There are two performers I watched within days of each other last year, both at magic-adjacent events in Vienna, and the contrast between them taught me something I had read about but never fully understood until I saw it in person.
The first performer was a mentalist. He was quick. Sharp. Every line was a precisely crafted verbal arrow aimed at exactly the right target. When a volunteer gave an unexpected answer, he had a response within half a second that reframed the answer perfectly. The audience laughed constantly, but the laughter was a specific kind — short, percussive, admiring. They were laughing at his cleverness. They were impressed.
The second performer was a close-up magician. He was slower. Warmer. He told stories about his own fumbling attempts to learn his craft. He made fun of himself with a gentleness that suggested he genuinely liked himself despite his flaws. When something went slightly wrong, he did not have a quick comeback — he had a human reaction, a rueful smile, a comment that made the audience feel like they were in on the joke with him rather than watching a performance. The audience laughed just as much, but differently. Their laughter was softer, longer, more connected. They were not impressed. They were charmed.
Both performers were funny. Both got excellent reactions. But they were using completely different tools, and those tools produced completely different relationships with their audiences.
In Fitzkee’s Showmanship for Magicians, he names these two tools precisely: humor and wit. And he argues that understanding the difference between them is one of the most important things a performer can do.
The Distinction
Fitzkee draws a clean line between humor and wit, and it is worth stating his distinction plainly because it clarifies something that most people — including most performers — muddle together.
Humor is deep and kindly. It comes from character. It is warm, empathetic, and based in the shared experience of being human. Humor says, “We are all a little bit ridiculous, and that is okay.” Humor does not attack. It embraces. Its laughter is the laughter of recognition and affection.
Wit is quick and sharp. It comes from intellect. It is pointed, observational, and based in the ability to see connections and incongruities faster than anyone else in the room. Wit says, “I noticed something you did not, and the noticing is funny.” Wit does not embrace. It illuminates. Its laughter is the laughter of surprise and admiration.
Both produce genuine laughter. Both are legitimate comedy tools. But they create fundamentally different audience relationships, and a performer who does not understand the difference will struggle to control the emotional temperature of their show.
Humor in Performance
Humor is the slower, warmer, more sustainable tool. It builds over time. It depends on the audience knowing something about your character — your flaws, your perspective, your way of seeing the world. Humor is why you can watch the same comedian over multiple specials and never get tired of them. The laughs are not coming from the surprise of clever lines (which diminish with familiarity) but from the ongoing relationship with a character you have come to know and like.
For a magician, humor is the comedy of being a person doing magic, as opposed to a performer delivering effects. It is the comment about being nervous. The admission that you practiced this in your hotel room at two in the morning. The self-aware acknowledgment that what you are about to do is a little bit absurd. The warmth you show toward a volunteer.
Humor depends on vulnerability. Not the manufactured vulnerability of a scripted self-deprecating line, but the genuine vulnerability of letting the audience see you as a whole person with shortcomings and quirks and a slightly ridiculous dedication to a craft that most adults abandoned in childhood.
I have found that humor works best in extended performances. When I am doing a thirty-minute keynote section with magic, humor is the engine. I am not delivering one-liners. I am building a relationship with the audience through my character — the adult professional who somehow ended up obsessed with card tricks, who practices in hotel rooms, who co-founded a magic company and still sometimes drops things on stage. The comedy comes from the ongoing revelation of who I am, not from individual clever moments.
Wit in Performance
Wit is the faster, sharper, more immediately impressive tool. It does not depend on the audience knowing your character. It depends only on your ability to see and articulate connections faster than they can. Wit is what makes a performer feel electric — the sense that this person’s brain is operating at a higher speed than everyone else in the room.
For a magician, wit is the perfectly timed observation about a volunteer’s reaction. The comment that reframes an unexpected moment. The verbal sleight-of-hand that redirects attention or undercuts a dramatic buildup with a precisely aimed line. Wit is the comedy of intelligence, and it signals to the audience that you are smart, quick, and in control.
Wit depends on precision. A witty line that is almost right is not funny. It has to land perfectly — the right words, the right timing, the right target. There is no room for approximation. This is why wit is harder to learn than humor. Humor can be messy and still work. Wit cannot.
I have found that wit works best in shorter, higher-intensity performance contexts. When I am doing a quick mentalism piece at a cocktail event, wit is the tool. The interaction is brief, the audience does not know me yet, and I need to establish credibility and entertainment value quickly. A sharp, well-placed observation accomplishes in three seconds what humor would take three minutes to build.
The Temperature Control Problem
Here is where Fitzkee’s distinction becomes practically important: humor and wit set different emotional temperatures, and most performers default to one without understanding what it costs them.
A performer who relies entirely on wit creates an audience relationship built on admiration rather than affection. The audience thinks, “That person is incredibly clever.” But they do not think, “I like that person.” And liking matters enormously for a magician, because the magic hits harder when the audience cares about the performer as a human being. A moment of astonishment from a performer you like is a fundamentally different experience from a moment of astonishment from a performer you merely admire.
