I was at a private dinner in Graz — eight people around a table, wine flowing, candles casting that warm amber glow that makes everyone look slightly better than they do in fluorescent conference rooms. The host had asked me to do some close-up magic between courses. Easy enough. I had my cards, a few small props, and a mentalism piece I had been refining for weeks.
The mentalism piece had a story. A good story, I thought. It was about a psychologist in Vienna who had conducted an experiment on intuition in the 1960s, and the story wove through the routine, building to a reveal that connected the psychological concept to the spectator’s own choice. On stage, at a keynote in front of two hundred people, this routine killed. The story gave it weight. The narrative arc gave it momentum. The reveal felt earned.
At this dinner table in Graz, it died.
Not violently. Nobody heckled or looked away. But I could feel the energy drain out of the interaction about ninety seconds in. The woman sitting across from me, who had been leaning forward with genuine curiosity when I started, slowly leaned back. Her husband started examining his wine glass. The couple next to them exchanged a glance that I recognized from corporate meetings — the “how long is this going to take?” glance.
I finished the routine. The reveal landed. There were polite nods. And then someone changed the subject.
Later that night, in my hotel room, I sat with a notebook and tried to understand what had gone wrong. The story was good. The routine was tested. The reveal was strong. So why did it feel like I had been talking at these people instead of talking with them?
The Invisible Wall
The answer came to me through two books I had been reading simultaneously — Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic and Darwin Ortiz’s Strong Magic. Both deal with scripting and presentation, but from different angles. And when I held their ideas up against my dinner table failure, the problem became blindingly obvious.
I had built a wall. A beautiful, well-constructed, narratively satisfying wall — but a wall nonetheless.
McCabe’s central principle is that every script must be written from the audience’s perspective, not the performer’s. And Ortiz makes an observation that hit me hard: the effect happens in the spectators’ minds, not in the performer’s hands. Both of these ideas point to the same truth, but I had been applying them to stage performance without adjusting for the close-up environment.
On stage, you are separate from the audience. There is a physical distance, a lighting difference, an implicit agreement that you are the performer and they are the observers. In that context, a story works because the audience has already accepted a presentational frame. They expect to be told things. They expect narrative. They are sitting in theater seats — literally or metaphorically.
At a dinner table, none of that exists.
At a dinner table, you are a person sitting among other people. There is no stage. There is no lighting separation. There is no implicit permission to deliver a monologue. The social contract is conversational. Everyone takes turns. Everyone contributes. The moment you launch into a three-minute story, you are violating the fundamental social dynamic of the setting.
You are building a wall between yourself and the people you are supposedly connecting with.
The Conversational Imperative
This is what I started calling the conversational imperative of close-up performance. The closer your audience is to you physically, the more your script must resemble actual conversation.
On stage, at twenty meters, you can tell a story about a Viennese psychologist. The distance grants you that authority.
At a table, at arm’s length, you need to talk to the person in front of you. You need to ask questions and actually listen to the answers. You need to respond to what they say, not deliver your next scripted line regardless of their input.
McCabe discusses something called flowchart scripting, an approach pioneered by Jon Armstrong. Instead of a linear script, Armstrong creates a branching structure based on possible audience responses. At each decision point, the spectator can respond in several ways, and the performer has a planned response for each path. This maintains structure while preserving spontaneity.
I realized that this approach was not just a nice option for close-up — it was the only approach that actually works in intimate settings. A linear, story-based script assumes the audience will sit quietly and absorb. That assumption is valid on stage. It is a fantasy at a dinner table.
What the Dinner Table Demands
After that Graz dinner, I started rebuilding my close-up repertoire from scratch. Not the effects themselves — those were fine. But the scripts. Every single one of them.
Here is what I found the intimate setting demands:
First, the script must include the spectator as a participant, not just a witness. On stage, you can say, “Imagine a psychologist in Vienna in the 1960s…” and your audience will imagine. At a table, a better approach is to ask the spectator, “Have you ever had a moment where you knew something was going to happen before it did?” and let their answer become part of the performance.
Second, the script must breathe. It must have gaps where the spectator is expected to speak, react, or contribute. A stage script can be dense and continuous. A close-up script must be porous. Every twenty to thirty seconds, there should be a moment where the conversational ball is in the spectator’s court.
