I want to tell you about a table cloth. It is not a dramatic story. Nobody was injured. No career was made or broken. But this table cloth taught me something about professionalism that I have carried into every performance since.
Early in my performing journey, I bought a folding table for close-up and parlor performances. The table was functional. It held my props at the right height. It had a flat, stable surface. It did everything a table needs to do.
But it was ugly. Or rather, it was neutral — a plain black surface that communicated nothing except “someone set up a table.” I did not think this mattered. A table is a table. The audience is not there to look at the table. They are there to see the performance.
Then I watched a recording from a private corporate event in Vienna, and something caught my eye. Not the performance. The overall visual impression of my setup. Me, standing behind the table, with my props arranged on the surface. And the image looked… disconnected. My jacket was dark blue. My shirt was white. The table surface was black. My props were a mix of colors — red, silver, natural wood. The overall effect was like looking at a room where every piece of furniture came from a different store and a different decade. Nothing was wrong, exactly. But nothing was right, either. Nothing was talking to anything else.
That weekend, I ordered a table cloth.
The Visual Unity Principle
The idea that props, costume, and performance surface should coordinate visually is not something I invented. It is a principle that runs through virtually every source I have studied, though it is often stated as a small aside rather than a major framework.
Fitzkee includes “color” and “proper costuming” in his master checklist of audience appeals. Harlan discusses costumes as a core element of the inanimate theatre framework and argues that customizing your props is what separates you from every other performer buying the same items off the shelf. The underlying principle is the same: the audience processes your performance as a total visual experience, and every element that is visible contributes to or detracts from the overall impression.
Color is the most powerful and most overlooked element of that visual experience.
Color works on the audience subconsciously. They do not analyze your color palette the way a designer would. They do not think, “His pocket square picks up the accent color of his table cloth, which echoes the red in his card case.” They just feel that the overall picture looks right. Or they feel that it looks wrong. Or — and this is the most common and most damaging outcome — they feel nothing at all, because the visual presentation is so neutral and uncoordinated that it fades into the background.
My Color Coordination Education
I came to color coordination the way I come to most performance insights: through the consulting world, then adapted to the stage.
In my strategy consulting work, I learned early that presentation materials need to have a consistent visual identity. Slides with mismatched colors, inconsistent fonts, and random graphic styles look unprofessional regardless of how good the content is. Clients notice. They do not say, “Your slide deck had inconsistent color usage.” They say, “Something about the presentation felt a little off,” or they do not say anything at all — they just have a slightly lower opinion of the presenter’s competence.
The parallel to live performance is exact. Your visual setup is your slide deck. Every element the audience can see is a slide. And if those slides do not match, the audience’s unconscious assessment of your professionalism takes a hit.
Here is what I did. I chose a color palette. Not arbitrarily and not by following a trend, but by starting with the color that already dominated my wardrobe — dark navy blue — and building outward from there.
Navy blue jacket. That was the anchor. Everything else needed to work with that.
For the table cloth, I chose a deep charcoal grey rather than black. The difference is subtle but important. Pure black absorbs all light and creates a visual hole — props placed on a black surface can seem to float in a void. Charcoal grey provides a dark, elegant backdrop while still reading as a surface. It also coordinates better with navy blue than pure black does.
For props, I began paying attention to the colors of the items I was using and making deliberate choices. Where I had a choice between a red prop and a blue one, I chose the one that worked with my palette. Where I was designing or customizing a prop — something Adam and I do regularly at Vulpine Creations — I specified colors that would sit harmoniously on my table and against my costume.
The result, the first time I set up with the coordinated palette, was striking. Not because any individual element looked dramatically different. But because the whole picture looked intentional. Unified. Professional.
The Three Zones of Color
I think about color coordination in three zones, a framework I developed for my own use after experimenting with different approaches.
Zone One: The Performer. This is your clothing — jacket, shirt, tie or no tie, pocket square, shoes. This is the largest and most prominent color area because you are the biggest and most visible element of your performance. Your clothing colors set the dominant palette.
Zone Two: The Surface. This is your table cloth, performance mat, or whatever surface your props sit on. It is the second largest color area and it should complement Zone One without competing with it. If your jacket is dark blue, your table cloth should not also be dark blue — that creates visual confusion about where you end and the table begins. A complementary dark neutral works best.
