I had been performing a mentalism piece for about four months. I had rehearsed it extensively. I had watched video of myself performing it at least a dozen times. I had tweaked the script, adjusted the timing, refined the transitions. By every measure I knew how to apply, the piece was solid.
Then Adam Wilber visited Vienna, and I asked him to try performing it using my script.
What happened in the next ten minutes was one of the most educational experiences of my performing life. Adam read the script, familiarized himself with the broad structure, and performed it for me while I sat in the audience position. He was not trying to imitate me. He was just delivering the material as written, with his own natural performance energy.
And I could immediately see everything that was wrong with it.
Lines that sounded natural when I said them sounded clunky when Adam said them. Transitions that felt smooth when I performed them felt abrupt when someone else performed them. A joke I had been proud of landed flat. A moment of dramatic silence that I thought was powerful turned out to be confusing — when I was performing it, my body language carried the moment, but the script itself provided no guidance for what should happen during that silence.
The piece I had thought was finished was, in fact, riddled with problems I had been unable to see because I was too close to it. The problems were not in my performance. They were in the material. And the only way to separate the material from the performance was to put the material into someone else’s hands.
The Blind Spot of Self-Review
Pete McCabe describes this technique in Scripting Magic — having another performer execute your script as a diagnostic tool. The principle is straightforward but the implications are profound.
When you perform your own material, you unconsciously compensate for its weaknesses. A transition that is not written clearly enough? Your body language fills the gap because you know what comes next. A line that is not quite funny enough? Your delivery sells it because you have rehearsed the timing a hundred times. A moment that does not make logical sense? Your performance papers over it because you understand the internal logic, even though the script does not communicate it.
These compensations are invisible to you. They are also invisible on video, because video captures your complete performance — material plus delivery plus compensation. You watch the video and everything looks fine because everything IS fine when you are the one performing it.
But the problems are still there, lurking in the script, waiting to surface when conditions change. When you are tired. When the audience is different from usual. When a technical glitch disrupts your timing. When the venue is louder or quieter than expected. Any change that prevents you from applying your usual compensations will expose the weaknesses that were always there.
Having someone else perform your script strips away all the compensations and shows you the material, naked and undefended.
What I Saw When Adam Performed My Script
The specific problems Adam’s performance revealed were embarrassingly basic.
The opening line depended on a particular vocal tone to work. On paper, and in my delivery, it sounded like a genuine confession. In Adam’s delivery, using his natural tone, it sounded like a setup for a joke. The line was ambiguous, and I had been disambiguating it with my delivery without realizing it.
A transition in the middle of the piece said something like “And now something interesting happens.” That is what it said. Those exact words. I had never noticed how empty that line was because when I said it, I was simultaneously making a physical gesture that directed the audience’s attention. The line was a placeholder that I had been propping up with physicality. Without my specific physicality, it collapsed into meaninglessness.
The climax depended on a pause that I had never written into the script. I just paused there naturally because I knew it was the climactic moment. Adam, reading the script, plowed straight through to the reveal without pausing, and the moment landed with about half the impact. The pause was essential but existed only in my performance, not in my script.
Each of these problems was fixable. The opening line needed to be rewritten to work regardless of vocal tone. The transition needed actual content instead of a placeholder. The climax needed a stage direction indicating the pause. Simple fixes, all of them. But I would never have found them without seeing someone else struggle with the material.
The Distance Creates Clarity
There is a concept in writing called “reading distance” — the idea that you cannot effectively edit your own work until you have put enough distance between yourself and the text. Writers are advised to finish a draft, put it in a drawer for a week, and then return to it with fresh eyes. The distance allows them to see the text as a reader would, rather than as the author who knows what every sentence was supposed to mean.
Having someone else perform your script is the performance equivalent of the writer’s drawer. It creates instant distance. You are no longer inside the material. You are outside it, watching it from the audience’s perspective, experiencing it as the audience would. The familiar becomes strange. The assumed becomes questionable. The invisible becomes obvious.
This works even better than the writer’s drawer technique because the distance is not just temporal — it is physical. You are not imagining how the audience might experience the material. You are watching, in real time, how the material performs when stripped of your personal compensations. The data is immediate and concrete, not imagined and abstract.
Why Video Is Not Enough
I want to address this directly because I used to believe video review was the gold standard of self-improvement. And video is extraordinarily useful — I am not dismissing it. I video my rehearsals regularly and always learn from watching them.
But video has a fundamental limitation: it shows you a complete performance, and you cannot separate the components. When you watch yourself on video, you see the material and the delivery and the compensations all fused together. If the result looks good, you cannot tell which elements are carrying the load. Maybe the material is strong and your delivery is adding to it. Or maybe the material is weak and your delivery is saving it. On video, both scenarios look the same.
