I used to walk on stage as the nervous version of myself -- the one who was worried about the next move, the next line, the next moment. It took a deliberate mental shift to learn how to leave that person backstage and let someone better take his place.
Read MoreThe first time someone told me I looked natural on stage, I almost laughed. They had no idea how many hours of deliberate, painstaking, deeply unnatural work went into looking like I was not trying.
Read MoreI had a routine that was flawless in my hotel room. Every move was clean, every line was polished, every beat was timed perfectly. Then I performed it for twelve people at a dinner party, and it was like I had never practiced it at all.
Read MoreI can trace my biggest leaps in performance ability not to books I read, videos I watched, or hours I logged in practice. I can trace them to the moments I stood in front of people I had never met and tried to create something extraordinary.
Read MoreI kept a card routine in my set for eighteen months because I was convinced it would eventually work. It never did. The problem was not the routine. The problem was that I did not understand there are three choices when something is not working, and I was stuck on the wrong one.
Read MoreThere was a period when I thought my show was good enough. The audiences were happy, the feedback was positive, the bookings were coming in. I was wrong. 'Good enough' was the most dangerous place I had ever been.
Read MoreFor the first two years of performing, I was obsessed with learning new material. My collection of effects grew constantly. What I did not understand was that the size of my repertoire was inversely proportional to the quality of my performances.
Read MoreThe show I almost phoned in at a small corporate dinner in Klagenfurt turned out to be the one that led to the biggest opportunity of the following year. I got lucky. The lesson I took from it is that luck should never be required.
Read MoreI have performed my core set hundreds of times. I know every word, every pause, every beat. And I am still looking for the next improvement. Not because the set is broken. Because the search itself is the thing that keeps the work alive.
Read MoreIf I could go back to the night it all started -- a hotel room, a new deck of cards, and a laptop open to a tutorial -- here is what I wish I had known. Not about magic. About the journey that was about to begin.
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