Zone Three: The Props. These are the smallest color areas but often the most attention-grabbing because they are what the audience focuses on during the actual effects. Props should contrast enough with the surface to be clearly visible, and they should not clash with your clothing colors.
The principle is hierarchy. Zone One dominates. Zone Two supports. Zone Three accents.
When all three zones are in conversation with each other, the audience sees a unified visual field. When they are not, the audience sees a collection of unrelated objects that happen to be in the same space.
The Brand Thinking Parallel
In my consulting work, there is a concept called visual identity — the idea that every visual touchpoint of a brand should tell a consistent story. The reason is not aesthetic perfectionism. The reason is trust. Your performance setup is your brand. When your colors coordinate, the audience’s unconscious conclusion is: this person is professional, in control. When your colors are random, the conclusion is: this person assembled this hastily.
Nobody sits in the audience thinking, “The color coordination suggests a high degree of professionalism.” But the feeling is there, and it colors — literally — the entire experience that follows.
Practical Steps I Actually Took
I want to be concrete about the actual decisions I made, because “coordinate your colors” is easy to say and slightly harder to execute.
Step one: I photographed my entire performance wardrobe. I discovered that what I thought of as “all dark blue” was actually three different shades that did not quite match. I consolidated to two jackets close enough to be interchangeable.
Step two: I photographed my table cloth under different lighting conditions. Stage lighting changes colors — a cloth that looks charcoal grey under daylight can look brown under warm stage lights. I tested under the warm-ish LED lighting most Austrian corporate venues use.
Step three: I laid out my props on the table cloth, in front of my jacket, and photographed the whole arrangement. The first attempt was better but not quite right. One prop — a bright red card case — screamed against everything else. I replaced it with a muted burgundy case. Small change. Significant visual impact.
Step four: I showed the photograph to Adam. He suggested switching the table cloth from charcoal to a very dark slate blue. I was skeptical — would it not make everything monotone? He was right. The slate blue cloth created a cohesive field that made the props stand out more, not less.
What Color Coordination Does Not Mean
I am not recommending that everything match — matching is boring. I am not recommending you follow specific color theory rules about complementary palettes. And I am not recommending you spend a lot of money replacing all your props. Most of the coordination can be achieved through the table cloth choice, the clothing choice, and small adjustments to a few key props. The table cloth is the single highest-impact change because it is the backdrop against which everything else is seen.
The goal is “considered and intentional,” not “perfect.” If you spend more than an afternoon on your color coordination, you are overthinking it. Choose a palette. Apply it. Move on.
The Adam Wilber Effect
Working with Adam at Vulpine Creations gave me an education in visual presentation that I could not have gotten from books alone. Adam thinks visually in a way that is second nature to him and utterly foreign to me. When he designs a product, the color and finish are not afterthoughts. They are design decisions made early and defended throughout the development process.
Watching him evaluate products taught me to see my own performance setup with more critical eyes. He would look at a prototype and say, “The color is wrong for what this is trying to be.” Not wrong in an absolute sense. Wrong for the context, the audience, the feeling it was trying to create.
I started applying that same lens to my performance setup. Is this color wrong for what I am trying to be? Does this visual element support the impression I want to create, or does it undermine it? Is there a simple change — a different cloth, a different case, a different shirt — that would bring the whole picture into focus?
The answers were almost always yes. And the changes were almost always simple.
The Final Picture
Here is what my setup looks like now, after two years of gradual refinement.
Navy blue jacket. Light grey or white shirt. Pocket square that picks up one accent color — usually a muted gold or burgundy. Dark slate blue table cloth. Props in colors that either coordinate with the palette or provide intentional contrast — a silver coin case, a wooden box with dark finish, cards with backs that do not clash.
The total impression, when I set up and step back to look at it from the audience’s perspective, is of a single unified visual field. Everything belongs together. Everything looks like it was chosen by the same person for the same occasion. Nothing jars. Nothing distracts.
And when the performance begins, the audience is not thinking about any of this. They are not admiring my color coordination. They are watching the magic. Which is exactly the point.
The colors did their job in the first three seconds. They established trust, professionalism, and visual coherence before I said a word. Now they can step back and let the performance take over.
That is what production value from color coordination means. Not that the audience notices it. That they would notice its absence.