I was sitting in my hotel room in Innsbruck after a performance that had gone well — not spectacularly, not poorly, just well. The kind of performance where the audience was with me the whole time, nobody checked their phone, the applause was genuine, and yet something felt off. Something I could not name.
I had recorded the set on my phone, propped against the nightstand at the back of the room. Watching it back, I realized what was wrong. There was a moment, roughly twelve minutes in, where the energy level of the show stopped rising. I had just finished what I consider one of my stronger pieces — a mentalism effect that always gets a big reaction. And then I moved into the next piece, which was also a mentalism effect, one that I like very much but that operates at roughly the same emotional intensity as the one before it.
The audience did not disengage. They stayed with me. But the trajectory changed. Instead of climbing, the show leveled off. For about four minutes, we were on a plateau. The audience was enjoying themselves, but they were not being carried forward. The sense of momentum, the feeling that something was building toward something, had stalled.
And then, worse, the piece after the plateau was my opener for the final sequence — something deliberately lighter, designed to set up the closing effect. Which meant the show actually stepped down in intensity before stepping back up for the finish. Forward, plateau, backward, forward again. Like climbing a staircase that suddenly goes flat, then drops a step, then resumes its rise.
That night, I picked up Dariel Fitzkee’s Showmanship for Magicians and reread the passage that had been nagging at the back of my mind. “Your act is like a set of stairs,” Fitzkee wrote, “always going forward and always rising.” Every word, every movement, every effort must carry interest higher and approach closer to the climax. Never descend from a level once gained. Never proceed on the same level for too long.
I had read those words before. I had agreed with them in the abstract. But watching my Innsbruck recording, I saw for the first time exactly what Fitzkee meant. The staircase metaphor is not just a nice way to think about show structure. It is a diagnostic tool. And applied to my own set, it revealed the precise locations where my show stopped being a show and became a collection of things that happened in sequence.
Why Plateaus Kill Momentum
A plateau in a performance is not the same as a bad moment. Bad moments are obvious. The audience disengages, the energy drops, you can feel the room cool. Plateaus are more insidious because nothing goes wrong. The audience is still engaged. The material still works. But the trajectory has flattened, and the audience’s unconscious expectation of forward movement has been violated.
Human beings are wired to detect patterns of change. When things are getting better, we lean in. When things are getting worse, we pull back. But when things stay the same — when the rate of change drops to zero — we grow restless in a way that is hard to articulate. We do not think “this has plateaued.” We feel something closer to “I am not sure where this is going.”
That uncertainty is deadly for a performer. Not because the audience leaves, but because the contract between performer and audience — the implicit promise that this experience is leading somewhere — has been weakened. And once that promise weakens, it takes significant effort to restore it.
The Boxer’s Instinct
Fitzkee used a boxing analogy that I have thought about many times. He wrote that every fighter knows how to go after a knockout once it is in sight. You wade in and slug. Keep slugging, harder and harder, until the knockout comes.
The implication for performers is that once the momentum is building, once the audience is rising with you, you must not let up. You must not pause at a comfortable level and coast. You must keep pushing upward, each moment more intense than the last, each effect building on the energy created by the one before it, until you reach the climax and deliver the knockout punch.
The temptation to coast is enormous. When you have just performed a strong piece and the audience is with you, there is a natural inclination to relax, to enjoy the goodwill you have earned, to take a breath before the next push. But that breath is a plateau. And the audience, however subtly, feels the momentum stall.
How I Found the Flat Spots
After Innsbruck, I went through my entire set with a piece of paper, drawing a rough graph of emotional intensity over time. I gave each effect a number from one to ten based on the strength of the audience reaction it typically generates, and I plotted those numbers against the timeline of the set.
The graph was revealing. The overall trajectory was correct — it started low and ended high. But the line was not smooth. There were bumps, plateaus, and dips scattered throughout. Two strong effects placed back to back at roughly the same level, creating a plateau. A deliberately lighter moment placed after a strong moment, creating a dip. A transition that went on too long, creating dead space that interrupted the climb.
Looking at the graph, I could see three specific problems.
First, the plateau I had noticed in Innsbruck — two mentalism pieces of similar intensity placed consecutively. The fix was not to cut either piece. Both were strong. The fix was to reorder them so that one clearly built upon the other, with the second piece starting at a higher baseline because the first had set it up.
Second, a dip in the middle of the set where a comedy moment deflated some of the tension I had carefully built. The comedy was good — it got laughs. But laughter can reset the emotional trajectory if it is not calibrated carefully. The audience was rising in intensity, then laughed, then had to rebuild the climb. I moved the comedy earlier in the set, where it served as a step upward from a lower baseline rather than a step down from a higher one.
Third, dead transitions. Moments between effects where I was setting up props, adjusting equipment, or delivering exposition that did not advance the emotional trajectory. These were not long moments — maybe thirty seconds each. But on the graph, they showed as flat lines. Small plateaus that individually were harmless but collectively added up to a significant amount of time where the show was not climbing.
