In 1943, Dariel Fitzkee cataloged thirty-nine distinct appeals that capture audience attention. Eighty years later, every single one still works, because human psychology hasn't changed.
Fitzkee identified six primary appeals that operate at the most fundamental human level. Understanding them changes how you think about every performance choice.
Beyond the primary appeals, Fitzkee identified production-level appeals: the power of physical action, coordinated group performance, and precisely timed execution.
Fitzkee's most provocative insight: instinctual appeals (danger, beauty, rhythm) will always outperform intellectual appeals (cleverness, complexity, puzzle). Instinct beats intellect every time.
Fitzkee's counterintuitive advice: always leave the audience wanting slightly more. Most performers do too much, not too little.
Before modern comedy theory existed, Dariel Fitzkee cataloged twenty-four comedy situations that reliably produce laughter. They still work because they map to fundamental human responses -- and they belong in every magician's toolkit.
Fitzkee's theory of laughter centers on three triggers: watching someone struggle, recognizing human shortcomings, and perceiving inconsistencies. All three are tools for the performer who wants to be genuinely funny.
Fitzkee distinguishes between humor (warm, empathetic, character-based) and wit (sharp, intellectual, observational). Both are powerful but serve different purposes in a magic show -- and most performers lean too far toward one.
One of Fitzkee's most reliable comedy situations: place someone dignified in an undignified position. The gap between expectation and reality produces reliable, warm laughter -- and it is the magician's secret weapon.
Greg Dean's First Story/Second Story framework parallels magic construction perfectly -- both exploit the audience building narratives from assumptions, and both deliver surprise through reinterpretation. Once you see the connection, you cannot unsee it.
Jack Benny's genius was not in his material -- it was in his relentless focus on the spectator's experience. Fitzkee uses Benny as the exemplar of audience-first thinking, and the lesson applies to every performer who wants to be remembered.
Fitzkee identifies a universal comedy principle: the audience loves seeing a confident performer humbled by circumstances. The key is making the jam believable and the recovery entertaining -- and knowing this gives you one of the most powerful tools in magic.
Fitzkee's taxonomy of eleven audience types provides a systematic approach to adapting your performance to any crowd. From children to intellectuals to drinking audiences, each type demands a different strategy -- and understanding the differences is the foundation of audience management.
A single spectator is the hardest audience because there is no crowd psychology, no social permission to react, and no one to hide behind. Every reaction must be genuine -- and that changes everything about how you perform.
Fitzkee's 1943 advice about women-only audiences is partially dated but partially timeless. Separating the obsolete from the universal teaches important lessons about audience assumptions -- our own included.
Fitzkee's advice for drunk audiences is brutally practical: work harder, work faster, talk louder. The subtlety of your best material is wasted when the audience's cognitive capacity is impaired. Here is what I learned from performing at Austrian corporate events where the wine had been flowing for hours.
Fitzkee classifies audiences by intelligence level -- immature, mature, cultured -- and prescribes different approaches for each. The framework sounds elitist but is remarkably practical. It changed how I prepare for every corporate event in Austria.
When an audience doesn't respond, the problem is never the audience. Fitzkee is unsparing: if your material doesn't land, it's your material that needs to change, not your audience. A lesson I learned the hard way at a corporate event in Salzburg.
Fitzkee's distinction between amusement (passive, forgettable) and entertainment (active, meaningful) is the difference between a performer who fills time and one who creates experience. It changed how I think about every minute I spend on stage.
Fitzkee lists eight techniques for creating unity in a magic act: theme, character, costume, music, prop consistency, running gags, narrative thread, and escalating structure. Here is how I turned a random collection of effects into something that felt like a show.
Fitzkee's staircase metaphor: every moment should advance the show. No plateaus, no steps backward, no repetition of energy level. The audience should always feel movement. Here is how I learned to eliminate the flat spots in my own set.
Timing isn't about how fast you go. It's about controlling the pace to achieve a specific emotional effect. Slow can be more powerful than fast when used deliberately. A lesson from Fitzkee that changed how I perform every single routine.
Fitzkee's five timing rules: build gradually, slow toward the climax, pause before the key moment, accelerate through transitions, and never rush a reveal. Practical rules I now apply to every routine in my set.
Fitzkee reframes misdirection as a subset of pointing -- you're not directing attention away, you're directing it toward something else. This positive framing changes how you design every moment of a performance.
Fitzkee's concept of perverse magic: routines where the magic seems to work against the performer. The audience sympathizes with the performer's struggle and celebrates when things finally work out. It is one of the most powerful structures in all of magic.
The performer's job is not to execute tricks sequentially but to orchestrate them into a unified experience. Like a conductor, you shape dynamics, tempo, and emotional arc -- and the difference between playing the notes and interpreting the music is the difference between mediocrity and mastery.
Fitzkee identifies nine distinct sources for act ideas. Most performers rely on one or two. Using all nine opens up creative possibilities that transform how you think about show building -- and I discovered that the ones I had been ignoring were the richest veins of all.
One of Fitzkee's most radical suggestions: study a great comedy act, musical act, or theatrical piece, strip it to its structure, and rebuild it with your magic material. I tried it, and the results were better than anything I had ever built from scratch.
Fourteen diagnostic questions that reveal whether an act is working and where it's failing. Applied systematically, they function as a performance MRI -- exposing structural weaknesses that feeling alone would never identify.
Fitzkee's show-day preparation includes seven distinct checklists covering everything from wardrobe to prop setup to mental preparation. The system eliminates the chaos of show day and replaces anxiety with confidence born of thoroughness.
Fitzkee's counterintuitive advice: start with what you want to say, then find tricks that serve those words. Most magicians do the opposite and end up with brilliant effects wrapped in meaningless patter. Reversing the process changed how I build every performance.
No matter how good a trick is, if it doesn't fit your character, your theme, or your show, it has to go. Fitzkee is ruthless about this: fit determines inclusion, not quality. Learning to let go of great material was one of the hardest and most important lessons of my performing life.
Audiences want to applaud but don't always know when. Fitzkee's three-step system ensures they know the trick is over: show the result, indicate completion, and finish with a clear physical gesture. I learned this lesson the hard way, standing in silence while an audience waited for permission to react.
Fitzkee's definition of interest -- thought-provoked attention -- is the simplest and most useful definition in performance theory. If they're thinking, they're interested. If they're not thinking, they're not. This single equation changed how I diagnose every flat moment in every show.
Fitzkee distinguishes punch from surprise. Surprise is unexpected. Punch is unexpected AND emotionally satisfying. The difference is the audience's emotional approval of the outcome -- and understanding that difference transformed how I design every climactic moment.