There is a moment in almost every magic performance where the performer asks for a volunteer. And in almost every amateur performance, that moment looks the same: the performer scans the audience, holds out a hand, and says something like, “Can I get someone to help me out?”
What follows is a social nightmare. Silence. Nervous laughter. People avoiding eye contact. Two seconds that feel like twenty. Then either someone is reluctantly pushed forward by their friends, or the performer desperately grabs the nearest person, and the routine proceeds with a spectator who did not want to be there and is radiating discomfort.
I have been on both sides of this failure. I have been the performer drowning in the silence. And I have watched dozens of other performers suffer through it. The experience is bad for everyone — the performer, the volunteer, and the audience. And it is entirely preventable.
The solution is spectator selection. Not the moment of asking, but the hours and minutes before it. By the time I point to someone and invite them on stage, they have already passed an audition they did not know they were taking. The selection is done. The asking is a formality.
The Pre-Show Scan
When Darwin Ortiz describes spectator selection in Strong Magic, he treats it as a systematic process with specific criteria and specific techniques. This framework changed my approach completely, because before I read it, I was choosing volunteers on instinct — which is another way of saying I was choosing randomly and hoping for the best.
The scan starts before the performance. Sometimes well before. At a corporate event, I arrive early — always. While the event staff is setting up and guests are arriving, I am watching. Not performing, not mingling aggressively, just observing with purpose. I am looking for specific things.
First, I am looking for people who are smiling. Not performing a social smile, not grimacing politely — genuinely smiling. People who seem happy to be there. People whose default resting expression is open and warm rather than closed and guarded. These people are likely to be comfortable, expressive, and cooperative on stage. They are having a good time already, and being invited to participate will feel like an extension of that good time, not an interruption of it.
Second, I am looking for people who are listening. During the pre-event chitchat, during the welcome remarks, during whatever programming precedes my performance — who is paying attention? Who leans in when the emcee speaks? Who seems genuinely curious about what is coming next? These are people who want to be engaged. They are psychologically ready to participate. When I invite them on stage, their internal response will be “Yes, this is exciting” rather than “Oh no, please not me.”
Third, and this is the most reliable indicator of all, I am looking for eye contact. Occasionally, while scanning the room, I will catch someone’s eye. Most people look away quickly. But some hold the contact for a beat, and then smile. This is the golden signal. A person who makes voluntary eye contact with the performer and responds with a smile is broadcasting a specific message: I see you, I am interested, I am friendly. Every time this has happened to me and I have selected that person as my volunteer, the interaction has been excellent. Without exception.
The Introduction Audition
If someone else is introducing me — the event organizer, the emcee, the CEO giving a brief welcome — I stand to the side and watch the audience, not the introducer. This is not rudeness; this is reconnaissance. How the audience responds to the introduction tells me everything about how ready they are for a performance, and specifically, who in the audience is most ready.
The people who lean forward during the introduction, who listen attentively, who seem genuinely curious about what is coming next — these are my primary candidates. They have already demonstrated engagement, attention, and a positive disposition. They are pre-qualified.
The people who continue their conversation, who check their phones, who lean back with arms crossed — these are not my candidates. It is not that they are bad people. They might become wonderful audience members once the performance starts. But for the specific role of on-stage volunteer, where I need someone who will be comfortable, expressive, and responsive, I want someone who has already shown me those qualities before the show begins.
Who to Avoid
This is the part of spectator selection that took me the longest to learn, because the instinct is exactly wrong.
The person who is most eager to volunteer — the one waving their hand, shouting “Me! Pick me!” — is often the worst choice. This is counterintuitive. You would think that enthusiasm equals cooperativeness. But Ortiz makes a crucial distinction: do not confuse expressiveness with extroversion. What you want is an expressive spectator — someone who reacts visibly, laughs openly, and communicates their experience to the rest of the audience. What you do not want is an extroverted spectator who sees the stage as an opportunity to become the center of attention.
The eager volunteer often wants to compete with you for the audience’s focus. They want to be funny. They want to steal the scene. They want to turn the interaction into their performance rather than yours. And when this happens, the dynamic shifts from collaborative to competitive, and the audience splits their attention between you and a spectator who is mugging for laughs.
I learned this the hard way at a conference in Vienna. I picked the loudest, most enthusiastic person at a front table. He bounded onto the stage, immediately started making jokes, grabbed the microphone, and spent the next three minutes turning every instruction into a comedy bit. The audience loved him. They loved him more than they were paying attention to me. By the time I got to the climax of the routine, the room’s energy was fragmented. Some people were watching me, some were watching him, and the moment of impossibility — which should have been the center of the universe for thirty seconds — landed in a scattered room.
