I loved card magic so much that my first show was five card tricks in a row. By trick three, the audience had checked out -- and I had no idea why until I understood the role variety plays in live performance.
Read MoreWhen I mapped my entire repertoire against Scott Alexander's eight categories of magical effects, I discovered I had been living in only two rooms of a mansion with eight. No wonder my shows felt one-dimensional.
Read MoreThe first time I performed a transformation effect where something changed right in a spectator's hands, the gasp was unlike anything I had heard before. Something about the directness of 'A became B' cuts straight through every defense.
Read MoreThe moment a borrowed ring appeared inside a sealed envelope across the room, the owner's face went through every stage of impossibility in about two seconds. Transpositions and teleportations work because they break the one rule everyone agrees on: things cannot move through walls.
Read MoreThe first time I made something truly vanish -- not just hidden, not palmed, but gone from the spectator's entire reality -- the woman across from me said nothing. She just stared at her empty hand. That silence taught me more about magic than any book ever could.
Read MoreOf all eight categories of effects, penetrations are the ones that make me light up. One solid object passes through another, and the audience's brains short-circuit in the best possible way.
Read MoreSomething is torn, burned, broken -- and then made whole. But the real magic of destruction and restoration isn't the restoration. It's the time the destruction gives you to connect with the audience.
Read MoreThe first time I saw something float during a live performance, the audience didn't scream or laugh. They went completely quiet. That silence taught me something about the difference between surprise and mystery.
Read MoreI was drawn to mentalism because Derren Brown broke my brain. Then I learned that mixing mind-reading with card tricks is one of the most controversial decisions a performer can make -- and I made it anyway.
Read MoreSteve Martin once said magic is the only talent you can buy. A display of skill moment is how you prove that what you do can't be purchased at a magic shop.
Read MoreNot every effect belongs everywhere. Here's the decision framework I use to match effects to show positions -- and why the wrong effect in the right slot can tank an otherwise perfect set.
Read MoreI was a card magic obsessive who built an entire show out of card tricks. The audience taught me why that was a mistake -- they just stopped caring by trick number three.
Read MoreI studied how a professional cruise ship headliner builds a full-length commercial show from modular pieces, and the architecture behind it changed how I think about my own thirty-minute set.
Read MoreA show with variety but no thread is a variety show. A show with variety and a thread is an experience. Here's how callbacks, running gags, and through-lines turn a collection of effects into something that feels like it was always meant to be.
Read MoreI dismissed classic effects as beneath me until an audience reaction taught me that the cups and balls has survived two thousand years for a reason. The magic snobs have it backwards.
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