Spring Break
Hypnotist Mapes puts audience to sleep
John Bailey
Issue date: 9/18/08 Section: Focus
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"An exploration into the unlimited potential of the mind," it reads.
"Wait," you ask, "wasn't this supposed to be a comedy show? Is this going to be some kind of new-age 'centering' malarkey? Isn't everyone just a plant anyway? Am I going to be turned into a gibbering idiot in front of a mostly-filled Jorgensen?"
There were no drum circles in Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts last night, and there were no plants. There were a bunch of goofy people hopping around on stage, and there were some great one-liners of the best sort: the kind that nobody plans.
After dispelling any fears the audience might have about hypnosis (to the reader: no, hypnosis can't make you do anything you don't want to do. No, you can't get stuck in a trance. No, I'm not a dark wizard, despite the ghastly promotional caricature), Mapes chose his co-stars, which numbered more htan 20, by means of a simple suggestibility test. The most suggestible of the audience were left onstage, slumbering peacefully in their boy-girl-boy-girl arrangement.
"It doesn't work on me," said Chana Rich, a 3rd-semester physiology and neurobiology major. "But it was fun to watch it work on other people."
Somehow, there seems to be a predominance of greasy, fat men with zero charisma among stage hypnotists. Fortunately, the wiry Mapes made an excellent showman, zipping about the stage and dropping suggestions with his earnest, casual voice.
The suggestions were entertaining at worst and a riot at best. Mapes threw the on-stage volunteers through a sort of intergalactic mental journey, making them hot, cold, hallucinatory and, at one point, 6 years old-all with amusing effects.
The landing on the imaginary planet yielded some fascinating sights, apparently.
"What are you looking at?" Mapes asked, as he pointed to one gaping student.
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