I had a routine I loved. It was a card effect with a visual transformation that got strong reactions. The method was clean, the structure was elegant, the climax hit hard. Every box was checked. And for about a year, it was one of my go-to pieces for corporate events around Austria.
The problem was that every time I performed it, something felt slightly off. Not technically — the execution was fine. Not structurally — the build was correct. The something that felt off was more subtle than that. It was the feeling that I was wearing a suit that belonged to somebody else. The routine worked, but it did not feel like mine. It felt like I was performing someone else’s material inside my own show.
And one evening in Salzburg, after a particularly smooth performance where the audience responded well and the client was happy, I sat in the hotel restaurant and finally admitted to myself what the problem was. The routine did not fit who I was on stage. It was built for a performer with a different energy, a different relationship to the audience, a different character. I was performing it competently, but I was performing it as an actor playing a role rather than as myself expressing something I cared about.
The routine was strong. It just was not mine.
The Character-First Question
Pete McCabe devotes an entire section of Scripting Magic to a principle that I had intellectually understood but not emotionally absorbed: character drives script. Before you can write what to say, you must know who is saying it. And by extension, before you can choose what to perform, you must know who is performing it.
This sounds obvious. Of course you know who is performing — it is you. But that answer is not sufficient. The question is not who you are in the abstract. The question is who you are on stage, in front of this specific audience, doing this specific thing. What is your relationship to the material? What is your relationship to the audience? What are you trying to communicate beyond the magical effect itself?
Max Maven’s three questions cut to the heart of it. Who is this person? What story are they telling? Why is it worth my time? If you cannot answer those questions for yourself — for your own stage persona — then you have no foundation for choosing material. You are selecting effects based on how impressive they are in the abstract rather than how well they fit the specific human being who will be performing them.
And effects that are impressive in the abstract but disconnected from the performer’s character produce a very specific audience response: admiration without connection. The audience thinks “that was clever” instead of “that person is fascinating.” Those are very different reactions, and the difference shows up in everything from the depth of the applause to the conversations people have after the show.
My Own Character Discovery
My character discovery was not a single moment. It was a gradual process of elimination that took years.
I started with a vague sense that I was a “serious” performer. Not in the sense of being humorless — I use humor constantly — but in the sense that my energy on stage was more contemplative than bombastic. I was not the high-energy, “pick a card, any card” guy. I was not the fast-talking, joke-a-minute entertainer. I was something quieter, something more conversational, something that drew from the fact that I spent my professional life in boardrooms and strategy sessions rather than in clubs and theaters.
The problem was that many of the effects I had chosen for my repertoire were designed for the high-energy, rapid-fire performer. They were effects that needed momentum, that needed exuberance, that needed a kind of theatrical showmanship that was not naturally mine. I could execute them. I could even get good reactions. But there was a gap between the material and the person performing it, and the audience could sense that gap even if they could not articulate it.
The first material I cut from my show was a series of fast visual effects. They were technically impressive. They required significant skill. They got audible reactions. But when I watched myself performing them on video, I could see the problem clearly. My body language changed during those sequences. My voice shifted. I became slightly louder, slightly more animated, slightly more theatrical than my natural energy. I was performing those effects in a mode that was not authentically mine.
In their place, I developed slower, more layered routines that matched my natural conversational style. Effects where the build was intellectual rather than visual. Effects where the audience’s anticipation came from curiosity rather than spectacle. Effects where the patter involved genuine stories from my life — the hotel rooms, the consulting career, the unlikely path from strategy work to magic — rather than generic magician banter.
The reactions were not always louder. Sometimes the new material produced quieter responses than the old. But the quality of the engagement changed dramatically. People leaned forward instead of leaning back. They listened instead of just watching. And after shows, the conversations shifted from “How did you do that?” to “Tell me more about yourself.” The second question is infinitely more valuable than the first.
The Constructivist Principle
Roberto Giobbi, writing in Scripting Magic 2, describes what he calls the constructivist approach: the person must be developed before the script. You cannot write an authentic script for a performer who does not know who they are on stage. And by extension, you cannot choose authentic material for a performer who has not done the character work.
Giobbi’s point, influenced by Juan Tamariz and the Spanish school of magic, is that the greatest performers do not “add presentation to tricks.” They express themselves through tricks. The trick is the vehicle. The person is the driver. And if the driver does not know where they are going, no vehicle, however powerful, will get them there.
