There was a period — probably six months, maybe longer — where I was stuck in a loop. I would learn a new effect, write what I thought was a decent script, rehearse it in my hotel room until the handling felt smooth, and then perform it at a corporate event. The audience would respond politely. Sometimes they would respond well. But the performances never felt like they were landing the way I imagined they should when I was rehearsing alone with a laptop and a deck of cards at midnight in some Marriott in Vienna.
I kept thinking the problem was technical. Maybe I needed a cleaner handling. Maybe the script needed another draft. Maybe I needed to practice more. So I would go back to the hotel room, refine the sleight, tighten the words, run through it another fifty times, and perform it again. Marginal improvement at best.
The breakthrough came from a checklist. Not a complicated system, not a philosophy — a checklist. Five points. I found it in Cara Hamilton’s guide on storytelling for magicians, and it reframed how I think about designing any piece of performance, whether it is a three-minute card routine or a full keynote closer.
She calls it the Five-Pointed Star.
The Five Points
The idea is straightforward. Every magical presentation has five elements that support the story you are telling. Not three. Not one. Five. And most of us — certainly I was in this camp — only ever think about one or two of them.
The five points are: setting, sound, light, props, and the story itself.
That is it. Five elements. And the claim — which I initially thought was overstated until I tested it against my own material — is that when all five elements are working together, the presentation becomes exponentially stronger than when only the story and perhaps the props are pulling their weight.
Let me walk through what happened when I actually applied this to a routine I had been performing for months.
The Routine I Thought Was Finished
I had a mentalism piece I was using as a closer in my keynote presentations. The effect was strong. The audience reaction was consistently good. The script had been through probably a dozen revisions. I was proud of it.
Then I sat down with the Five-Pointed Star checklist and ran the routine through each point.
Story: Yes. I had a narrative arc, a personal connection, a clear through-line from setup to climax. This point was solid.
Props: Mostly fine. The items I used were presentable and appropriate for a corporate audience. Not flashy, not cheap. Good enough.
Light: I had never once thought about it. Whatever the venue provided, I used. Sometimes that was a harsh white spotlight. Sometimes it was dim ambient lighting that washed out everything on stage. Sometimes the audience could barely see the items I was holding up. I had been performing the same routine under wildly different lighting conditions and assuming it was the same experience for the audience every time. It was not.
Sound: I had a microphone, usually. Beyond that, nothing. No consideration of how music or ambient sound might frame the piece. No thought about what the audience was hearing in the seconds before I began. No awareness of how the room’s acoustics shaped the mood.
Setting: This one hit hardest. I had given zero thought to the physical environment beyond making sure I had enough table space. The setting in which I performed had nothing to do with the story I was telling. I was asking the audience to enter a narrative world while standing in front of a bare stage with a generic conference backdrop. The setting was not supporting my story. It was actively ignoring it.
Two out of five. That is what I scored when I was honest with myself. A routine I thought was finished was operating at forty percent of its potential.
The Setting Problem
Setting was the element I had been most blind to. As a consultant who performs at corporate events, I had trained myself to be flexible — to work in whatever room I was given, with whatever setup was available. Flexibility is a virtue in that world. But I had confused flexibility with indifference.
The setting does not need to be elaborate. It needs to be in sympathy with the narrative. If you are telling a story about mystery and impossibility, the environment should feel like it supports that tone. A single draped cloth on the table instead of a bare surface. A backdrop color that creates depth rather than flatness. Even the arrangement of chairs — whether the audience is close and intimate or spread across a ballroom — changes the narrative feel of the piece.
I started making small requests in my advance riders. A black tablecloth instead of the venue’s standard white. A warm lighting wash instead of the default fluorescent overhead. Permission to dim the houselights slightly during my closing piece. These are not diva requests. They are five-second adjustments that venue technicians make without blinking. And they transformed the frame around my performance.
The first time I performed my mentalism closer with a warm amber wash instead of flat white lighting, the audience leaned in before I said a single word. The setting was doing work I had been asking my script to do alone.
Sound as Atmosphere
Sound was the second revelation. I do not mean music specifically — although music can be powerful. I mean the entire sonic environment of the performance.
I noticed that at most corporate events, the moment before a performer takes the stage is filled with ambient noise: chatter, glasses clinking, chairs shifting. That noise communicates to the audience that what is about to happen is casual, interruptible, not particularly important. It is the sonic equivalent of the lights being on in a cinema before the film starts.