The Ruthless Question
Fitzkee’s staircase principle requires a question that is uncomfortable to ask: does this moment carry the act higher? Not “is this good?” Not “does this get a reaction?” Not “do I enjoy performing this?” But specifically: does this moment take the audience to a higher emotional level than the moment before it?
If the answer is no — if the moment is as good as the one before it but not better, or if the moment is good in isolation but does not advance the overall trajectory — then it needs to be moved, modified, or eliminated.
Fitzkee was brutal about this. He wrote that no matter how much you love a trick, no matter how well you can do it, throw it out permanently if it does not contribute lift. The love you have for a piece of material is irrelevant. The skill you have developed to perform it is irrelevant. The only question that matters is whether it serves the forward-and-upward trajectory of the show.
I have cut effects that I loved. I have cut effects that got good reactions. I cut them because they did not fit the staircase — they were good steps but they were in the wrong location, creating plateaus or dips instead of contributing to the climb. It hurts every time. And every time the show gets better.
The Gravity of Descending
The worst violation of the staircase principle is not the plateau. It is the descent. When you reach a certain level of intensity and then drop below it, you lose more than you gained. The audience’s recalibration downward is more damaging than a plateau because it actively contradicts the promise of forward motion.
I experienced this at a corporate event in Graz, where I made the mistake of following my strongest mentalism piece with a lighter card effect that I thought would provide a welcome change of pace. The intention was good — variety, contrast, a moment to breathe before the final push. But the execution was a disaster of trajectory. The audience had been lifted to a high emotional level by the mentalism piece, and the card effect brought them back down. Not all the way down. But down. And from that lower level, the final sequence had to do more work than it should have needed to do.
After that, I restructured. The lighter moments now live in the first third of the set, where they serve as upward steps from a low baseline. The middle and final thirds escalate without interruption. If I need variety — and I do, because contrast is important — I achieve it through changes in pacing, tone, and type of effect, not through changes in intensity. The variety happens on the surface. The trajectory underneath never descends.
Practical Architecture for the Staircase
Here is the framework I now use when building or revising a set.
I divide the set into three sections, roughly corresponding to Fitzkee’s three-act structure. The first section establishes who I am, builds rapport, and moves from low to moderate intensity. The second section increases the stakes, introduces more powerful effects, and moves from moderate to high intensity. The third section delivers the strongest material and climaxes with the single most powerful effect in my repertoire.
Within each section, every effect is slightly more intense than the one before it. The first effect in section two is slightly more intense than the last effect in section one. The first effect in section three is slightly more intense than the last effect in section two. No gaps. No plateaus. Just a continuous rise.
Transitions between effects are not neutral. They are not dead time. They advance the narrative, build anticipation for what is coming next, or deepen the emotional connection with the audience. A transition that does not carry the show forward is a transition that needs to be rewritten or cut.
The closing effect is non-negotiable. It must be the strongest piece in the entire set. If it is not, then something earlier in the set is too strong and needs to be moved or modulated downward so the closer can tower above everything else. The audience’s last impression is the impression that stays. If the last step of the staircase is not the highest, the audience leaves feeling like the show peaked somewhere in the middle and then declined.
The Hotel Room Graph
I keep a graph of every set I perform. It lives in my phone, updated after every show. Each effect gets a score based on the audience’s response. Over time, the graph shows me where my staircase is smooth and where it has rough patches. Effects that consistently underperform their position in the set get moved or replaced. Effects that consistently overperform get promoted to later in the set, where their strength contributes more to the overall trajectory.
This is the kind of analytical approach that comes naturally to me as a consultant. I am used to tracking metrics, identifying patterns, and optimizing systems. Applying those same habits to performance felt strange at first — like reducing art to a spreadsheet. But Fitzkee’s framework gave me permission to be systematic about it. The staircase is a structural principle. Structure can be analyzed, measured, and improved. The artistic expression happens within the structure, not instead of it.
The Audience Feels the Shape
The audience never thinks about staircases. They never think about trajectory or escalation or forward motion. They simply feel it. When the staircase is right, the audience’s experience has a shape — a shape that rises continuously from the first moment to the last, with the peak at the end. That shape creates satisfaction. The audience does not know why the show felt so good. They just know it did.
When the staircase has flat spots or dips, the audience feels that too. Not as a conscious complaint. As a vague sense that something was off. That the show was good but not great. That some parts were better than others. That the ending, even if it was strong, did not feel like the climax of a journey.
Fitzkee’s staircase metaphor gave me a simple visual model for something that is, in practice, quite complex. Every moment must be forward. Every moment must be upward. No exceptions. No coasting. No descents. Just a continuous climb toward a peak that the audience will remember long after the individual steps have faded.
It is a demanding standard. It means no comfort zones in the middle of a set. It means constant evaluation, constant adjustment, constant willingness to cut material that does not serve the trajectory. It means treating your best effect as the destination and everything else as the road that leads to it.
But when the staircase is right — when every step rises above the last and the final step is the highest of all — the feeling in the room is unmistakable. The audience does not just applaud. They release. All the energy that has been building, step by step, finds its expression in a moment of collective emotion that is far greater than any individual effect could produce on its own.
That is what Fitzkee meant. And it is, I believe, the single most important structural principle in all of performance.