Of Fitzkee’s thirty-nine audience appeals, the first six occupy a special position. They are not just items on a list. They are the foundation. The bedrock appeals that operate at the most fundamental level of human psychology, beneath conscious thought, beneath cultural conditioning, beneath individual taste. Music. Rhythm. Movement. Youth. Sex Appeal. Personality. These six work on everyone, in every context, in every era. And most magicians, myself included for a long time, systematically neglect at least half of them.
When I first read Fitzkee’s analysis of these primary appeals in “Showmanship for Magicians,” I had the same reaction I often have when a clear truth is stated plainly: mild irritation at myself for not seeing it sooner. Of course music matters. Of course movement matters. Of course personality matters. These are so obvious that they barely seem worth stating. And yet I was performing without music, with minimal movement, and with a personality that was present but unexercised. The obvious appeals were the ones I was ignoring.
Music: The Universal Shortcut to Emotion
Fitzkee placed music first on his list, and I do not think the placement was arbitrary. Music is the most powerful emotional shortcut available to any performer. It can establish mood, create tension, signal transitions, and generate emotional responses that would take minutes of spoken word to achieve — all in a few seconds.
I performed without music for the first two years of my magic journey. Not because I had made a deliberate choice about it, but because I simply had not thought about it. I was focused on the effects, the scripting, the technique. Music felt like a production concern, something for performers with full stage shows and technical crews. I was doing close-up and parlor magic at corporate events. Music did not seem relevant.
The day I added walk-on music to my keynote performances was the day I understood what I had been missing. The music started before I said a word, and I could feel the room shift. The audience’s attention coalesced. Their mood aligned. By the time I opened my mouth, I was performing for an audience that was already primed to engage, already emotionally positioned, already in the right frame of mind. The music had done in thirty seconds what my opening lines used to take two minutes to achieve.
Fitzkee argued that every bit of music in a performance should mean something. It should not be wallpaper. It should be doing work — establishing mood, reinforcing character, punctuating moments, creating contrast. When I use music now, I think of it as a co-performer. It has a role. It has cues. It contributes to the experience as deliberately as any spoken line or visual effect.
Rhythm: The Invisible Structure
Rhythm is distinct from music, though they are related. Rhythm is the pattern of tension and release, acceleration and deceleration, activity and stillness that underlies every performance. It is felt rather than heard. And when it is right, the audience cannot articulate why the performance feels good. When it is wrong, they cannot articulate why it feels off.
I think about rhythm constantly now, though I did not always. My early performances had no rhythm. They had sequence — one thing followed another — but no rhythmic structure. The pace was constant. The energy was flat. The result was a performance that was technically competent but somehow lifeless, like a song played entirely in monotone.
Rhythm in performance works the same way rhythm works in music. There must be variation. Fast passages and slow passages. Moments of density and moments of space. Crescendos and diminuendos. The audience’s nervous system responds to these variations involuntarily. A sudden acceleration creates excitement. A sudden deceleration creates anticipation. A pause creates tension.
The most practical change I made was learning to vary my pace within individual effects. Instead of performing at a constant medium tempo from beginning to end, I now start effects at a conversational pace, accelerate through the middle phases, and dramatically decelerate as I approach the climax. This deceleration is Fitzkee’s specific recommendation, and it works exactly as he described. The slower you go before the climax, the more weight the climax carries.
Movement: The Antidote to Static Performance
When Fitzkee placed movement third on his list, he was addressing a problem that plagues magic to this day: static performance. Most magicians stand in one place and do things with their hands. Their bodies are essentially prop stands — stationary platforms from which the hands operate.
I was guilty of this. Profoundly guilty. My early performances involved me standing behind a table or standing center stage with my feet planted, moving nothing but my hands and occasionally my head. I was performing magic in the same physical posture as a news anchor reading a teleprompter.
Movement does not mean pacing nervously or wandering aimlessly around the stage. It means purposeful physical activity that creates visual interest and communicates energy. Stepping forward when making an important point. Moving laterally to engage different sections of the audience. Using the full width of the stage instead of camping in the center. Physically approaching a spectator when involving them. Stepping back to give a moment space.
These movements are not decoration. They are communication. A performer who moves with purpose communicates confidence and vitality. A performer who stands still communicates rigidity and nervousness, even if they are neither rigid nor nervous. The audience reads physical behavior instinctively, and stillness — unless it is deliberately deployed for dramatic effect — reads as passivity.
Since I started incorporating deliberate movement into my performances, the energy has changed noticeably. Not just the audience’s energy, but my own. Moving my body engages my whole nervous system in the performance rather than just my hands and voice. It makes me more present, more dynamic, more alive on stage. And that vitality is contagious.