This is the distinction between decoration and expression. A performer who has not done the character work ends up decorating effects — adding stories, jokes, and personality elements on top of material that was chosen for other reasons. The decoration can be excellent. It can be funny, warm, engaging. But it will always feel slightly grafted on, because the material beneath it was not chosen to serve the character.
A performer who has done the character work chooses material that is already an expression of who they are. The presentation is not added later. It is inherent in the choice. When you know your character — your energy, your relationship to the audience, your natural conversational rhythm, your interests, your vulnerabilities — the right material announces itself. You do not have to force it into shape. It fits because it was chosen to fit.
The Spine of Your Performance
McCabe introduces a concept borrowed from acting theory: the spine, or the super-objective. This is the single guiding principle that informs every creative decision. Not something vague like “be entertaining” or “be funny.” Something specific and personal that defines what you are trying to do when you step in front of an audience.
My spine took me a long time to articulate. I circled around it for months, trying different formulations, rejecting each one as either too broad or too narrow. The formulation I eventually settled on — and I am not going to share the exact words, because it is personal in a way that would feel strange to publish — has to do with the intersection of wonder and analytical thinking. It captures the paradox that defines my performing identity: I am someone who thinks systematically about everything, including the things that cannot be systematically explained. The magic I perform sits in that gap between analysis and mystery. It is my way of showing audiences that the world is more interesting than any framework can fully capture.
Once I had that spine, material selection became almost automatic. I would look at an effect and ask: does this serve my spine? Does this express the tension between systematic thinking and inexplicable experience? If yes, it goes in the show. If no, it does not matter how impressive it is. It does not belong.
The card routine I cut — the one that felt like someone else’s suit — failed the spine test completely. It was a pure visual spectacle. Beautiful, skillful, impressive. But it had nothing to do with the intersection of analysis and mystery. It was not saying anything about who I am or how I see the world. It was just impressive. And impressive without character is hollow.
What Material Selection Looks Like After the Character Work
After I did the character work and defined my spine, several things changed simultaneously.
First, I stopped being attracted to effects based on method cleverness. I used to choose material partly because the method fascinated me — “what a brilliant solution to this problem.” Now I choose material based entirely on the audience experience and how that experience serves my character. I do not care how the trick works, from a selection standpoint. I care what it looks like, what it feels like, and what it says about the person performing it.
Second, I started gravitating toward effects with built-in narrative potential. Effects where there is a natural story — a choice, a prediction, a test, a personal challenge — rather than effects that are pure demonstrations. My consulting background gives me a natural framework for framing effects as experiments, as investigations, as “let me show you something I discovered.” That framing serves my character. A pure demonstration of skill does not.
Third, I became much more selective. My active repertoire shrank by nearly half. But each remaining piece felt solid in a way that the fuller repertoire never had. Every effect in the show served the same character, told the same larger story, expressed the same core tension. The show became coherent in a way it had not been before, and audiences responded to that coherence even if they could not identify what had changed.
The Paradox of Limitation
There is a paradox here that my strategy brain finds deeply satisfying. By limiting my material choices to effects that serve my character, I actually became more creative. The constraint forced me to look at effects differently, to find angles and presentations that I would never have discovered without the filter.
When anything goes — when you can perform any effect that seems strong — the creative pressure is low. You are shopping from the world’s largest catalog. But when you must find material that fits a specific character, expresses a specific spine, and serves a specific relationship with the audience, you start seeing possibilities in effects you would previously have dismissed. You start adapting, reframing, combining. You start making material your own not because you decided to be original but because the constraint demands it.
This is, incidentally, the same principle that drives innovation in business. Constraint breeds creativity. The company with unlimited resources rarely innovates as aggressively as the company that must solve the problem with what it has.
The Test I Now Apply
When I encounter a new effect, I run it through a simple filter before investing any practice time.
Can I imagine performing this as myself? Not as a generic magician. Not as an idealized version of a performer. As me, Felix, the strategy consultant who fell into magic through hotel room card practice and ended up co-founding a magic company with Adam Wilber. Can I see myself doing this in front of a corporate audience in Vienna and having it feel like a natural expression of who I am?
If the answer is yes, the effect gets a trial period. If the answer is no, it does not matter how strong it is. It is someone else’s trick. And performing someone else’s trick, no matter how well, will always produce someone else’s reactions.
The goal is not to perform impressive magic. The goal is to perform magic that is unmistakably yours. And the only way to get there is to know who you are on stage — truly know it, not vaguely sense it — and let that knowledge shape every material decision you make.
When you know who you are, you know what to perform. Everything else follows.