Patty's (and her committee's) Stage Hypnosis Questions Answered

I don’t have an FAQ page up on my site but I talked with a party planning committee on their speakerphone yesterday and below are some of the questions they asked. And my answers:

Q. Will someone under hypnosis say something “bad” about the company?

A. Not if I don’t ask them and suggest to them to say something bad about the company. Which I won’t. Besides, people won’t do anything under hypnosis that they wouldn’t normally do.

Q. What if no one volunteers to come up on stage?

A. They’ll volunteer. I’m not sure about how another stage hypnotist might approach this, but I come from a comedy background and start my show with jokes and audience interaction to get them laughing. As Victor Borge said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two (or more) people.” Once we’ve shared some laughs together and I’ve explained what’s about to happen, they become comfortable with me and with the idea of being hypnotized and volunteer.

Q. Could you do a half hour of stand-up comedy and a half hour of hypnosis? We’re unsure about the hypnosis show.

A. I understand that a lot of companies could be aprehensive about bringing a comedy hypnotist to their event. (Read my sub par hypnotist post below.) Although I could break the show up to half comedy half hypnosis, I won’t. Once people see their friends and coworkers on stage displaying their hidden talents, and they realilze my show is politically correct for the corporate culture and in good taste, they’ve almost forgotten about the stand-up I did to get the show rolling.

Q. A lot of our employees are over 50. Will that make a difference?

A. Not really. I’ve had some of my best shows with an audience full of baby boomers. Heck, they need the hypnotic stress relief more than most younger folks!