There is a line I used to say near the beginning of my first real show — a thirty-minute set I had cobbled together because you cannot co-found a magic company and not be able to perform. The line was some variation of “I’m going to show you something impossible.” I said it with conviction. I had practiced it in hotel rooms. I thought it sounded confident and strong.
It was weak. And it took me a long time to understand why.
The problem was not the delivery, or the timing, or even the words themselves in isolation. The problem was that by explicitly announcing impossibility, I was implicitly conceding that it needed announcing. I was, in effect, asking the audience to believe something they had not yet been given reason to believe. I was selling before I had earned the right to sell. And audiences can smell that from across the room.
The fix was so subtle that I almost missed it. I stopped telling people what was about to happen. I started behaving as if what was about to happen was already understood.
That shift — from declaration to presupposition — changed everything.
The Language You Do Not Notice
Presupposition is the information that a sentence takes for granted. Not the information it asserts, but the information it assumes is already true. If I say “When you notice the change,” I have not told you a change will happen. I have presupposed it. The sentence is about when you will notice it, not whether it will occur. The change itself is treated as a given.
Compare that to “I’m going to make something change.” Now I am asserting the change. I am putting it on the table for evaluation. The audience’s critical mind engages immediately: Really? How? I bet I can figure it out. The assertion invites scrutiny. The presupposition bypasses it entirely.
I first encountered this distinction not in a magic book, but in Derren Brown’s Absolute Magic, where he describes four beliefs he holds in mind during performance — beliefs he communicates through behavior rather than words. One of them is essentially: “This is the real stuff. I’m not messing about.” Brown’s point is that this belief is never stated outright. It leaks through in manner, timing, and the way you carry yourself. The audience picks it up not because you told them, but because your behavior took it for granted.
That was the moment the concept of presupposition clicked for me. Not as a linguistic trick, but as an entire philosophy of communication.
What Presupposition Actually Does
When you presuppose something, you embed it beneath the surface of your communication where it is far less likely to be questioned. The audience’s conscious attention focuses on whatever you are explicitly saying, while the presupposed information slips into their understanding unchallenged.
This is not manipulation. It is how all confident communication works. When a surgeon says “After the procedure, you’ll want to rest for a few days,” no one questions whether the procedure will happen. The presupposition — that the procedure is a done deal — is so naturally embedded that resisting it would require the listener to actively deconstruct the sentence. And no one does that in normal conversation.
Performers who struggle with audience compliance are often performers who assert when they should presuppose. “Would you like to help me with something?” invites a no. “As you step up here, just stand to my left” presupposes that they are already stepping up. The compliance is built into the grammar. The spectator would have to actively refuse, which requires social energy most people will not expend.
This works because of something deeper than linguistics. It works because confidence is suggestion. When you behave as if something is true, other people’s default response is to accept it as true. The social contract favors agreement. We are wired to go along with confident framing unless we have a strong reason not to. And presupposition is the linguistic expression of that confidence.
The Four Things I Presuppose
Over time, I developed a set of presuppositions that run beneath everything I do on stage. I did not write them down as rules. They evolved through hundreds of performances, corporate events in Vienna and Graz, keynote gigs in Salzburg and Linz, and countless hotel room rehearsals where I would record myself and listen back for the moments where my language was asserting instead of assuming.
The first is that what I am doing is worth their full attention. I do not ask for attention. I do not request that phones be put away. I simply wait. I look at the audience with a kind of expectant patience — the same patience you would show if you were about to tell a close friend something genuinely important and they were momentarily distracted. The waiting presupposes that what comes next deserves the silence. And the audience, reading that presupposition from my body language, provides it.
The second is that something genuine is happening. Not a trick. Not a demonstration. Something real. I communicate this by taking things slowly, by not rushing, by treating each moment with a weight that suggests consequence. If I were doing a party trick, I would be breezy and fast. The pace itself presupposes significance.
The third is that the spectator is already part of this. Not a prop. Not a stooge. A participant in something that matters. I communicate this through eye contact, through the way I speak to them rather than at them, through the micro-acknowledgments — a nod, a small smile, a moment where I register their presence as a person rather than as “the volunteer.”
