The CEO of a midsize Austrian manufacturing company was standing on stage next to me, holding a rubber chicken.
He had not expected to be holding a rubber chicken. He had expected to participate in a brief mentalism demonstration during the company’s annual strategy retreat in Innsbruck. He had expected to look competent and collected in front of his two hundred employees. He had expected, at worst, a moment of polite confusion followed by a polite reveal.
Instead, he was holding a rubber chicken, looking at it with an expression that suggested the chicken had deeply betrayed him, while his entire workforce laughed so hard that several people in the front row had tears running down their faces.
The moment lasted maybe eight seconds. It was the single biggest reaction I have ever gotten from a corporate audience. And when I analyzed it afterward — because of course I analyzed it, I am a consultant, that is what we do — I realized it was a textbook example of one of Fitzkee’s most powerful comedy situations: the dignified person in the undignified position.
The Mechanism
When I was reading through Fitzkee’s Showmanship for Magicians and his catalog of twenty-four comedy situations, this one stopped me in my tracks. Not because it was surprising — the principle is obvious once stated — but because I realized I had been experiencing it my entire professional life without naming it.
Situation number four in Fitzkee’s taxonomy is “inconsistency in association of persons or things.” This is the formal name for what happens when someone or something appears in a context that contradicts their established identity. A judge in a clown car. A general in a bubble bath. A surgeon doing karaoke. The gap between the person’s dignity and the situation’s lack of dignity produces laughter that is both reliable and warm.
The warmth matters. This is not cruel laughter. Nobody is being humiliated. The laughter comes from the recognition that even the most dignified among us are, underneath the titles and the posture, just people. The rubber chicken does not diminish the CEO. It reveals the human being underneath the CEO. And that revelation is delightful because it confirms something the audience already suspects: that authority and dignity are costumes we wear, and underneath them, we are all equally susceptible to absurdity.
Why Magicians Have a Built-In Advantage
Here is why this particular comedy situation is so valuable for magic performers: the performance context provides the dignity half of the equation automatically.
Think about what happens when you walk on stage as a magician or mentalist. The audience immediately assigns you a certain status. You are the person who can do impossible things. You are the expert. You are the one in control. Whether you cultivate that image or downplay it, the audience projects a degree of authority onto you simply because you are the one performing and they are the ones watching.
That projected authority is the “dignified person” half of the equation. It is free. You did not have to earn it through years of building a reputation (although that helps). The performance context hands it to you the moment you step in front of the audience.
Now all you have to do is supply the undignified situation.
This is where the comedy goldmine opens. Any moment where the performer’s authority is undermined — by a mistake, a prop malfunction, a volunteer who does something unexpected, a prediction that appears to be wrong — creates the gap between dignity and undignity that produces reliable laughter. And because the audience assigned you the dignity in the first place, the gap is already wide enough to work.
The Corporate Context
I perform primarily in corporate settings — keynotes, strategy retreats, product launches, leadership events. In these environments, the dignity-undignity gap is even more potent because the audience lives in a world of hierarchies, titles, and professional composure. They spend their entire working lives maintaining dignity. The idea that dignity can be playfully disrupted is not just funny to them — it is cathartic.
This is why the CEO-with-rubber-chicken moment worked so well. Every person in that room spent their professional life managing their relationship with that CEO. They measured their words, controlled their body language, calibrated their communication. And suddenly, there he was, holding a rubber chicken, looking baffled. The laughter was not at his expense. It was a release of the tension that comes from constantly navigating hierarchical relationships. For eight seconds, the hierarchy dissolved, and everyone was just a person laughing at the absurdity of a man holding a rubber chicken.
I have learned to use this dynamic deliberately. When I invite a volunteer on stage, I pay attention to who they are in the room’s hierarchy. A senior leader who volunteers creates a much bigger comedy opportunity than a junior team member, not because the senior leader is funnier but because the dignity gap is wider. The more dignified the person, the more comedy potential in the undignified situation.
But — and this is critical — the undignified situation must be harmless. The moment it crosses into genuine embarrassment, the comedy dies and discomfort takes its place. The CEO holding a rubber chicken is funny. The CEO being made to look incompetent in front of his team is not. The line between those two is thin, and the performer’s responsibility is to stay firmly on the right side of it.
Historical Examples
Fitzkee uses several performers to illustrate this principle, and the one I find most instructive is Cardini. Cardini performed as a slightly tipsy English gentleman — dressed immaculately, carrying himself with perfect poise, and then being perpetually astonished by cards and billiard balls that kept appearing in his hands. The comedy came entirely from the gap between his dignified appearance and the undignified things happening to him. He was the quintessential dignified person in an undignified situation, and his act has been studied for nearly a century because the principle is so pure.