When I started requesting a brief music cue before I walk on — just fifteen or twenty seconds of something atmospheric that signals a shift in mood — the quality of the audience’s attention changed immediately. They stopped chattering. They turned forward. By the time the music faded and I began speaking, I had the room.
This is not a magic trick. This is basic theater craft. But most magicians, and certainly I was one of them, think of sound only in terms of “do I have a microphone” and maybe “should I play something during my manipulation act.” Sound is an atmosphere builder, and it works on the audience before you do a single thing.
Light Tells the Story Before You Do
I came to understand light through repeated failure. Performing a piece about intuition and hidden knowledge under harsh, shadowless fluorescent lighting is like whispering a secret in a brightly lit cafeteria. The words might be the same, but the experience is fundamentally different.
Light communicates mood faster than language does. A single focused spotlight with the surrounding area darker creates intimacy and focus. It tells the audience “pay attention here, something important is happening.” A broad, flat wash communicates openness and casualness. Neither is wrong — but each tells a different story.
I am not a lighting designer. I cannot rig a theatrical light plot at a hotel ballroom. But I can ask the venue technician to bring the house lights down to fifty percent during my closing piece. I can request a warm-toned spot instead of a cool one. I can position myself so the existing light works with my presentation rather than against it.
These requests take thirty seconds during a sound check. The impact lasts the entire performance.
Props That Belong to the World
The props point on the checklist was where I thought I was already doing well. My props were clean, professional, appropriate. But “appropriate” is not the same as “in sympathy with the story.”
The distinction is subtle but powerful. A prop that is merely appropriate looks like a prop. It does its job, but it sits outside the narrative world. A prop that is in sympathy with the story becomes part of the world you are creating. It looks like it belongs in the story, not in a magic catalog.
I started thinking about the texture and appearance of every item the audience sees. Not in terms of magic methodology — that is a separate concern — but in terms of narrative coherence. Does this object look like it belongs in the world of the story I am telling? Does it feel like something the character I am presenting would naturally possess?
When the answer is yes, the prop becomes invisible as a “magic prop.” It stops triggering the audience’s automatic suspicion — the reflex that says “that looks like a trick item” — and starts supporting the narrative. The audience stops analyzing and starts experiencing.
How I Use the Checklist Now
The Five-Pointed Star has become my standard evaluation tool for any piece of performance. Not just magic — I use it when I design keynote presentations, workshop exercises, anything that involves standing in front of people and trying to create an experience.
Before I consider a routine finished, I run it through all five points. Setting: is the physical environment supporting or contradicting the narrative? Sound: what is the audience hearing before, during, and after the piece? Light: is the lighting creating the right mood and focus? Props: do the physical objects belong in the world of the story? Story: is the narrative itself coherent, engaging, and worth the audience’s time?
If any point scores poorly, I know exactly where to focus my next round of work. And the fix is almost always simpler than I expect. A tablecloth. A music cue. A lighting request. A prop wrapped in something more interesting than its original packaging.
The Compound Effect
The real power of the checklist is not in any individual element. It is in the compound effect of all five working together. When the setting, the sound, the light, the props, and the story are all pointing in the same direction, the audience experiences coherence. They may not be able to articulate why the performance feels immersive, but they feel it. The individual threads weave into something that holds together.
When I was only scoring two out of five, I was asking my script and my method to do all the heavy lifting. They were doing a decent job. But they were doing it alone, in an environment that was neutral at best and contradictory at worst.
Now, every element of the presentation shares the load. The story does not have to work as hard because the setting, the sound, the light, and the props are all whispering the same narrative to the audience before I open my mouth.
The Deeper Lesson
The deeper lesson of the Five-Pointed Star is about coherence. About recognizing that a performance is not a trick with some words wrapped around it. It is an environment. It is a world you build for the audience to step into, however briefly.
When I was stuck in that loop of refining my handling and rewriting my script, I was doing the equivalent of redecorating one room in a house while the rest of the building was empty. The room looked fine. But the experience of walking through an empty house to reach one decorated room is not the experience of stepping into a fully realized home.
Five points. Setting. Sound. Light. Props. Story. A checklist simple enough to write on a napkin and powerful enough to transform how you think about every piece of performance you will ever design.
I keep it on my phone. I check it before every show. And I have never scored two out of five again.