Darwin Ortiz writes about the importance of seeing the effect from the audience’s point of view. Video gets you partway there — you see the visual perspective the audience saw. But you do not see the experiential perspective, because you already know what is coming at every moment. You cannot be surprised by your own material. You cannot be confused by your own transitions. You cannot fail to follow your own logic.
Another performer can. And that is precisely why they are valuable as a diagnostic tool.
The Vulnerability Factor
I should be honest: this technique requires vulnerability. Handing your script to another performer and watching them perform it is exposing. It is showing someone your work at its most naked — without the protective layer of your personal delivery.
The first time I did this with Adam, I was genuinely nervous. Not because I doubted Adam’s skill, but because I knew, on some level, that the material might not hold up. I had invested months in this piece. I was attached to it. Watching someone else expose its weaknesses felt like watching someone critique a child’s drawing while the child is standing there.
But the vulnerability is the point. The discomfort is the signal that you are about to learn something important. If the experience were comfortable, it would not be revealing anything new.
Adam, to his credit, was constructive and specific. He did not say “This doesn’t work.” He said “I found myself wanting to pause here but the script pushed me forward” and “This line made sense to me as a reader but felt strange to say out loud” and “The audience doesn’t know yet that this object matters — can you set it up earlier?”
Every note was actionable. Every note pointed to a specific problem in the material, not in the performer. And every note made the piece better.
The Practical Process
Over time, I have developed a structured process for this technique that works well in the context of my performing life.
I start by writing out the complete script, including stage directions for physical actions, pauses, and audience interaction points. This forces me to make explicit everything that I normally leave implicit in performance. If the script says “pause,” it means anyone performing it will know to pause there. If it says “look at the spectator,” anyone will know to make that eye contact.
Then I give the script to another performer — usually Adam, but I have also used this technique with fellow performers I have met at magic gatherings. I ask them to perform it as naturally as they can, without trying to imitate me. I want their instincts, not my habits.
I watch from the audience position. I take notes on three things: where the performer seems comfortable, where they seem uncertain, and where the audience response (even if the “audience” is just me) differs from what I expected.
After the run-through, we discuss the notes. The performer tells me where the script supported them and where it left them stranded. I tell them where the piece looked different from my internal image of it.
Then I rewrite. The rewrite is usually faster and more decisive than any rewrite I have done based on video review alone, because the problems are so much clearer.
The Reverse Application
There is a reverse application of this technique that is equally valuable: performing someone else’s script yourself.
When I perform material written by another performer, I discover where my own instincts differ from theirs. I find moments where their script assumes a delivery style I do not have. I find transitions that work in their voice but not in mine. I find jokes that are funny in their rhythm but flat in mine.
This reveals not just problems in their script but characteristics of my own performing voice. Every place where another performer’s material feels unnatural in my mouth is a place where my voice differs from theirs. And mapping those differences helps me understand my own voice more precisely.
McCabe discusses adaptation extensively — the insistence that you should never perform someone else’s script unchanged. Performing someone else’s script is the fastest way to discover what needs to change, because the discomfort of mismatch is immediate and unmistakable.
What This Teaches About Scripting Standards
The deeper lesson of this technique is about scripting standards. A truly well-written script should work for any competent performer, not just for the author. It should be clear enough, complete enough, and robust enough that the material itself carries the performance, rather than depending on the author’s specific delivery to survive.
This is a higher standard than most performers apply to their scripts. Most of us write scripts that work for us and never test whether they would work for anyone else. The result is material that is intertwined with our personal performance habits in ways we cannot see.
Kleon writes about how teaching is the best way to learn — that when you teach someone else your process, you understand it better yourself. Having someone else perform your script is a form of teaching. You are teaching them your material, and in the process, you discover what you actually know versus what you only think you know.
The parts of your script that another performer can execute smoothly are the parts you truly understand and have communicated clearly. The parts that trip them up are the parts where your understanding is intuitive rather than explicit, where your knowledge lives in your body rather than in your words.
My Standing Recommendation
If you have never had another performer execute your script, I recommend it unreservedly. It is one of the most efficient diagnostic tools available to any performer at any level.
You do not need a professional collaborator. You do not need a world-class performer. You need someone who can read, speak, and handle basic props. The less skilled they are, in some ways, the more diagnostic the exercise becomes — because a less experienced performer has fewer compensatory habits and will expose script weaknesses even more nakedly.
You will learn more about your material in one ten-minute session of watching someone else perform it than in ten hours of watching yourself on video. The learning is different in kind, not just in degree. Video shows you how you perform the material. Another performer shows you what the material actually is.
And once you know what the material actually is — once you can see it separate from yourself, standing on its own — you can make it better. Not by compensating more skillfully, but by writing material that does not need compensation.
That is the difference between a performer who has good material and a performer who performs well despite imperfect material. The first is sustainable. The second is fragile.
Have someone else play you. Watch what happens. Fix what breaks. And perform the result with the confidence that comes from knowing your material can survive without you.
That is the real test. And it is a test worth taking.