Tricks Are Signposts: The Grand Effect Nobody Talks About
I spent two years collecting tricks like stamps before I realized the collection itself was never the point.
The Grand Effect
View AllRemove the Tricks: What Remains Is the Real Magic
I tried a thought experiment -- imagining my act with every trick removed -- and what I found in the empty space changed how I perform.
Showmanship Is a Cheap Substitute for Drama: Why That Distinction Matters
I thought I needed to become a better showman. Then I read a sentence that made me realize I was solving the wrong problem entirely.
Magic Is Bad Theatre: The God-Figure Problem and How to Fix It
I spent years performing like an omniscient god-figure who snapped his fingers and made impossible things happen. Then I realized why my audiences were impressed but never truly moved.
From God to Hero: How Shifting Your Role Changes Everything
Once I understood the god-figure problem, the next question was obvious: if I should not be a god on stage, what should I be instead? The answer restructured my entire approach to performing.
Wonder vs. Puzzlement: Why Magic's Goal Is Wonder, Not Fooling People
I spent my first year trying to fool people. Then I read something that made me realize I was aiming at the wrong target entirely.
Meaning, Vision, and Communication
View AllMagic Is Not Inherently Anything: The Most Liberating Idea in Performance
I believed magic was inherently powerful, inherently mysterious, inherently meaningful. Then I read six words that demolished every assumption I had.
If You Don't Communicate It, It Doesn't Exist in Your Performance
I had a beautiful artistic vision for my card routine. The audience saw a guy doing card tricks. The vision was real -- but only inside my head.
The Difference Between Bewilderment and Astonishment Is Meaning
Both responses involve not knowing how something happened. But one leaves the spectator reaching for an explanation, and the other leaves them reaching for words.
Delude Yourself: Why Your Vision Must Feel Absolutely True
The most counterintuitive advice I have encountered in magic: to create something real for the audience, you must first believe something impossible about yourself.
See Yourself from the Outside: The Mental Shift That Changes Performance
I spent years thinking about my performance from behind my own eyes. The day I learned to see myself from the audience's perspective -- literally, as a visualization exercise -- was the day everything about my performing changed.
Magic Exists Only in the Spectator's Mind: Why a Trick Performed Alone Is Just Practice
Joshua Jay crystallized something I had been circling for years: magic does not happen in the performer's hands. It happens in the spectator's mind. A trick performed alone in a hotel room is not magic -- it is rehearsal. The magic only exists when someone is there to experience it.
Suggestion, Withholding, and Presence
View AllThe Hannibal Lecter Principle: Why Withheld Power Is More Terrifying Than Displayed Power
Anthony Hopkins terrified audiences not by screaming and raging but by holding immense power beneath a calm surface. Derren Brown applied the same principle to magic: the grandeur of your performance should be withheld, felt rather than seen. The more you hold back, the more the audience feels it.
Stop Announcing Your Power: Why Tiny Cues Work and Bold Statements Backfire
I used to tell audiences what I could do before I did it. Then I learned that the most powerful form of communication in performance is what you never say out loud. Bold statements are questioned. Tiny cues -- a glance, a pause, a slight adjustment in posture -- are believed without examination.
The Art of Apparently Unintentional Implication
The most powerful communication in magic is the kind that looks accidental. When the audience thinks they caught something you did not intend to reveal, they trust it completely -- because they discovered it themselves. This is the art of apparently unintentional implication, and it changed how I think about every moment on stage.
Presupposition: The Most Powerful Form of Suggestion You Already Use
I spent years studying scripts and patter before I realized the most powerful thing I communicate in every performance is what I never bother to say out loud.
Four Things I Communicate Before Every Trick Without Saying a Word
The audience has already decided how they feel about you before your first trick begins. I learned to control those decisions by controlling what I communicate without speaking.
A Kind of Magician: Three Words That Disarm Every Preconception
Everyone has a mental image of what a magician is. That image was my biggest obstacle until I found three words that made it irrelevant.
Silence as a Weapon: When Not Speaking Communicates More Than Any Script
My performances got stronger the day I stopped filling every moment with words. The silence was terrifying at first. Then it became the most powerful tool I own.
Feigning Reluctance: Why Making Them Ask You Is the Most Powerful Setup
The night I stopped offering to perform and started waiting to be asked, the reactions went through the roof. Reluctance is the most underrated tool in a performer's arsenal.
Never Ask If They Want to See a Trick: The Art of Setup Before the First Effect
I used to walk up to people at events and ask if they wanted to see something. It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand why that question killed the magic before it started.
Withheld Presence: The Impact Made by What You Don't Do
I spent two years trying to be bigger, louder, and more impressive on stage. Then I learned that the most powerful performances are defined by what the performer holds back.
Invisible Props: Why Nothing in Your Hands Is the Strongest Starting Position
I used to walk into every performance loaded down with props, as if the magic lived inside the objects. Then I discovered that the most powerful starting condition is the one where the audience can see absolutely nothing.
Designing with Cause
View AllEffect Without Cause: Why Clicking Your Fingers and Making Something Happen Isn't Magic
For years I snapped my fingers as the 'magical moment' in every effect. Then I learned that the snap is exactly where drama should live -- and my performances were hollow because I was skipping the only part that mattered.
You're Very Clever: The Three Words That Kill the Magic
The first time a spectator told me I was 'very clever,' I took it as a compliment. It was not a compliment. It was the sound of wonder dying.
The Magic Is the Process: Why the Cause Matters More Than the Effect
I spent years obsessing over the moment the card changed. Then I read a single sentence that made me realize the moment before the change is where the magic actually lives.
The Kafka Principle: Start with a Feeling, Not a Method
Every effect I designed for the first two years started with a method. Then I discovered a creative process that starts somewhere entirely different -- with a feeling, an image, a metaphor that refuses to leave you alone.
Rose Petals Instead of a Torn Card: When Aesthetics Drive the Trick
A torn corner proves the card is the same card. A rose petal proves nothing -- and yet it creates a moment the audience remembers forever. That contradiction taught me something fundamental about what magic is for.
Acting, Art, and the Inner Life
View AllRemembering to Forget: Why the Best Actor on Stage Doesn't Know His Lines
I memorized my script until I could recite it in my sleep. That turned out to be the problem. The breakthrough came when I learned to forget it.
What Would I Actually Do? Stanislavski's Magic If Changes Everything
I spent years acting like a magician instead of being one. Then a single question from a nineteenth-century Russian theatre director rewired how I perform.
Grasp the Soul, Not the Dress: Why Character Starts on the Inside
I spent months building a persona from the outside -- costume, music, props -- before realizing I had the entire process backwards.
Stop Presenting Magic and Start Transmitting It
There is a difference between showing someone a trick and making them feel that something impossible just happened in their world. I had to unlearn one to learn the other.
Can Magic Be Art? Wonder, Conviction, and the Zone
I used to think magic became art when it was performed beautifully. Then I read two arguments that dismantled that assumption from completely different directions.
The Magician Is the Artwork: Why Individual Tricks Are Just Methods
I spent years perfecting individual effects before realizing that the tricks are not the point. The performer is the point. Everything else is method.
Loving the Art in Yourself vs. Loving Yourself in the Art
A line from Stanislavski, filtered through Derren Brown, forced me to confront why I was really performing -- and whether my answer was the right one.