Conversely, a performer who relies entirely on humor creates an audience relationship built on warmth but potentially lacking in impressiveness. The audience thinks, “I really like that person,” but they may not think, “That person is extraordinary.” And extraordinariness matters for a magician too, because part of the magic experience is the sense that you are in the presence of someone with unusual abilities.
The solution, as Fitzkee implies without quite stating directly, is to use both. Humor to build the relationship. Wit to punctuate and impress. Humor as the foundation. Wit as the seasoning.
What I Learned the Hard Way
When I started performing, I leaned heavily on wit. My background is in strategy consulting. I am trained to see patterns, make connections, and articulate observations quickly. That skillset translates naturally to witty performance. My early performances were full of sharp comments, quick observations, and clever reframes.
And they were cold. Not terrible. Not unfunny. But cold. People laughed, but the laughter had a distance to it. Afterward, audience members would say things like, “That was really clever,” or “You are so quick.” But they would not say, “I loved that,” or “I felt like you were talking just to me.” The wit was creating a barrier. I was performing AT the audience rather than WITH them.
The shift came gradually, and it came largely from studying performers who balanced both tools effectively. I noticed that the performers I admired most — the ones whose shows felt both impressive and warm — were not choosing between humor and wit. They were alternating between them with deliberate control.
They would open with humor. A personal story, a self-deprecating observation, a moment of vulnerability that invited the audience into a relationship. And then, once the relationship was established, they would deploy wit — a sharp line that surprised and impressed. And then back to humor, deepening the relationship. And then another flash of wit. The alternation created a rhythm that was warm enough to build connection but sharp enough to maintain respect.
The Jack Benny Principle
Fitzkee uses Jack Benny as his exemplar of comedy done right, and it is worth noting that Benny was primarily a humor performer, not a wit performer. Benny’s comedy was almost entirely character-based. He played a version of himself that was vain, cheap, easily flustered, and perpetually the victim of circumstance. His comedy came from the audience’s ongoing relationship with that character. They laughed not because his lines were clever but because they knew him and loved him and found his reactions to situations endlessly entertaining.
Benny’s timing — his famous pauses, his silences, his long looks at the audience — was humor timing, not wit timing. Wit requires speed. Humor often requires slowness. The pause that lets the audience recognize themselves in the situation. The beat that allows the absurdity to sink in. The silence that says, “You know exactly what I am thinking, and we both know it is ridiculous.”
This was revelatory for me. I had always associated comedy with speed — the faster the better, the quicker the comeback the more impressive the performance. But Benny proved that the most beloved comedy in history often came from slowing down, from letting the audience’s recognition build, from trusting the situation to be funny without verbal ornamentation.
Practical Application
Here is how I think about humor and wit now when I am building or refining material.
For the opening of any performance, I lead with humor. A personal story, an admission, something that establishes me as a person before I establish myself as a performer. This builds the warm connection that will carry the entire show.
For transitions between effects, I use humor. The moments between tricks are where the audience decides how they feel about you, not about your magic. Those moments need warmth, not sharpness.
For moments within effects — interactions with volunteers, unexpected developments, real-time observations — I use wit. These are the moments where quickness and precision create excitement and energy. A sharp line during a mentalism reveal. A perfectly timed observation about a volunteer’s reaction. A quick verbal reframe that catches the audience off guard. These flashes of wit punctuate the show and prevent the warmth from becoming sleepy.
For closings, I return to humor. The last impression should be of a person, not a performer. The final moments should leave the audience feeling connected, not impressed. Impressiveness fades quickly. Connection lingers.
The Consultant’s Parallel
I notice this pattern in my consulting work too, and I think the parallel is useful. The best presentations I have ever given combine strategic insight (the equivalent of wit — sharp, precise, impressive) with personal storytelling (the equivalent of humor — warm, connected, human). A presentation that is all insight feels cold and academic. A presentation that is all storytelling feels pleasant but insubstantial. The combination is where the power lives.
This is not a coincidence. Whether you are performing magic or delivering a business presentation, you are dealing with the same human audience, the same social dynamics, the same need for both intellectual engagement and emotional connection. Fitzkee understood this. He studied entertainment broadly, not just magic, and his distinction between humor and wit reflects a universal principle about how humans respond to communication.
The Deliberate Choice
The most important takeaway from Fitzkee’s distinction is that humor and wit are choices. They are not personality traits. You are not “a humor person” or “a wit person.” You are a performer who can learn to deploy both tools appropriately, based on what the moment requires.
This reframe was important for me because I had spent years believing that my consulting background made me a “wit person” and that warmth was simply not in my toolkit. That belief was limiting and wrong. Warmth is available to anyone willing to be vulnerable. Wit is available to anyone willing to practice precision. The only question is whether you are making a deliberate choice about which tool to use in which moment, or whether you are defaulting to one out of habit.
Humor is deep and kindly. Wit is quick and sharp. The performer who masters both has access to the full spectrum of comedy. The performer who masters only one is working with half the palette.
And in performance, as in life, the full palette makes all the difference.