The Archive
What used to be premium-only is going public in weekly stages. Past posts are being updated regularly, so check in.
The Dual Act: Two-Person Telepathy, Coded Systems, and the Vanishing Format That Changed Modern Mentalism
September 2, 2023
Two people. No visible signal between them that anyone could verify. An audience of seven million listening on BBC Radio in 1949, and a woman...
The Six Faces of Belief: Common Performer Archetypes and What Each One Actually Signals
August 8, 2023
Every performer is already playing a character. That's the part most discussions about mentalism persona skip past entirely. Before you choose a costume, before you...
The Book Test Reconsidered: Construction, Psychology, and Why No Other Effect Generates the Same Silence
July 23, 2023
Most performers who do book tests can't tell you why the effect works. They know it lands. They know the room goes quiet in a...
Part 3 of 4 · The Mentalism Persona
Part 3: The Promise You Didn’t Mean to Make, When the Persona Puts You in Ethical Situations You Never Planned For
June 30, 2023
The previous installment in this series, Part 2: The Mask That Makes Promises, made the case that your mentalism persona doesn't just shape how you...
The Camera Didn’t Lie: Spirit Photography, Double Exposures, and the Modern Performer’s Use of Visual Evidence
June 2, 2023
The photograph arrived in mourning families' hands weeks after the sitting. It showed what they'd hoped for and hadn't dared name out loud: a translucent...
After the Curtain: Managing Belief, Discomfort, and the Conversations That Happen When the Show Refuses to End
May 13, 2023
The show ended forty minutes ago. Everyone has their coats, there's laughter near the door, and she's still standing near the edge of the room,...
Light as Language: A Working Performer’s Guide to Atmospheric Illumination
April 13, 2023
Most performers think about lighting the way they think about tablecloths. Something to have, not something to use. They dim the overheads, put a candle...
The Body in the Dark: Physical Phenomena and the Case for Bringing Manifestations Back to the Modern Seance
March 27, 2023
I've sat in rooms where a table moved and nobody wanted to leave. Not because the show was especially polished. Because something had changed in...
The Skeptic at Table Three: Managing Disbelief Without Breaking the Room
March 5, 2023
There's a man in the third row. He arrived with his wife, who looks genuinely curious. He looks like he's waiting for something to go...
Part 2 of 4 · The Mentalism Persona
Part 2: The Mask That Makes Promises, How Your Mentalism Persona Sets Ethical Constraints You Cannot Ignore
February 10, 2023
In Part 1: The Second Skin Problem: Building a Mentalism Persona That Survives the Long Set, the argument was structural: your character has to be...
Routining the Séance: How to Architect a Complete Bizarre Magic Experience From First Effect to Final Exit
January 21, 2023
I don't claim there's a formula for this. I'm skeptical of anyone who does. But I've sat through enough séances, as a performer and as...
Part 1 of 4 · The Mentalism Persona
The Second Skin Problem: Building a Mentalism Persona That Survives the Long Set
January 1, 2023
I'm not going to tell you persona is everything. That's a workshop line, and workshop lines are where real thinking goes to die. What I...