What Happens When a Hypnotist and an Improv Comic Ask for Volunteers

I’m totally biased on this: I think Colin Mochrie is the best improv comic ever. Episodes of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” – in which he co-stars – make me laugh so hard that I wake up the cat.

Now he has teamed with hypnotist Asad Mecci for a show they call “HYPROV: Improv Under Hypnosis” that has already played in over a hundred cities and had residencies in Las Vegas, New York and Toronto. They open their latest tour with a show at Hawaii Theatre on Oct. 10.

I’ve learned that the basic rule of improv comedy is “Yes, and …” “Yes” means you accept whatever your improv partner has done; “and” means you build onto it. In an interview with both performers, I ask Mochrie: “I can see your hypnotized audience members accepting your lead, but can you count on them to add to it?”

“I thought that was going to be the problem,” Mochire replies. “I thought, ‘They’re just going to say yes to everything,’ but they add things that are sometimes so out there. It certainly keeps me and Asad on our toes.”

Mecci gives a hilarious example of an unexpected “and.”

In one show, a hypnotized woman from the audience was told that she was madly in love with Mochrie and should propose to him, Mecci says. “This woman gets down on one knee to propose and realizes Colin has a wedding ring on his hand, and she calls him some choice names because she did not realize that he was already married.”

The amateur improvisers do not think like the professionals, so the unexpected is to be expected. In one scene, Mochrie’s a superhero looking for a sidekick. So the audience member declares himself “The Gibraltar Kid.”

“What’s your superpower?” Mochrie asks. “Are you strong like a rock? Do you turn into a rock?”

“No, I have residency in Gibraltar,” he replies.

“Your superpower is you can work in the place where you live?” Mochrie answers back, adding to me: “A real improviser wouldn’t have come up with that.”

He says when he improvises with friends and regular partners, he generally knows where they’re going in a scene, even though they’re all improvising. “I don’t have that with these people. I really have to focus on them. And it makes it more exciting because I truly have no idea where the scene is going.”

Mecci finds their performance partners by asking for up to 12 adult volunteers from the audience. Then he selects the three to five people who appear the most susceptible to hypnosis.

“I’m looking for physiological indicators,” he says, like changes in breathing and skin color, plus riveted attention, like “they’re really focused on me.”

“The best subjects are the ones able to dissociate from their surroundings and become fully immersed in the moment. For example, two people watch a horror movie. One person looks at the blood and says, ‘It looks fake.’ The other person screams and jumps in their chair. I’ll take the person who screams and jumps in their chair.”

Onstage, “These people are fully committed to the scene. It’s amazing to watch some random volunteer from the audience keep up with Colin,” Mecci says.