Third, the story — if there is one — must be short, personal, and directly relevant to what is happening in the moment. Not a narrative about a historical figure. Not a three-act story with rising action and climax. More like an anecdote you would naturally share in conversation: “Something weird happened to me last week…” delivered in the same tone and cadence you would use if there were no trick at all.
Fourth, the script must be able to absorb interruptions. At a dinner table, someone will interrupt. The waiter will arrive. The person next to you will make a joke. A phone will ring. If your script is a fragile, linear construction that requires unbroken attention, every interruption will damage it. If your script is conversational and modular, interruptions become part of the texture. You absorb them, respond to them, and continue.
The Story Paradox
Here is the irony: I am a huge believer in story. Michael Weber’s principle — “best story wins” — is one of the ideas I have found most powerful across every domain I work in. In strategy consulting, in keynote speaking, in magic, the person with the best story almost always has the most impact.
But “best story wins” does not mean “longest story wins” or “most theatrical story wins.” It means the story that resonates most deeply with the specific audience in the specific moment wins. And at a dinner table with eight people who are already in the middle of their own evening, their own conversations, their own social dynamics, the best story is usually very short and very personal.
I learned this the hard way by testing different approaches over dozens of close-up performances. The elaborate stories that worked on stage consistently underperformed in close-up. The short, conversational approaches — a quick personal confession, a single question that made the spectator think, a two-sentence setup that led directly to an impossible moment — these consistently outperformed everything else.
The Two-Script System
I now maintain two scripts for every effect I perform in both settings. The stage version and the table version. They share the same effect, the same method, the same core structure. But the words are completely different.
The stage version has a narrative. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a story that provides context and emotional weight. It is designed for an audience that has committed to watching a show.
The table version has a conversation. It has questions and responses. It has gaps and flexibility. It is designed for people who are in the middle of their evening and have given me a few minutes of their attention as a courtesy.
The table version is harder to write. Much harder. Because a conversation is less predictable than a monologue. You have to prepare for multiple paths. You have to be genuinely responsive. You cannot rely on the momentum of a narrative to carry you from beginning to end.
But the table version, when it works, creates something the stage version cannot: a genuine sense of connection. Because the spectator is not watching magic happen. They are part of the magic happening. They spoke, they chose, they contributed — and then something impossible occurred that was woven into their own words and choices. That is not a wall between performer and spectator. That is a bridge.
The Mistake Most of Us Make
The mistake I made in Graz is one I see other performers make constantly. We develop material that works on stage, and then we assume we can perform the same material at a table with minor adjustments. Turn down the volume, reduce the gestures, speak more quietly — but keep the same script.
This does not work. The script is not a cosmetic layer that can be resized. The script defines the relationship between performer and audience. A story-based script defines that relationship as presenter-to-audience. A conversational script defines it as person-to-person. These are fundamentally different relationships, and you cannot achieve one with the tools of the other.
Ortiz writes that every single word you say to a spectator constitutes part of the performance. This is true in both settings. But the implications are different. On stage, every word is part of your presentation. At a table, every word is part of your conversation. And a presentation that intrudes on a conversation is not just ineffective — it is socially awkward. It makes people uncomfortable. It builds a wall that should not be there.
Taking the Wall Down
The fix is not complicated, but it requires discipline. Before scripting any close-up piece, I now ask myself three questions:
Would I say this to a friend at dinner? If the answer is no — if the language is too formal, too theatrical, too “performative” — it does not belong in a close-up script.
Does the spectator speak during this routine? If the answer is no, the script is a monologue, and monologues do not belong at dinner tables.
Can this routine absorb an interruption without breaking? If the answer is no, the structure is too fragile for the close-up environment.
These three questions have transformed my close-up work. Not because they made me more technically skilled. The technique was never the problem. The problem was that I was building walls where I should have been building bridges. I was performing at people instead of with them. I was telling stories when I should have been having conversations.
The wall that should not be there is the wall between your stage persona and the real person sitting across the table. In close-up magic, the person sitting across the table does not want a show. They want a moment. And moments happen in conversation, not in monologue.