handled the situation well at all because I had stayed in the frame they had set: a battle that involved me with them as the center of attention and catapulted them out of a large audience onto center stage. Each time I responded at length to their attacks, I reinforced that frame and encouraged them to fire another round. What I should have done was break the frame, either by metacommunicating—directly talking about what was going on—or by indirectly changing it.
