There was an event in Graz — a corporate holiday party for maybe eighty people — where I learned something about spectator selection that I have never forgotten. I was about ten minutes into a mentalism set, and I needed a volunteer for a piece that required someone to make a genuine, uncontrived choice and then react honestly when the impossible happened. This was early in my performing life, and my instinct was to pick the person who looked most willing.
That person was obvious. A man at the front table had been visibly enthusiastic since I walked on. He laughed loudly at my opening jokes, leaned forward during the card work, and was practically vibrating with eagerness. His hand was up before I even asked. Every signal he was sending said: Pick me. I want to be up here.
So I picked him.
What followed was a masterclass in everything that can go wrong when you confuse eagerness with suitability. The moment he was on stage, the dynamic shifted. He did not want to participate in my effect. He wanted to perform. He turned to the audience and mugged. He added commentary to everything I said. He tried to get laughs — not from the situation, but from his own material, his own reactions, his own personality. He was not helping me create a moment. He was competing with me for the room’s attention.
The effect still worked, technically. The method was sound. The reveal happened. But the moment was gone. Whatever reaction the audience might have had to the impossible thing that had just occurred was diluted by this man’s performance, which had turned the entire sequence into a comedy bit starring him. I got polite applause. He got the laughs. And I walked away from the stage knowing that something essential had been lost.
I did not understand what had gone wrong until several weeks later, when I encountered a single line in Darwin Ortiz’s Strong Magic that landed like a hammer. Ortiz was discussing spectator selection, and he wrote something I had to read three times: “Do not confuse expressiveness with extroversion.”
Seven words. They reorganized my entire approach to choosing volunteers.
The Distinction That Changes Everything
Expressiveness and extroversion look similar from the outside, especially when you are standing on a stage scanning a room full of faces. Both produce visible reactions. Both generate energy. Both create the appearance of engagement. But they are fundamentally different phenomena, and mixing them up will sabotage your performance more reliably than any technical failure.
An expressive person reacts openly to what is happening around them. They smile when something delights them. Their eyebrows rise when something surprises them. They lean forward when they are curious. They gasp, they laugh, they cover their mouth with their hand. Their emotional state is visible on their face and in their body. They are transparent.
An extroverted person, on the other hand, projects outward. They want to be noticed. They want to be heard. They generate energy not in response to what is happening but as a declaration of their own presence. They are not reacting to you. They are performing alongside you. Sometimes they are performing instead of you.
The expressive person is a mirror. They reflect the experience back to the audience, amplifying whatever emotion the performer has created. When the impossible happens and the expressive person’s jaw drops, the entire room sees that reaction and feels it vicariously. The expressive person’s response becomes proof that the moment was real, that it mattered, that it was worth caring about.
The extroverted person is a spotlight — pointed at themselves. They do not reflect the experience. They redirect it. When the impossible happens and the extroverted person turns to the audience to mug or crack a joke, the moment is interrupted. The audience’s attention, which should be on the effect and the emotional response it creates, is pulled toward the volunteer’s personality. The magic moment becomes a personality moment, and you cannot get it back.
Why My Consulting Brain Should Have Seen This Sooner
In my day job as a strategy consultant, I understand this distinction perfectly. In a client workshop, the most valuable participants are not the ones who talk the most. They are the ones who listen carefully, react visibly when an idea resonates, and contribute at the right moments. The person who dominates every conversation, who always has the loudest opinion, who cannot resist turning every discussion into their own monologue — that person is often the least useful in the room. They are not processing. They are broadcasting.
I had applied this understanding in business for years. I had facilitated hundreds of sessions where my job was to read the room, identify the people whose reactions told me the most about where the group’s thinking actually was, and give them space to influence the conversation. I knew that the quiet person nodding thoughtfully was often more valuable than the extrovert holding court.
But put me on a stage with a deck of cards and a room full of strangers, and all that experience evaporated. The stage felt different. The time pressure felt different. When I needed a volunteer, I reached for the most visible option — the person whose energy was impossible to miss — because in the anxiety of performance, visibility felt like safety. A loud, willing volunteer seemed like a guaranteed collaborator. Someone who would fill the silence if I stumbled, who would keep the energy up if I faltered.
What I did not realize was that I was selecting a collaborator for a show they were not performing. They had their own show. Mine was secondary.
How I Learned to See the Difference
The shift in my spectator selection happened gradually, through a combination of reading and painful experience. The Ortiz line was the conceptual breakthrough, but the practical learning came from performing dozens of sets and paying close attention to which volunteers elevated the moment and which ones flattened it.
