of genuine astonishment or a memory of a good trick.
Most performers, myself very much included, fill this window with action. They move to the next phase. They make a comment. They start cleaning up props. They transition to the next effect. This activity, however well-intentioned, deflates the moment. It gives the audience permission to stop feeling astonished and start processing, analyzing, moving on.
Protecting the aftermath means doing nothing. Or as close to nothing as you can manage. After the peak, stop. Let the reaction happen. Let the silence or the gasp or the applause or the laughter — whatever form the reaction takes — fill the room without competition from you.
Do not comment on the reaction. “Pretty amazing, right?” kills the moment dead. Do not explain what just happened. “So the prediction I wrote this morning matches every single one of your choices.” They know. They were there. Your recap converts astonishment into analysis.
Do not immediately set up the next thing. The transition can wait ten seconds. Those ten seconds of aftermath are where the extraordinary moment lives. Cut them short and you cut the moment short.
I started building explicit aftermath pauses into my routines. After every impossibility peak, I scripted a minimum of eight seconds of nothing. No talking. No movement. No prop handling. Just standing there, letting the moment exist.
Eight seconds, in rehearsal, felt like an eternity. In performance, it felt right. The audiences were not waiting for me to do something. They were still inside the moment. And when I eventually spoke again, they were in a different state than they had been before — a state of genuine wonder rather than polite appreciation.
Step Five: Watch, Measure, Adjust
The final step is the one that turns this from theory into practice: watch your recordings.
After every performance where I had implemented these changes, I reviewed the footage with a specific focus on the impossibility peak and its surrounding territory. I watched the audience, not myself. I timed the reactions. I noted when applause started and how long it lasted. I watched for the physical signs of genuine astonishment — the open mouths, the turning to neighbors, the involuntary stepping back — versus the signs of polite appreciation — the measured clapping, the half-smile, the nod.
Over the course of about three months of this process, I developed a reliable sense of which adjustments were working and which were not. Some pauses were too long for certain venues. Some approach sequences needed more energy reduction. Some aftermath windows could be shorter because the audience was ready to move on and holding them in silence started to feel awkward.
The adjustments are ongoing. They will always be ongoing. Because the extraordinary moment is not a fixed destination. It is a living thing that shifts with every audience, every venue, every performance. What worked in the conference hall in Vienna needs adjustment for the intimate dinner in Klagenfurt. The pause that was perfect for a hundred people feels wrong for twenty.
But the methodology is consistent. Identify the peak. Clear the approach. Frame the peak. Protect the aftermath. Watch and adjust. Repeat.
What I Have Learned About the Extraordinary Moment
After a year of stalking extraordinary moments through my repertoire, I have arrived at a conclusion that is both humbling and energizing.
The extraordinary moment is almost always already in your material. You do not need new effects. You do not need better methods. You do not need more expensive props or more elaborate staging. The impossibility is already there, built into the effect you have been performing for months or years.
What you need is to stop burying it. Stop rushing past it. Stop cushioning it with words and activity and theatrical habit. Stop treating it like one beat among many when it is the beat — the reason the entire routine exists.
The extraordinary moment does not need you to create it. It needs you to get out of its way and then, when it arrives, to give it the space and the silence and the weight it deserves.
That is what it means to stalk it. Not to invent it. To find where it already lives, clear the path to it, and let it land.