15 posts in this series
I mastered the technique. I rehearsed obsessively. The shows were technically excellent. And then I realized: the audience had no idea who I was. They clapped for the tricks, but they never connected with the person performing them.
Read MoreThe most important thing I do before a performance has nothing to do with props, scripts, or technique. It happens in the thirty seconds before I walk out, and it changes everything about how the audience receives me.
Read MoreI performed in silence for longer than I care to admit. Clean technique, smooth routines, zero personality. Then I learned that without stories, you're not a performer -- you're furniture that does tricks.
Read MoreI used to think big-stage magic was all about spectacle. Then I learned why the greatest illusionist alive insists on telling personal, sentimental stories in the middle of his mega-productions -- and why the audience loves him for it.
Read MoreThe fastest way to make an audience feel like they matter is absurdly simple: prove you know where you are. Three sentences at the start of a show can transform a generic performance into something that feels made for this room, this night, this group.
Read MoreA glass shatters during your show. A phone blares from the third row. A waiter drops a tray. The audience is watching you, not the disruption -- and how you respond in that moment tells them everything about who you really are.
Read MoreI thought emotion in performance was about looking surprised, looking amazed, looking moved. Then I studied acting, and I learned that faking an emotion and feeling an emotion produce two entirely different results -- and audiences can always tell the difference.
Read MoreThe most skilled performer I have ever watched live left me cold. The warmest performer I have ever watched live made technical errors I could spot from across the room. Guess which one I would pay to see again.
Read MoreEveryone tells you to 'be yourself' on stage. Nobody tells you that it is the single hardest piece of advice in all of performance -- because the person you are offstage is exactly who you have been trained to hide.
Read MorePost one hundred. A milestone I did not expect to reach. And the perfect moment to talk about the pattern I keep seeing at magic conventions: performers whose lectures outshine their shows -- and what that reveals about the deepest challenge in all of performance.
Read MoreI kept returning to one case study that complicated everything I thought I understood about authenticity in performance -- a performer who was undeniably brilliant, undeniably himself, and yet somehow never broke through the way his talent demanded.
Read MoreI spent a year trying to be someone else on stage before I realized the audience could see through it. But abandoning character entirely is not the answer either -- the answer is understanding the difference between a costume and a commitment.
Read MoreThere is a story about a young performer trying too hard to impress an agent. The agent's note was five words long and contained more wisdom than a library of performance theory. Those five words changed how I think about every show I do.
Read MoreMy routines used to be interchangeable with anyone else's. Then I started weaving my real life into them -- the consulting, the hotel rooms, the late discovery of magic -- and suddenly no one else could perform my show.
Read MoreI performed a technically flawless thirty-minute set and then realized the audience knew absolutely nothing about me. They applauded the magic. They forgot the magician. That was the night I understood what Pillar Two was really about.
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