The moment that changed how I think about volunteer logistics happened at a corporate gala in Vienna. It was a large event — about two hundred people, a raised stage, a formal dinner. I was performing after the keynote speeches, and I had a mentalism piece that required a volunteer to join me on stage.
I spotted my volunteer during the dinner — a woman in her fifties, clearly enjoying the evening, engaged and expressive. Perfect. When the moment came, I invited her up. She stood, smiled, walked to the front of the room with confidence, and arrived at the edge of the stage.
The stage was about sixty centimeters high. There were no stairs.
She stood at the edge, looked up at the stage, looked down at her heels, and the energy in the room shifted. It was subtle but unmistakable. The anticipation I had built — the warm invitation, the building intrigue of the routine — collapsed into an awkward practical problem. How does this woman get onto this stage?
I jumped down, extended my hand, and helped her up. She managed it gracefully enough, and we both laughed about it. The audience laughed too. But the laugh was not the good kind — it was the nervous kind, the kind that comes from shared discomfort rather than shared delight. And the thirty seconds of physical negotiation — the stepping, the lifting, the heel management, the skirt adjustment — had completely broken the flow of the routine.
I recovered. The routine went well. But I knew, standing there on that stage helping a woman in heels navigate a sixty-centimeter step, that this was a problem I should never have had.
The Invisible Infrastructure
Here is what I have learned about volunteer logistics: the infrastructure that gets people from their seats to your performance area and back again is invisible when it works and catastrophic when it fails. It is one of those production elements that nobody thinks about during the creative process — the scripting, the rehearsal, the effect design. All of your attention goes to what happens during the routine, and almost none goes to what happens in the transition between the audience member’s seat and the performance space.
Weber’s advice on handling volunteers in Maximum Entertainment is primarily about the interpersonal dynamics — asking for their name, treating them as guests, never showing displeasure. Scott Alexander’s advice is about pacing — too much audience participation kills momentum, stagger participation pieces, keep stage visits brief. Both sets of advice are excellent and necessary. But neither one addresses the purely physical question of how people get to and from the stage.
And yet, in my experience, the physical logistics of volunteer management have been responsible for more broken moments than any scripting error or technical failure.
The Walk
The first thing most performers underestimate is the walk. The time it takes for a volunteer to get from their seat to the performance area. This is not negligible. In a theater-style setup with narrow rows, the volunteer has to excuse themselves past several other audience members — stepping over bags, bumping knees, mumbling apologies. In a banquet setup with round tables, they have to push back their chair, navigate around other chairs, and cross an open floor that suddenly feels very wide and very exposed.
Scott Alexander makes the point vividly: “It takes time for grandma to hobble her way up onstage and then hobble back down.” The image is deliberately comical, but the principle is serious. Every second of that walk is dead time — time during which no entertainment is occurring. The audience is watching someone navigate a physical space, not experiencing a magical moment.
The longer the walk, the worse the problem. And the problem compounds in both directions — the walk to the stage and the walk back. If you have a volunteer on stage for a three-minute routine, and the walk takes thirty seconds each way, you have just added a minute of dead time to a three-minute piece. That is a twenty-five percent inflation of the routine’s running time with zero entertainment value.
My mitigation strategies for the walk are practical. First, I select volunteers from the front rows whenever possible. This shortens the walk to a few seconds. Second, when selecting from further back, I begin talking — continuing the routine, building context, maintaining the narrative — before the volunteer has reached me. The walk becomes background activity rather than foreground activity. The audience’s attention stays on my words rather than tracking the volunteer’s physical journey.
Third, and this is something I picked up from Dan Harlan’s Tarbell lecture, I use music. If I know a routine will involve audience participation, I have background music ready that can fill the transition. The music maintains energy and atmosphere during the walk, preventing the dead silence that makes physical transitions feel interminable.
The Step
Now, the step itself. The physical challenge of getting a person from the floor level to a raised stage. This is where my Vienna gala taught me the most painful lesson.
Not every performance happens on a raised stage, of course. Close-up performances, keynote addresses in conference rooms, house parties — many of the events I perform at are at floor level, and the step problem does not exist. But a significant percentage of corporate events, galas, and formal functions do involve a stage. And stages almost always involve steps.
Here is what can go wrong, drawn from my own observations and experiences:
The step is too high. A standard stage step of fifteen to twenty centimeters is manageable for most people. A stage that is sixty centimeters or higher, without proper stairs, requires a genuine physical effort that can be difficult for anyone in heels, anyone with mobility limitations, anyone wearing a tight skirt, or anyone who simply was not expecting to climb.
The step is too narrow. Steep, narrow stairs feel dangerous, and an audience member who feels physically unsafe will communicate that discomfort to the entire room. The routine is dead before it starts.
There are no handrails. A volunteer navigating unfamiliar stairs in an unfamiliar environment, in front of two hundred watching colleagues, while wearing formal attire, in dimmed lighting — that person needs something to hold onto. Without a handrail, they instinctively reach for the performer. Now you are physically supporting a nervous audience member instead of performing.
