Hypnotist Mapes puts audience to sleep

It's hard not to be skeptical when reading the brochures distributed at the outset of James Mapes' "Journey Into The Imagination" hypnosis show.

"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.

"Giant mushroom," the student replied.

"And what do they think is so funny?" said Mapes, pointing at the snickering audience.

"Maybe they're laughing at the mushroom."

At one point, the volunteers were asked to imagine cranky, 20 foot flowers chucking petals at them.

"Give them a sign to show them you don't want them around," suggested Mapes. Some of the volunteers gave a thumbs-down, some waved in disgust, and some just flipped the flowers the bird.

Later, a volunteer was placed in an imaginary - but still quite constricting - box and asked to grab a wad of cash from Mapes' hand.

"How do you feel?" asked Mapes, when the brawny young man bounced off the walls in frustration.

"I''m in a box," he replied, giving Mapes a withering look of impatience.

Mapes even threw some entertaining twists on old stage hypnotist standbys: the "forget a number" routine was livened up when multiple students were tested, resulting in a furious battle of wills. "She's wrong, I'm right," the hypnotized girls protested, and of course the crux of the argument was whether "seven" was a number.

Though the eventual cast was only a small portion of the audience, Mapes gave plenty more the chance to participate. Even those who were sent back to their seats got a taste of the experience.

"It halfway worked on me," said Melissa Argraves, a 3rd-semester psychology major. "I went up and I fell asleep. I was conscious of everything going on around me, but I was in a sleeping state. Before he sent me back to my seat, I felt like I was the only one up there."

The combination of relaxation, suggestion and post-hypnotic triggers resulted in several audience members who, while failed as on-stage subjects, got a few moments in the limelight.

A massed post-hypnotic butt-pinch caused both hysterics and hysteria, including one man who leaped up in furious shock.

"What's going on?" asked Mapes, feigning confusion.

"She pinched my ass!" yelled the man.

Apart from an awkward past-life regression-it's never a good idea to put someone who believes they're in 1939 Poland in the middle of a laugh-out-loud comedy show¬-"Journey Into The Imagination" was a rousing success throughout.

And did it really work? Was it just a big fake?

"I didn't expect it to work," said Jimmy Donahue, a 1st semester theater major and on-stage participant. "It was like-you wanted to move, but you couldn't. You wanted to participate. It was a lot of fun."