There was a night in Salzburg, about two years into my performing journey, when I got more laughs than I had ever gotten in a single show. The audience was responsive, the timing was clicking, and every line I delivered seemed to land. By the middle of the performance, I was riding the kind of wave that performers dream about — that feeling of being completely in sync with the room, every word producing a reaction.
And yet, when I drove home that night, something nagged at me. The show had been funny. Undeniably funny. But had it been magical? Had the audience experienced the kind of wonder that made them question what they had just witnessed? Had there been a single moment where the laughter stopped and something else took its place — silence, awe, the intake of breath that signals genuine astonishment?
I could not identify one.
I had performed an entire show of magic and mentalism, gotten consistent laughs, received warm applause, and left the audience entertained. But I had not given them the one thing that only a magician can give. The mystery had been sacrificed for the comedy. And I had not even noticed it happening until the show was over.
The Addiction
John Graham names this problem directly in Stage by Stage. He writes: “It is easy to become addicted to getting laughs. I may be someone so afflicted.” And then he delivers the principle that has stayed with me ever since: “A laugh before or after the magical moment is fine. But never during, and never at the expense of the mystery.”
When I first read this, I understood it intellectually. Of course you should not undermine the magic with comedy. That seems obvious. But the problem is not that performers decide to sacrifice the mystery. The problem is that the mystery gets sacrificed gradually, unconsciously, one laugh at a time, until the magic is hollow and the performer does not know why.
Here is how it happens.
You perform a routine. At the climactic moment, the audience reacts with astonishment. But you are nervous about silence, about dead air, about the gap between the effect and the applause. So you drop a funny line. The audience laughs. The laugh feels good. It feels productive. It feels like you have managed the moment skillfully. What you have actually done is replace the audience’s astonishment with amusement. You have traded a response that only you can create for a response that any comedian can create.
And because the laugh feels so good, you do it again next time. And the time after that. And gradually, the comedy encroaches on the magic until every climactic moment is followed immediately by a joke, and the audience never gets the chance to sit in the wonder.
Graham points out that this is not a new problem. Emil Jarrow, a vaudeville headliner who was a comedy magician performing small tricks to big effect, followed this principle nearly a century ago. And you can see it in the work of modern masters like Mac King. The comedy is everywhere in their shows — before the magic, around the magic, between the magic. But at the precise moment when the impossible thing happens, the comedy steps aside. The laughter pauses. The mystery is given room. And only after the audience has fully absorbed the magical moment does the comedy return.
My Specific Mistake
My version of this problem was specific and, I suspect, common among performers who come to magic from a professional speaking background as I did. In keynote speaking, you learn that silence is the enemy. Every gap in your presentation is a moment when the audience might disengage. You are trained to fill space, to maintain momentum, to keep the audience’s attention through continuous verbal engagement.
When I brought this instinct into magic performance, it created a specific problem: I could not stop talking during the magical moment. The reveal would happen, and my mouth would keep going. I would narrate the impossible thing as it occurred. I would make a witty observation about what had just happened. I would acknowledge the audience’s surprise with a comment that turned their gasp into a chuckle.
At a corporate event in Vienna, I performed a mentalism piece where I revealed a word that a spectator had merely thought of. This is the kind of moment that should stop the room. The audience should experience a beat of genuine cognitive dissonance — the gap between what they know is possible and what they just witnessed. That gap is the magic.
But I did not let the gap happen. The moment the word was revealed, I said something like, “And that is why you should never think too loudly at a conference.” The audience laughed. It was a good laugh. A warm, genuine laugh. And it completely obliterated the magical moment. The audience went from the edge of astonishment directly to amusement, skipping over the wonder entirely.
I know this because I asked someone afterward what they thought of that particular moment. Their response: “Oh, that was the funny one where you read the woman’s mind. That was great.” They remembered it as comedy. The magic was a vehicle for the joke, not the other way around. The impossible event — a genuine moment of what should have felt like mind-reading — had been reduced to a premise for a punchline.
That is what Graham means by “at the expense of the mystery.”
The Mechanical Problem
Both comedy and magic rely on surprise. They share a fundamental mechanism: something unexpected happens, and the audience reacts. But the nature of the surprise is different, and the emotional pathway it triggers is different, and the two pathways can interfere with each other if the timing is wrong.
A magical surprise triggers wonder. The audience’s cognitive system encounters something that does not fit its model of reality. There is a moment of genuine disorientation — not unpleasant, but profound. The mind reaches for an explanation and does not find one. This state of suspension, of not-knowing, of having your model of reality gently disrupted, is the core experience that magic offers. No other art form can produce it.
