I signed up for an improv comedy class in Vienna because I was terrified of one specific thing: the moment during a corporate performance when an audience member says something I did not expect.
It was not the tricks I was afraid of. After enough hotel-room rehearsal sessions and enough performances at events across Austria, the effects themselves had become reliable. My hands knew what to do. My timing had improved. The mechanics of the performance were, if not flawless, at least functional.
But the moments between the mechanics — the moments when someone in the audience made a comment, cracked a joke, or asked an unexpected question — those moments paralyzed me. My instinct was to shut them down. To redirect. To get back to my script as quickly as possible, because the script was safe. The script was rehearsed. The script would get me to the finish.
What I did not realize, until I spent several months in that improv class, was that those unexpected moments were not threats to my performance. They were gifts.
The First Rule
The foundation of improvisational theater is a principle so simple it sounds trivial: “Yes, and…” When your scene partner says something, you accept it as true and build on it. You do not deny it. You do not ignore it. You do not redirect to something you had planned. You accept what has been offered and add something to it.
If your scene partner says, “Wow, this elevator is going really fast,” you do not say, “We are not in an elevator, we are in a spaceship.” You say, “I know — I think we passed the hundredth floor about thirty seconds ago.” You accept the reality that has been established and build the scene within it.
In improv terminology, everything that happens is an “offer.” A line of dialogue, a gesture, a sound effect, even a mistake — all of it is material. All of it is something you can accept and build upon.
The moment I heard this principle articulated in class — by a teacher who had been performing improv in Vienna for over a decade — I felt something click. Because in my magic performances, I had been violating this principle constantly. Every time an audience member said something unexpected, I was blocking the offer. I was saying “No” when I should have been saying “Yes, and…”
How I Used to Handle the Unexpected
Here is what my audience interactions used to look like. I would invite a volunteer to think of a card. The volunteer would pause and say, “Any card? Can I think of a joker?” And I would say, “No, just a regular card, any of the fifty-two,” and move on.
That is a block. The volunteer offered me something — a joker — and I denied it. I told them their offer was wrong. Technically, I was correct. My routine was not designed for jokers. But what the audience heard was a performer shutting down a participant. What the volunteer felt was being told they had made a mistake. The energy in the room dipped slightly, and I did not even notice.
After improv training, the same moment goes differently. The volunteer says, “Can I think of a joker?” And I say, “You want the joker? Interesting choice. Most people go for hearts or spades, but you went straight for the wild card. I respect that. Let me tell you something about people who choose the joker…” And then I smoothly guide them toward a regular card while making them feel like their instinct was not wrong — it was remarkable.
The difference is not just technique. It is philosophy. In the first version, the audience member is an obstacle to my script. In the second version, the audience member is a collaborator in the show. And the audience can feel that difference from across the room.
The Corporate Event Laboratory
Corporate events are, it turns out, the perfect laboratory for practicing improv principles. Because corporate audiences are not like theater audiences. Theater audiences sit quietly, follow the conventions of the performance space, and generally wait for applause points. Corporate audiences are at a party. They have been drinking. They are with colleagues. They feel entitled to participate, comment, and interject. They are, in improv terms, making offers constantly.
At a product launch in Graz, I was performing a mentalism piece that involved asking a volunteer to concentrate on a personal memory. The volunteer, a senior executive who had clearly been enjoying the open bar, said loudly: “I am thinking about my divorce.” The room went quiet. This was not in my script. This was not a moment I had rehearsed. This was a bagel — a big, messy, emotional bagel.
My old self would have frozen, or redirected with something awkward like, “Let’s try a different memory.” My improv-trained self said, “That is clearly a strong memory. Hold onto it. The strongest memories make the strongest connections.” The room relaxed. The volunteer relaxed. The joke was acknowledged without being denied, the emotional weight was held without being dismissed, and we moved forward together.
At a conference in Vienna, during a close-up session after my keynote, a spectator who was watching me perform a card effect said, in a tone of genuine amazement, “Wait, are you a wizard?” A year earlier, I would have laughed it off and continued the trick. Instead, I paused, looked at him seriously, and said, “I am a strategy consultant. Wizards have much better hair.” The table erupted. The comment became a recurring joke for the rest of the session — people kept asking about my wizard qualifications — and the entire energy of the performance was elevated because of it.
None of these responses were scripted. They could not have been. But they were all enabled by a skill I had deliberately practiced: the ability to accept what is offered and build on it.
What Improv Class Actually Taught Me
The improv class in Vienna met weekly for three months. I was the only person in the class who was there for magic performance rather than comedy or personal development. The other participants were actors, teachers, a therapist, a software developer who wanted to be funnier at parties, and a woman who said she signed up because she was tired of being boring at dinner.
