FEATURED EVENT: Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis
Straight from a Las Vegas Residency and a recent Off-Broadway run, this show is coming to the Parker Playhouse.
Improv shows create theater based on suggestions from the audience but the performance HYPROV: Improv Under Hypnosis — coming to the Parker Playhouse this weekend — creates theater using performers from the audience. Starring improvisor Colin Mochrie – known for television’s Whose Line is it Anyway — and hypnotist Asad Mecci, the 90-minute show involves twenty audience members – all of whom volunteer – undergoing hypnosis. Those who are receptive stay on stage and are awake, aware and fully conscious – they can even lie, says Mecci. What’s left the volunteers is the part of the brain that deals with self-reflection and criticism — forces holding back even seasoned improvisors. Mochrie then performs with each of them in a situation decided by the audience.
“That means we have then created an instant improv troupe with those people onstage,” says Mecci. “Getting ordinary people to do extraordinary things by unlocking their comedic genius.”
The show started as a one-performance experiment at Toronto’s Second City theater and has since finished an Off Broadway run, been featured in theaters across the United Kingdom and was a mainstay at the legendary Showroom at Harrah’s in Las Vegas. The New York Times said, “The audience erupted in laughter, it killed.” While Time Out New York called it “hilarious and fascinating.”
“I’m still shocked that Asad is able to hypnotize people night after night,” says Mochrie. “I still get nervous wondering what is going to happen, but each night I’m blown away. I have to keep myself from laughing.”
Brett Graff is SocialMiami.com’s managing editor and has been a journalist covering money, people and power for over 20 years. Graff contributes to national media outlets including Reuters, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Maxim, and the PBS show, Nightly Business Report. A former U.S. government economist, her nationally syndicated column The Home Economist is first published in The Miami Herald and then on the Tribune Content Agency, where it’s available to over 400 publications nationwide. She is broadcast weekly on two iHeartRadio news shows and is the author of “Not Buying It: Stop Overspending & Start Raising Happier, Healthier, More Successful Kids,” a parenting guide for people who might be tempted to buy their children the very obstacles they’re trying to avoid.