A comedic surprise triggers recognition. The punchline reframes information that the audience already has, revealing an unexpected connection or interpretation. The mind reaches for the new frame, finds it, and the recognition produces laughter. This is satisfying, delightful, and deeply human. But it is also fundamentally analytical. The audience’s cognitive system is resolving the surprise, not sitting in it.
When comedy arrives too close to the magical moment, it triggers the resolution pathway. The audience’s mind, which was suspended in wonder, is given something to resolve. The joke provides a frame. The frame provides an explanation. Not an explanation of the method, necessarily, but an emotional explanation — a way to process and package what just happened. And once the moment is packaged, the wonder dissipates.
This is why the timing matters so precisely. A laugh before the magical moment is fine because the comedy primes the audience without interfering with the effect. They are relaxed, engaged, and enjoying themselves, which makes them more receptive to the magic when it arrives. A laugh after the magical moment is fine, too, as long as there is a gap — a beat of silence where the mystery is allowed to land, to be felt, to be absorbed. The comedy can follow, and it can even enhance the moment by providing an emotional release after the tension of the impossible event.
But a laugh during the magical moment, or immediately after it with no gap, short-circuits the wonder. The audience never gets to experience the full depth of the mystery because the comedy redirects them before they have had time to feel it.
Learning to Shut Up
The fix sounds simple: stop talking at the magical moment. Give the audience silence. Let the effect land in quiet.
In practice, this was one of the hardest adjustments I have ever made. My instinct to fill silence was deeply ingrained. The gap between an effect and the audience’s response felt, from on stage, like an eternity. Two seconds of silence after a reveal felt like ten. My body wanted to speak, to acknowledge, to manage, to produce.
I started by adding a physical reminder. At the exact moment of the reveal in each routine, I would take a small step backward. Not dramatically. Just a half-step. The movement occupied my body enough that my mouth could stay closed. It gave me something to do that was not talking. And the step backward also had a visual function: it physically gave the audience the space to react. I was receding so they could take center stage.
The first time I tried this deliberately was at a keynote in Linz. The reveal happened. I stepped back. The silence lasted maybe three seconds. It felt like three minutes. And then the audience reacted. Not with laughter. With something quieter and more powerful. A murmur. A collective exhalation. A few people shaking their heads. One woman saying “no” softly, almost to herself. And then the applause came, building from a few people to the whole room.
That reaction was worth more than every laugh I had gotten at the Salzburg show combined. It was the reaction that only magic can produce. And I had been killing it with comedy for months without realizing it.
The Practical Rule
I now operate by a rule that I apply to every routine in my repertoire: identify the magical moment and build a comedy-free zone around it.
The comedy-free zone is a specific number of beats before and after the effect. Before the effect, the comedy stops and the tone shifts. This does not mean the mood becomes somber or serious. It means the pace changes. The energy shifts from conversational and light to focused and present. The audience can feel the transition, and it prepares them for something different from a punchline.
After the effect, the comedy-free zone is the gap. The beat of silence. The step backward. The permission for the audience to experience the full weight of what just happened. Only after that gap — after the audience has reacted on their own terms, in their own way — does the comedy return.
The length of the gap varies by routine and by audience. For a strong mentalism reveal, the gap might be five or six seconds. For a visual effect that produces an immediate gasp, the gap might be only two seconds. You develop a feel for it over time, reading the room, sensing when the wonder is cresting and when the audience is ready for the next beat.
The Paradox of Comedy Magic
This principle does not mean that comedy and magic are incompatible. They are deeply compatible. The best comedy magic in the world — the work of Mac King, Jeff Hobson, Michael Finney — is hilarious and astonishing in equal measure. But in every great comedy magic act, the comedy and the magic take turns. They share the stage, but they do not occupy the same moment. The comedy creates the environment. The magic creates the miracle. And the transition between them is managed with surgical precision.
Graham notes that this has been a principle of the best comedy magic for close to a century. It is not a modern discovery. It is an ancient understanding that gets rediscovered by every generation of performers who make the mistake I made — getting addicted to the laughs and forgetting why they are on stage in the first place.
We are magicians. Comedians can get laughs. Speakers can get laughs. Anyone with decent timing and good material can get laughs. But the moment of genuine mystery — the instant where the audience’s model of reality cracks and something impossible fills the gap — that belongs to us. It is our unique contribution to the performing arts. And we must protect it, even when the alternative feels easier and more immediately rewarding.
A laugh before or after the magic is fine. But never during. And never at the expense of the mystery.
I had to lose the mystery to understand how precious it was. I do not intend to make that trade again.