After a corporate show in Linz, a woman from the audience approached me during the reception. She was warm, complimentary, clearly enjoyed the performance. And then she said something that kept me awake for two nights.
“One thing I noticed,” she said, almost apologetically. “You used a different marker for the second part than the first part. The first one was thicker. I spent a couple of minutes wondering if there was something special about the second one.”
She said it casually, the way someone might mention a continuity error in a film. No accusation. No suspicion that she could articulate specifically. Just an observation that something had been different, and that the difference had occupied her attention for minutes she should have spent experiencing the show.
She was right. I had used two different markers in two different routines. I had not thought about it. One was a jumbo marker I used for writing that needed to be visible to the whole room. The other was a regular marker I used for a different purpose in a different piece. To me, they were just markers — functional tools that served their respective purposes. To her, they were a signal that something was being managed. That things on stage were not as casual and ordinary as they appeared.
That conversation changed how I think about every object on my stage.
The Invisible Thread of Consistency
John Graham writes about prop consistency in Stage By Stage, and the principle is disarmingly simple: if you use a stool, use the same stool throughout. If you use a marker, use the same marker. If a prop appears in your show, it should feel like it has always been there, not like it was introduced specifically for this one moment.
The logic is straightforward. Every time a new prop appears on stage, the audience’s attention shifts to it. They do not consciously think, “Why is there a new stool?” But somewhere below conscious awareness, a question forms. A flag gets planted. And if that flag coincides with the moment of the effect — if the new prop appears just before something impossible happens — the audience’s subconscious connects the two events. The new prop becomes suspect. The impossibility becomes less impossible, because there is an unexplained variable the audience can point to.
Consistency removes that variable. If the stool has been on stage the whole show, used for sitting and for holding props in multiple routines, its presence during any particular moment is unremarkable. It is part of the landscape. The audience’s attention stays where you want it — on the effect, on the story, on the experience — instead of drifting to a question about furniture.
This principle seems obvious once you understand it. It was not obvious to me for a long time.
The Close-Up Habit
In close-up magic, prop consistency is less critical because the performing context provides its own justification. When you are sitting at a dinner table, everything around you is already there — the wine glass, the napkin, the salt shaker, the menu. If you reach for a pen to write something down, nobody questions the pen. It is just a pen. The environment is full of ordinary objects, and any of them can be recruited into a performance without suspicion.
On stage, nothing is there by accident. The audience knows this. Every object on that stage was placed there by the performer or the crew. Every prop was brought, chosen, positioned. The audience may not consciously articulate this, but they operate under an assumption that everything they see is part of the plan. And when something changes — when a new object appears that was not there before, or when a familiar object is replaced by a slightly different version — the audience notices the change precisely because they are tracking the plan.
This was the mental adjustment I had to make. In close-up, I operated in a world of ambient objects where consistency was the default condition. On stage, I operated in a curated environment where every inconsistency was a signal.
The Marker Incident
Let me describe the specific failure that the woman in Linz identified, because the details illustrate the principle.
In my show at that time, I had two routines that involved writing. In the first, I needed to write large text visible from the back of the room. For this, I used a jumbo marker — thick, bold, highly visible. The effect required audience members to see what I was writing from a distance, so the jumbo marker was a practical necessity.
In the second routine, later in the show, I needed to write something in a different context — a more personal, intimate moment where the writing was for one person, not the whole room. For this, I used a regular marker. Thinner, standard size, the kind you would find in any office supply drawer.
To me, these were different tools for different purposes. One was a paintbrush, the other a pen. Using the jumbo marker for the intimate moment would have felt wrong — like shouting a whisper. And using the regular marker for the large-text moment would have been impractical — the writing would be invisible past the fifth row.
But to the audience, the distinction was not functional. It was suspicious. Two markers meant two opportunities for something to be different about one of them. The inconsistency created a question where no question should have existed, and that question diverted attention from the experience I was trying to create.
Graham addresses this exact scenario. His advice is clear: use apparently the same marker for both routines. “By keeping things consistent in this way, you further establish the marker as ordinary and avoid drawing undue attention to something that might otherwise simply be ignored.”
The word “apparently” is key. The markers do not need to be identical in every respect. They need to look the same from the audience’s perspective. Same brand. Same color. Same approximate size. If the audience perceives them as the same marker, they are the same marker. Consistency is a function of perception, not inventory.
The Stool Problem
The marker was a small instance. The stool scenario illustrates the principle at larger scale.
Imagine a show where a performer uses a stool throughout — sitting on it during conversational moments, placing props on it during demonstrations, resting against it casually. The stool becomes part of the stage landscape, as unremarkable as the table or the backdrop. It is always there. It has always been there. Nobody thinks about it.