We did exercises that I initially found excruciating. Standing in a circle, making eye contact with someone, and saying a word. The next person had to respond with a word that was associated with the first one, and the game continued around the circle. Simple. Except that the instinct to plan ahead is overwhelming. You hear the word “ocean” and your mind immediately starts generating your response — “waves,” “fish,” “blue” — and you stop listening. You stop being present. You start performing instead of responding.
The teacher caught this constantly. “You are not listening,” she would say. “You have already decided what you are going to say. That is not improv. That is a monologue you have planned in advance.”
This is exactly what I was doing in my magic performances. I was not listening to my audience. I was performing at them. When a volunteer spoke, I was not hearing what they said — I was waiting for them to finish so I could deliver my next line. The improv class forced me out of this pattern by making the next line dependent on what the other person actually said.
The Five Offers Every Performer Gets
After months of improv training and applying the principles to my performances, I have identified five categories of offers that magicians routinely receive and routinely block.
The first is the verbal comment. Someone says something — a joke, a question, an observation. This is the most obvious offer, and the easiest to accept. All you need is a genuine response. Not a scripted comeback. A genuine response that acknowledges what was said and adds to it.
The second is the physical reaction. Someone leans back in surprise. Someone covers their mouth. Someone grabs the arm of the person next to them. These are physical offers that deserve acknowledgment. A simple look at the person who is reacting, a slight smile, a nod — these small responses tell the audience that you are present and aware.
The third is the silence. Sometimes the audience gives you nothing. No laughter, no gasps, no comments. This silence is an offer too. It is telling you something about the energy in the room, about the pacing of the routine, about the connection between you and the audience. Accepting this offer means adjusting. Not panicking. Not filling the silence with nervous chatter. Adjusting your energy, your pacing, your approach to meet the room where it is.
The fourth is the mistake. Yours or theirs. A card drops. A volunteer gives the wrong answer. A technical cue misfires. Every mistake is an offer. You can ignore it, which tells the audience that you are not present. Or you can accept it, which tells the audience that you are human, that you are real, and that you can handle whatever happens.
The fifth is the energy shift. You can feel it when a room changes. When the energy rises after a strong moment. When it dips because you have been talking too long without delivering. When it shifts sideways because something unexpected happened in the back of the room. These shifts are offers. Accepting them means riding the wave rather than plowing through it.
The Script Is Not the Enemy
One of the most important things I learned in improv class, and the thing that took the longest to understand, is that accepting offers does not mean abandoning your script.
This was my fear, and it is the fear of many performers who resist improv principles. If I accept every audience comment, if I build on every unexpected moment, will I ever get back to my routine? Will I lose the thread? Will the show spiral into chaos?
The answer, counterintuitively, is no. Having a strong script actually makes you more able to accept offers, not less. Jonathan Levit made this point in his interview with McCabe: when you know your script, you know where you need to end up. This means you can take detours. You can explore a moment. You can accept an offer and play with it for thirty seconds, because you know exactly how to get back on track.
Without a script, you are more afraid to diverge, because you might not find your way back. With a script, you can wander freely, because the path home is always clear.
This realization was liberating. I did not need to choose between scripted performance and spontaneous interaction. I needed both. The script provides structure. The improv provides life. Together, they create a performance that is both reliable and real.
The Practice Protocol
I now practice improv responses as deliberately as I practice sleight of hand. In my hotel room, I will run through a routine and, at key audience interaction points, I will say random things out loud — playing the role of the unexpected audience member — and then practice responding.
“Is that the card I picked?” “No, but that’s what makes this interesting.”
“That’s impossible!” “That’s what my co-founder said. He was also wrong.”
“I don’t believe it.” “Good. Skepticism is the best starting position. Watch closely.”
These are not scripted lines that I deploy mechanically. They are templates — patterns of response that I can adapt to whatever the audience actually says. The practice builds the muscle of acceptance and response. It makes “Yes, and” a reflex rather than a conscious decision.
The Transformation
The shift in my performances since adopting improv principles has been significant. Not because I am funnier, though I think I am slightly funnier. Not because I have better comebacks, though I have a few. The shift is that my performances feel alive in a way they did not before.
When I am performing now, I am not executing a sequence. I am having a conversation with a room full of people, and the magic is happening within that conversation. When someone says something unexpected, I feel a small jolt of excitement rather than a small jolt of anxiety. Because every unexpected moment is an opportunity to do something that has never happened before, something that no rehearsal could produce, something that belongs to this specific audience on this specific night.
That is what the improv teacher in Vienna was trying to tell us from the first class: the best moments are the ones you cannot plan. But you have to be ready to accept them when they arrive.
Accept every offer. Say “Yes, and…” Build on what you are given. The audience is not the enemy of your script. They are the co-authors of your show.