The lighting on the steps is poor. In many venues, the stage is lit and the stairs are not. The volunteer steps from bright light into shadow, loses depth perception, and hesitates or stumbles. I have seen this happen more times than I can count.
My Pre-Show Step Protocol
After the Vienna incident, I developed a specific protocol for evaluating and preparing any performance space that involves elevation changes. This protocol runs during my pre-show walkthrough, well before the audience arrives.
First, I walk the path myself. I stand at the seats where volunteers are most likely to be seated, and I walk to the stage. I note every obstacle, every gap, every uneven surface. I walk the stairs going up and coming down. I do this in performance shoes, not in my sneakers, because the experience of navigating stairs in dress shoes is different from navigating them in casual footwear.
Second, I evaluate the stairs. Are they stable? Are they wide enough for two people to use simultaneously (because I will often walk alongside the volunteer)? Is the surface non-slip? Are there handrails? If there are no handrails, is there a wall or column nearby that could provide support?
Third, I check the lighting on the stairs. I ask the lighting operator or the venue manager to show me what the lighting will look like during the performance. If the stairs are in shadow, I ask for adjustment. A simple uplighter or a small LED strip on the stair edges can make an enormous difference. Many venues have these available but do not deploy them unless asked.
Fourth, I plan my volunteer selection around the physical reality. If the stairs are steep and there are no handrails, I will select younger, more mobile volunteers. If the stage is high and the only access is a narrow set of stairs, I may decide to bring the volunteer to a position beside the stage rather than on it. If the physical logistics are genuinely problematic, I may redesign the routine to keep the volunteer in their seat entirely.
The Helping Hand
Weber’s principle that volunteers are doing you a favor — treat them as guests, not props — extends directly to the physical handling of their transitions. Every physical interaction with a volunteer communicates something to the rest of the audience about who you are and how you treat people.
Scott Alexander emphasizes this as well: always help them up onto the stage and help them down. Even if they do not need the help. Even if they are young and agile and bounding up the stairs two at a time. The gesture matters. Extending a hand, offering a steadying touch, walking alongside them — these actions communicate care, respect, and professionalism. The audience reads them instantly and unconsciously.
I have developed a physical routine for the volunteer transition that I execute the same way every time. When I invite someone up, I walk toward them. I meet them partway, shortening the distance they need to travel alone. I offer my hand as they approach the stairs, positioning myself slightly ahead and to their side. I ascend first, keeping my hand extended behind me so they can use it for balance. Once on stage, I guide them to their position with a light touch on the shoulder or a gesture.
On the way down — and this is the part most performers forget — I walk them to the stairs, descend first, and extend my hand from below to help them down. The descent is actually more challenging than the ascent for most people, especially in heels, because you are stepping into uncertainty rather than stepping up to something you can see.
The entire transition takes perhaps fifteen seconds. But those fifteen seconds communicate more about my character as a performer than any scripted line ever could.
The Return Trip
Speaking of things performers forget: the volunteer’s return to their seat is at least as important as their arrival on stage. After the routine is complete, there is a natural swell of applause. The temptation is to ride that applause into the next segment — to keep talking, to transition immediately, to maintain the energy you have built.
But the volunteer is still standing there. They need to get back to their seat. And if you have already moved on to the next bit, they are walking back alone, through an audience that has already redirected its attention to you. It is the loneliest walk in the world.
Alexander’s advice about the whispered thank-you resonates deeply with me here. Before the volunteer begins their return walk, I stop. I face them. I say something — sometimes a quiet thank-you, sometimes a brief acknowledgment of something specific they did during the routine. The audience sees this moment as an unscripted, personal interaction. It registers as genuine warmth. And it gives the volunteer a graceful beat in which to begin their departure, accompanied by the audience’s applause rather than abandoned during my next transition.
Then I watch them return to their seat. Not in a way that freezes the show — I may be speaking, beginning the setup for the next piece — but I track them with peripheral awareness. If they hesitate at the stairs, I pause. If they need a hand, I go to them. The routine is not over until the volunteer is safely back in their seat.
The Larger Principle
All of this — the stairs, the walks, the lighting, the handrails, the helping hand — comes down to a single principle that extends far beyond volunteer logistics: the audience’s experience includes everything they see, not just the parts you planned.
The scripted moment, the reveal, the climax — those are the parts you planned. But the volunteer tripping on a step, the awkward climb onto a stage, the lonely walk back to a seat during the next routine — those are the parts the audience will remember if they go wrong. And the parts they will never notice if they go right.
That asymmetry is the essence of production. Great production is invisible. The audience never thinks about the stairs because the stairs worked. They never notice the lighting on the steps because the lighting was correct. They never feel uncomfortable watching a volunteer navigate the stage because the navigation was smooth, supported, and graceful.
Bad production is unforgettable. One stumble. One awkward moment. One flash of a volunteer’s fear as they stare down a steep step in heels, in front of their colleagues, wondering how they got into this situation.
Check the stairs. Walk the path. Light the steps. Plan the transitions. And always, always extend your hand. The logistics nobody thinks about are the logistics that define whether your show feels professional or amateur.
It is the work nobody sees. And that is exactly the point.