Youth: The Appeal That Has Nothing to Do with Age
This is the appeal on Fitzkee’s list that most people misunderstand. When Fitzkee says “youth,” he does not mean that performers must be young. He means that audiences are drawn to the qualities associated with youth: energy, vitality, enthusiasm, freshness, spontaneity, physical dynamism.
A sixty-year-old performer who brings genuine energy and enthusiasm to the stage is hitting the youth appeal. A twenty-five-year-old performer who is tired, low-energy, and going through the motions is missing it entirely.
I find this reframe liberating. I came to magic as an adult — a professional in my thirties with a consulting career and no performance background. I could not compete on literal youth. But I could compete on the qualities that youth represents. Freshness of perspective, certainly — as an adult learner, everything was new to me, and that genuine excitement about discovering magic was something I could bring to the stage honestly.
Energy is a choice. Enthusiasm is a choice. The decision to perform with vitality rather than going through the motions is a choice that anyone can make regardless of age. And when you make that choice, the audience responds to it because they are responding to the underlying psychological appeal of youth — the appeal of being alive, engaged, and present — not to your biological age.
Sex Appeal: The Appeal Nobody Wants to Talk About
Fitzkee placed sex appeal fifth on his list, and I suspect many modern readers of his book skim past it uncomfortably. We are not supposed to talk about sex appeal in a professional context. It feels reductive, potentially offensive, certainly awkward to discuss.
But Fitzkee was not talking about attractiveness in a narrow physical sense. He was talking about the broader category of magnetic physical presence — the quality that makes people want to look at you, that creates a visual gravitational pull. It includes attractiveness, certainly, but also includes confidence, posture, grooming, the way you carry yourself, the way you make eye contact, the way you occupy space.
For a performer, this appeal is fundamentally about taking care of your instrument. Your body is your instrument. How it looks, how it moves, how it presents itself to the audience — these are not vanity concerns. They are professional concerns. Just as a musician maintains their instrument, a performer maintains their physical presence.
Practically, this means attention to grooming, fitness, wardrobe, and posture. It means being deliberate about how you present yourself physically rather than treating your appearance as an afterthought. It means understanding that the audience is looking at you for the entire duration of your performance and that what they see matters.
I made changes in this area reluctantly. It felt shallow to worry about what I was wearing or how my hair looked when I should have been focused on the magic. But Fitzkee was right. When I started dressing more intentionally, standing taller, projecting more physical confidence, the audience response improved. Not because I became more attractive. Because I became more watchable. And watchability is the raw material of performance.
Personality: The Most Important of the Six
Fitzkee saved the most important primary appeal for the end of the six. Personality. He wrote that personality is the most valuable single product of the entertainment industry. People are more interested in people than in anything else.
This is the appeal that everything else serves. Music supports your personality. Rhythm expresses your personality. Movement communicates your personality. Youth energizes your personality. Sex appeal makes your personality visually compelling. But personality itself — who you are, how you relate to people, what makes you distinctively you — is the core product that the audience is consuming.
Fitzkee was blunt about this: “If they want the tricks, any magician will do. If they want YOU, only you will do.” This is not a vague inspirational statement. It is a ruthlessly practical business observation. The only thing that differentiates you from every other performer who can do the same tricks is your personality. If you are not actively selling your personality, you are a commodity.
For me, developing my personality as a performing asset meant leaning into what made me different rather than trying to look like a “real” magician. I am a strategy consultant who discovered magic in hotel rooms. That is unusual. That is interesting. That is a personality angle that no full-time magician can replicate because it is genuinely mine.
When I stopped trying to perform like a magician and started performing like a consultant who happens to do impossible things, the audience response changed dramatically. Because they were no longer watching a mediocre version of a professional magician. They were watching something they had never seen before — someone from their own professional world who could do extraordinary things. And that novelty, that distinctiveness, that personality differentiation is exactly what Fitzkee was talking about.
The Compound Effect
The power of the six primary appeals is not in any individual appeal but in their combination. A performance that hits all six simultaneously creates a compound effect that is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Consider what happens when music, rhythm, movement, vitality, physical presence, and personality are all working together. You have a performer who arrives with energy and music, who moves with purpose and rhythm, who is physically compelling to watch, and who is distinctively, memorably themselves. Before a single effect is performed, before a single trick begins, the audience is already engaged. Already interested. Already leaning forward.
This is the foundation that the remaining thirty-three appeals build on. Without the primary six, even strong effects feel flat. With the primary six, even modest effects feel vibrant.
I am still working on all six. Some days I score better than others. But having the framework — having the specific, named appeals to check myself against — has transformed my preparation process. Before every performance, I ask myself: is there music? Is there rhythm? Is there movement? Am I bringing energy? Am I taking care of my physical presentation? Am I being authentically myself?
If the answer to any of these is no, I have work to do before I step on stage. Because these six appeals are not optional enhancements. They are the foundation of everything that follows.