The effect was fine. The reaction was mediocre. And it was entirely my fault for picking the wrong person.
Now I actively avoid the most eager hand. I look for the sweet spot: someone who is engaged, warm, and expressive, but who is content to be in the audience rather than desperate to be on the stage. Someone who will enjoy the experience of participating without trying to hijack it.
The Eye-Contact-and-Smile Selection
My most reliable technique is something I call the selection moment, though it probably has a dozen names in the literature. Sometime during the early minutes of the performance — during a routine that does not require a volunteer — I make casual eye contact with several people in different parts of the room. I am not staring. I am including them in the performance, making them feel seen, connecting with individuals rather than performing at a mass.
During these brief eye-contact moments, I am noting who responds. Who smiles back. Who holds the contact comfortably. Who seems energized by the connection rather than uncomfortable with it.
By the time I reach the routine that requires a volunteer, I already know exactly who I am going to ask. The selection happened five minutes ago. The invitation is just the public-facing version of a decision I already made.
And here is the key: because I have already established a small connection with this person — we made eye contact, they smiled, I smiled back — the invitation does not feel cold. It feels like a natural extension of a connection that already exists. The person does not feel randomly selected from a crowd of strangers. They feel recognized. Chosen. And that feeling makes them more willing, more comfortable, and more expressive from the first moment they stand up.
The Logistics Nobody Thinks About
Spectator selection is not just about personality. It is about logistics. Where is the person sitting? Can they get to the stage easily, or will they need to climb over six people and navigate a row of chairs? Is there a clear path? Are there steps involved, and if so, are the steps well-lit and obvious?
I think about this because I have watched — and experienced — the momentum-killing effect of a volunteer who cannot physically get to the performance space. The energy of the selection moment (“Yes! Come on up!”) dies completely during forty-five seconds of chair-shuffling, purse-gathering, and careful navigation around table legs. By the time the volunteer arrives, the room’s energy has deflated.
When I have control over the room setup, I request that aisles be clear and that the front row is close to the performance area. When I do not have control, I adjust my selection to favor people who are physically close and have an unobstructed path.
This sounds like a trivial consideration. It is not. In live performance, momentum is everything. Every second of dead time — time when nothing interesting is happening — costs you audience attention. A volunteer who can stand up and be beside you in four seconds preserves the energy. A volunteer who takes thirty seconds to navigate the room dissipates it.
The Repeat-Audience Signal
Ortiz describes a signal I have found incredibly reliable: the repeat audience member. If you perform multiple sets at an event — common in a cocktail hour or a walk-around situation — anyone who comes back for a second set is an ideal volunteer candidate. They have already demonstrated that they enjoy your work. They have already shown you how expressive they are. And they have a pre-existing positive relationship with you, which means they will be comfortable and cooperative on stage.
I seek these people out deliberately. If I perform close-up during a cocktail hour and then do a stage set after dinner, I scan the audience for faces I recognize from earlier. The person who laughed the loudest during the close-up set, who asked me to do “one more,” who told their spouse about what they saw — that person, if they are in the audience for the stage show, is my first-choice volunteer. I already know they are expressive. I already know they are friendly. And they already know me, which means the invitation feels like a reunion rather than a cold approach.
The Deeper Principle
All of this adds up to a single principle: never leave spectator selection to chance. The volunteer is not a prop. They are a cast member. They are the audience’s representative on stage. Their comfort, their expressiveness, their energy — all of these directly affect the audience’s experience. A great volunteer amplifies the effect. A poor volunteer dampens it. And the difference between great and poor is not luck — it is selection.
When I watch experienced performers, I notice that their volunteer interactions are consistently smooth, consistently productive, consistently entertaining. This is not because they are lucky. It is because they have already done the work. They scanned the room. They identified the candidates. They made eye contact. They noted who smiled. They chose someone who would be comfortable, expressive, and cooperative. By the time the audience sees the selection, the audition is long over.
The audience never knows any of this is happening. They see a performer point to someone in the crowd, and a moment later, that someone is on stage being delightful. It looks spontaneous. It looks like the performer just has a gift for finding good volunteers.
It is not a gift. It is a process. And like most processes that look effortless to the outside observer, it is the product of deliberate, systematic preparation that begins long before the first word of the performance.
The audition nobody sees is the one that makes the show.