Now imagine that during the closing effect, the performer brings out a different stool. Same approximate size, but different style — different color, different design. To the performer, this stool has a specific function that requires a different construction. But to the audience, a new stool means something new is happening. The landscape has changed. Something is different, and different means suspect.
If instead, the stool that has been on stage all along — the one that was sat on, leaned against, used to display items — turns out to be the same stool used in the closer, no flag is raised. The prop was hiding in plain sight, established as ordinary through repeated innocent use. The consistency rendered it invisible, and invisibility is the best condition for a prop to be in when it matters most.
I did not have a stool problem specifically. But I had the equivalent in other areas — a clipboard that appeared only for one routine, an envelope that materialized from behind a table, a piece of rope that had no prior existence on stage. Each of these was a minor version of the stool problem. Each introduced a variable that the audience could, and sometimes did, notice.
The Audit
After the conversation in Linz, I went back to my hotel room and laid out my entire show on the bed. Not the effects. The props. Every physical object that appeared on stage, in order of appearance.
I listed them. I noted when each first appeared, when it was last used, and whether it was consistent with every other instance of a similar prop. The results were embarrassing.
I had three different types of envelopes. Two different markers. A pen that appeared in one routine and was never seen again. A rope that had no prior justification for being on stage. Each inconsistency was small. None of them, individually, would have ruined a show. But collectively, they created an environment of casual sloppiness that worked against the carefully constructed impossibility of the effects.
Graham’s insight is that consistency is a form of deception — perhaps the most fundamental form. Before you can make something impossible happen, you must first establish what is normal. Normal means consistent. Normal means that the objects on stage behave the way ordinary objects behave — they persist, they remain the same, they do not transform or multiply or change brands between one routine and the next. When everything on stage is consistent, the one moment of inconsistency — the impossible moment, the effect — stands in stark relief against a background of normalcy.
When multiple inconsistencies exist in the prop landscape, the impossible moment is diluted. It becomes one more change in an environment of changes. The audience’s ability to distinguish between “things that are different because they are different” and “things that are different because something impossible happened” is compromised.
The Practical Solution
Solving prop inconsistency is mostly a logistics exercise, and it happens during show construction, not during performance.
The first step is the audit I described — laying out every prop and tracking its appearances through the show. The second step is identifying overlaps. Where am I using two versions of the same category of prop? Where does a prop appear without prior establishment? Where does something vanish from stage without explanation?
The third step is consolidation. Can I use the same marker for both routines? If one requires a jumbo and the other does not, can I restructure so the jumbo works in both contexts? If not, can I justify the difference logically — a jumbo marker for the audience to see, and a fine-point for a different explicit purpose that the audience understands?
Graham notes that using different writing instruments is fine when the purposes are visibly different. A jumbo marker for large-text display and a pencil for a spectator to write a private note — these are logically distinct uses that do not trigger suspicion because the audience understands why different tools are needed. The problem arises when two similar props are used for similar purposes without any logical distinction.
I consolidated my prop list over the course of about three weeks, testing changes in live performances. The jumbo marker became my marker for both writing-based routines, with minor adjustments to the second routine to accommodate its size. The envelopes were standardized to one type. The pen disappeared entirely, replaced by the marker.
The result was subtle but real. The show felt cleaner. Not because any individual effect was stronger, but because the environment in which the effects occurred was more credible. The stage landscape felt like reality — consistent, predictable, ordinary — and the moments of impossibility felt more impossible by contrast.
What This Means for the Transition
For performers moving from close-up to stage, prop consistency is one of those principles that seems trivially obvious until you realize you are violating it constantly. In close-up, the environment does the consistency work for you. On stage, you must do it yourself.
The audit is the starting point. Look at your show not as a sequence of effects, but as a collection of objects. Track those objects. Ensure that they behave the way ordinary objects behave — persisting, remaining the same, serving their apparent purpose and nothing more.
The woman in Linz taught me that the audience is watching everything. Not just the moments I want them to watch. Not just the effects. Everything. The markers, the envelopes, the stool, the clipboard, the rope. Every object is either building credibility or undermining it. Consistency builds. Inconsistency undermines. And the audience does not need to articulate why something feels off for it to feel off.
She never figured out how the effect worked. She was not trying to. She was simply a perceptive person who noticed that something changed and could not stop noticing. That is the cost of inconsistency — not exposure, but distraction. Not the audience figuring out your methods, but the audience spending their attention on the wrong things.
Every object on your stage is either invisible or suspicious. Consistency is what makes it invisible. And invisible is what you want.