Another example Fitzkee references is Ballantine, who built an entire career on the comedy of a magician whose tricks consistently go wrong. Ballantine’s character was a serious, competent-looking performer whose dignity was undermined at every turn by his own effects. The audience delighted in watching a person who looked like they should be in control lose control repeatedly. The dignity was in his appearance and bearing. The undignity was in his circumstances. The gap between them was where the comedy lived.
I think about these examples often because they demonstrate something important: the most enduring comedy characters in magic history are not the ones who told the best jokes. They are the ones who embodied the best comedy situations. Cardini did not need punchlines. He needed a tuxedo and a confused expression. The situation did the comedy work.
Building It Into Your Routines
Here is how I think about applying this principle practically, based on what has worked in my own performances.
First, establish the dignity clearly. Before you can undermine it, the audience needs to believe in it. If you walk on stage looking and acting casually, there is no dignity to undermine. The gap does not exist. So the opening of any routine that is going to use this principle needs to establish competence, authority, or seriousness. I often do this through my introduction and the opening moments of an effect — clean, confident, controlled. The audience settles into the expectation that I know what I am doing.
Second, design the undignified moment carefully. It should feel spontaneous even if it is planned. The best undignified moments appear to happen to the performer rather than being chosen by the performer. A prop that behaves unexpectedly. A prediction that appears to be wrong. A volunteer who seems to outsmart you. The comedy is strongest when the audience believes the undignified situation was not part of the plan.
Third, maintain composure through the undignified moment. This is counterintuitive but essential. The comedy comes from the gap between dignity and undignity. If you abandon your dignity entirely — if you panic, flail, or break character — the gap collapses and the comedy with it. The funniest response to an undignified situation is a dignified reaction to it. The CEO looking at the rubber chicken with quiet bewilderment was funnier than the CEO throwing the chicken in the air would have been. Composure in the face of absurdity is what makes the absurdity funny.
Fourth, resolve the situation with a restoration of dignity. This is where the magic comes in. After the audience has laughed at the apparent failure or absurdity, you resolve the effect in a way that reveals your competence was there all along. The dignity returns, but now it is deeper because the audience has seen you be both human and extraordinary. They laughed with you, and now they are astonished by you. That combination is more powerful than either emotion alone.
The Volunteer Version
The same principle works beautifully with volunteers, and the dynamic is slightly different because the volunteer’s dignity is not performance-based — it is personal.
When I bring someone on stage, they carry their personal dignity with them. Their colleagues are watching. Their self-image is on the line. And the moment I place them in a mildly undignified situation — asking them to do something slightly silly, or revealing something they did not expect to be revealed, or making them the center of an absurd moment — the dignity gap activates and the audience laughs.
But the performer’s responsibility with a volunteer is even greater than with self-deprecating comedy. When you are the one in the undignified situation, you control the damage. When a volunteer is in the undignified situation, you must protect them. Every laugh must be warm, not sharp. Every moment must be one the volunteer can join in with, not one they endure. And the resolution must always restore the volunteer’s dignity — ideally elevating it above where it started. They should walk back to their seat feeling like a hero, not a victim.
I learned this the hard way. Early in my performing life, at a small event in Klagenfurt, I had a volunteer moment that went slightly too far. The person was a good sport, but I could see in their eyes the moment the comedy shifted from “this is fun” to “I want this to stop.” It was subtle. Nobody else in the room noticed. But I noticed, and I felt terrible about it for weeks. Since then, I have been relentless about monitoring the volunteer’s comfort and pulling back the moment I see even the slightest sign of discomfort.
The audience does not want to see someone humiliated. They want to see someone placed in a mildly absurd situation and then rescued from it. The placement creates comedy. The rescue creates goodwill. Both are essential.
The Self-Application
The most useful application of this principle is the one I use most often: applying it to myself.
I am a strategy and innovation consultant. I wear a suit. I speak about frameworks and business models and market dynamics. That is my professional dignity. And when I interrupt a keynote about corporate strategy to produce a deck of cards and admit that I spend my evenings in hotel rooms practicing card tricks because I could not bring a guitar on the road — that is the undignified situation. The gap between “serious strategy consultant” and “adult man who practices card tricks alone in hotels” is inherently funny. I do not need a punchline. The situation is the joke.
This is the power of incongruity as a comedy tool. You do not need to be a comedy writer. You do not need razor-sharp timing or a library of one-liners. You need a clear understanding of the gap between how you present yourself and what you are actually doing, and the willingness to let the audience see that gap.
Fitzkee understood this in 1943. The dignified person in the undignified situation. The CEO with the rubber chicken. The strategy consultant with the deck of cards. The tuxedoed gentleman mystified by the objects appearing in his own hands.
The principle has not changed because the psychology has not changed. Humans are wired to find incongruity funny. And the performer who understands this has access to a comedy tool that requires no jokes, no punchlines, and no comedy training. Just a clear understanding of the gap between dignity and absurdity, and the courage to stand in that gap and let the audience laugh.
It never gets old. The rubber chicken always works.