The fourth is that I know exactly what is about to happen. Even when — especially when — I do not. The steadiness in my voice, the lack of hedging, the absence of the nervous verbal filler that plagues so many performers. All of it presupposes competence and certainty, which the audience mirrors back as trust.
None of these are ever spoken. They are felt. They exist in the spaces between words, in the tempo of movement, in the quality of eye contact. And they do more work than any scripted line I have ever written.
Why Assertions Backfire
The opposite of presupposition is assertion, and assertion is where most beginners live. “I have incredible powers of the mind.” “This next effect is truly impossible.” “You will not believe what happens next.”
Each of these statements is an invitation to disagree. The audience hears a claim and immediately, unconsciously, evaluates it. Their critical faculty engages. They become judges rather than participants. And a judge is the last thing you want in your audience.
I learned this the hard way during my early performances. I was so eager to establish credibility that I over-sold everything. I would tell people I was going to blow their minds before I had done a single thing to earn that promise. The result was not increased anticipation — it was increased skepticism. The bigger the claim, the higher the bar. And the higher the bar, the less room there is for wonder.
Darwin Ortiz makes a related point when he observes that people tend to see what they expect to see and experience what they want to experience. Presupposition leverages this beautifully. When your behavior takes magic for granted, the audience’s expectation aligns with your frame. They do not see a man trying to fool them. They see a man who operates in a world where these things are simply possible. And because they expect to see that, they do see it.
The Consultant’s Parallel
Here is where my day job gave me an unexpected advantage. In strategy consulting, presupposition is the single most important communication tool I use. When presenting a recommendation to a board, I never say “I think this might work.” I say “When we implement this approach, the first results will appear in Q3.” The implementation is presupposed. The timeline is presupposed. The success is presupposed. The board’s job is to discuss the details, not to question the fundamental direction.
This is not arrogance. It is clarity of conviction. It communicates that you have done the work, you have considered the alternatives, and you are presenting the path forward with confidence. Boards — like audiences — respond to this frame. They lean in rather than pushing back.
When I moved from consulting stages to performance stages, I brought this habit with me. And I was startled to discover that it worked even more powerfully in magic than in business. Because in business, people expect confidence and sometimes resist it. In a performance setting, people crave it. They want to be led. They want someone who knows where they are going. Presupposition says “I know where we’re going” without ever having to say it.
The Silence That Says Everything
The most potent presupposition I have ever deployed is silence. A pause after an effect that is longer than the audience expects. A moment where I simply stand still and let the impossibility settle.
That silence presupposes that what just happened was significant enough to warrant a pause. It presupposes that I am not nervous about the reaction. It presupposes that the moment needs space, and I am confident enough to give it. The audience reads all of this in a two-second gap where nothing is said and nothing is done.
Contrast this with the performer who immediately launches into the next effect, or who says “Pretty cool, right?” or who fills the silence with nervous chatter. Each of those behaviors asserts the need for validation. They communicate that the performer is not sure the effect landed and needs confirmation. The audience, reading this insecurity, downgrades their own experience. If the performer does not seem convinced, why should they be?
Presupposition as Philosophy
I have come to think of presupposition as more than a technique. It is a philosophy of performance. It is the decision to live inside your own frame rather than arguing for it. To behave as if the world you are creating is real, and to trust the audience to step into it with you.
This does not mean being delusional. It means understanding that the audience’s experience is shaped more by what you take for granted than by what you claim. The things you claim can be questioned. The things you assume are absorbed.
Every performer communicates presuppositions whether they intend to or not. The nervous performer presupposes that things might go wrong. The rushed performer presupposes that the material is not engaging enough to hold attention at a slower pace. The apologetic performer presupposes that magic is something that requires an apology.
The choice is not whether to presuppose. The choice is what to presuppose. And the performers who understand this — who consciously choose the assumptions that run beneath their words and actions — are the ones who create experiences that feel less like tricks and more like encounters with something genuinely inexplicable.
I stopped telling audiences that what I do is impossible. I started behaving as if impossibility were simply the medium I work in. The difference is everything.