A magazine for and about Stage Hypnosis. ©


James Szeles
(Click on image to see full size.)

Putting my money where my mouth is.

If you read the posting in Alt.Hypnosis you've read about performing at corporate events and how hard they can be.  Well, I just got back from performing  two shows in Hawaii for a travel expo trade show and it took everything I know to make the show happen.  The shows were in a very large exhibition  hall with a trade show going on at the time and several of the booths had hawaiian tribal dancers complete with drums performing dances every hour, the noise level was very high.  On top of that, the attendees were very laid back and didn't respond to the skits I was doing on stage.  I was told by the promoter that this is pretty typical of the island people, in fact he said when people like Ricky Martin come to town, they stop their concert  and ask what's wrong with the crowd, why aren't they "into it".  I did one show per day for two days; the first show I had to beg the people to come on stage.  There were only 40 people in the audience and I was lucky to get ten people on stage.  I did a long induction and wound up keeping six of the people but only two were really deeply under.
The next day I had an idea of what to expect and the second show was much better.  There were about 20 people in the audience, again I had to beg them to volunteer, but I got 6 on stage and got very lucky to get three of them deeply under.  With two men and one woman under I started to get the crowd into the show.  I told the woman that everyone in the audience was a long lost friend and she went thought the crowd hugging every one.  This was great because the older people in hawaii do not like to be touched - the reactions were classic!  In the middle of the second show one of the two Hawaii drum bands started to play even though they had been asked to wait until my show was over.  This was poor planing on the promoters part; he wasn't aware that some of the exhibitors were going to have live entertainment.  The drums were very loud and I knew I could not talk over them so I had to think fast.  I had my sound guy start my music for the male strippers and had him crank it up.  This did the trick and they stopped playing.  Several minutes later the second drum group started up and this time I incorporated their drumming  into one of my skits. I did manage to do a great second show and was asked back next year.