I started keeping mental notes after every performance. Not about the effects, but about the volunteers. What had I seen in them before I selected them? How had they behaved once they were involved? Had their presence enhanced the audience’s experience or competed with it?
Patterns emerged quickly. The volunteers who created the strongest audience reactions shared a set of characteristics that had nothing to do with volume or eagerness. They were attentive during the show. They smiled naturally, not performatively. When I caught their eye, they held the contact briefly and then returned their focus to what I was doing, rather than escalating the interaction. They were comfortable being in the audience. They did not need to be on stage.
The volunteers who created problems also shared characteristics. They were often the first to raise their hand. They called out comments during the show. They made eye contact and held it in a way that felt like an invitation, or sometimes a challenge. They were restless in their seats. They were engaged, but not with the performance — with the possibility of participating in it. Their attention was directed at themselves.
Once I started seeing this distinction clearly, my selection process changed completely.
The Smile Test
Ortiz describes a technique I have adopted and now use at every performance. While scanning the audience — whether during an introduction, during the opening minutes of my set, or during a routine that does not require a volunteer — I occasionally catch someone’s eye. What happens in that moment tells me almost everything I need to know.
An expressive person, when you catch their eye, will smile at you and then look away or return their attention to what you were doing. The smile is a response. It says: I am enjoying this. It is warm and involuntary and brief. It does not demand anything from you.
An extroverted person, when you catch their eye, will smile and lean forward. They will hold eye contact. They will nod emphatically or gesture. The smile is not a response — it is an audition. It says: I am available. Choose me. It is persistent and directed and it comes with expectations.
Both smiles look friendly. Both seem positive. But one is a reaction and the other is a request. Learning to distinguish between them is one of the most practically useful skills I have developed as a performer.
What Happens When You Get It Right
The first time I deliberately selected an expressive person over an obviously extroverted one, the difference was immediate. It was a conference in Salzburg, another corporate event. I needed a volunteer for a mentalism piece — a thought-reading sequence that required the participant to think of something personal and then react when I revealed it.
There was a woman in the third row who had been quietly engaged throughout my set. She laughed at the right moments, leaned forward during the suspenseful parts, and had given me exactly one brief smile when our eyes met. She had not raised her hand. She had not called out. She was present, attentive, and responsive — but not seeking the spotlight.
There was also a man in the front row who had been enthusiastically vocal since the start. He had commented on two effects, laughed louder than the room warranted, and had been making eye contact with me as if willing me to notice him.
I chose the woman in the third row. I walked to her, made eye contact, and asked if she would help me with something. She looked surprised — genuinely surprised, not performatively surprised — and said yes.
What happened next was one of the best performing moments I had experienced up to that point. When the reveal happened, her reaction was real. Her eyes widened. She brought her hand to her mouth. She looked at the audience and then back at me, and the audience saw every bit of it. They did not just hear her react. They saw her face process something impossible. They experienced her disbelief.
The room erupted. Not because the method was more clever or the effect was more impressive than usual, but because the emotional channel between the performer and the volunteer — and between the volunteer and the audience — was clear and unobstructed. She was not performing a reaction. She was having one. And the audience could tell the difference.
The Lesson Beyond Magic
This distinction between expressiveness and extroversion is not limited to selecting volunteers. It shows up in every context where you need to read people — in meetings, in interviews, in social situations, in leadership.
The expressive person in a meeting is the one whose face tells you when your argument is landing and when it is falling flat. They are your real-time feedback system. The extrovert in a meeting is the one who tells you what they think before you have finished your point. They are their own feedback system.
Both have value. Extroverts bring energy and momentum. Expressive people bring authenticity and emotional transparency. But if you are looking for someone who will reflect reality back to you — whether on a stage or in a boardroom — the expressive person is the one you want.
In performance, this is not a nice-to-have distinction. It is the difference between a moment that the audience remembers and a moment that gets lost in someone else’s personality. The person you bring on stage is not just a participant in your effect. They are a lens through which the entire audience experiences the impossible. Choose a lens that clarifies, and the moment becomes luminous. Choose a lens that distorts, and the moment becomes noise.
Seven words from Ortiz. One line in a book full of lines. But those seven words — “do not confuse expressiveness with extroversion” — changed my performing more than any technique I have ever learned. They taught me to stop looking for the loudest person in the room and start looking for the most honest one.