The Hypnotist Show

On the night of Nov. 7, the Tesoro gym was shrouded by the hypnosist of Mark Yuzuick. The Hypnotist Show began at 7 p.m. Yuzuick picked 25 volunteers, 18 of which were successfully hypnotized. These volunteers included Danielle White, Josh Kurtzman, Chanelle Wikoff, Jimmy Jacobs, Thomas Stokes, Alec Belsito, JD Denniston, Kelly Jamshidi, Meredith Turner, Adam Mikolajczyk, Kristen Lazatin, Mitchell Lotufo, Bryce Strangman, Scott Curran, Kyle Long, Hannah Lopiccolo, Hadley Evans and Yasmine Segat.
Yuzuick suggested the first scenario: all the volunteers were to play their favorite instrument in an orchestra. Some students, such as senior Hadley Evans, played the violin with great passion, while senior Thomas Stokes jammed on the electric triangle. Senior Alec Belsito hit imaginary drums to his own beat. Yuzuick then decided to spice up the orchestra by incorporating rock ‘n roll music. Everyone switched to electric guitar and drums, except for Stokes, who continued to jam on the electric triangle. Senior Jed Abello comments, “Thomas plays a mean electric triangle.”
As a transition from one scenario to the next, Yuzuick made a clicking noise as he thumped each volunteers’ head, putting the volunteers to sleep. The next scenario was a dance competition, the winner of which would receive a prize of one million dollars. On Yuzuick’s signal, the volunteers sprung from their chairs and danced to the infamous melody, “Cotton Eyed Joe”.
After this, Yuzuick assigned roles to each of the volunteers. Jimmy Jacobs, Kyle Long, and Thomas Stokes sprung up out of their chairs and spanking their rear ends while yelling, “Who’s your daddy?” , while Kristen Lazatin, Meredith Turner and Yasmine Segat flung themselves center stage and rocked out on air guitars and Josh Kurtzman and Scott Curran squealed as an imaginary rat ran by their chairs.
Yuzuick later brought out a stuffed monkey and told the volunteers to imitate whatever the monkey did. The monkey went through a series of crazy dances moves while the volunteers did their best to copy.
Yuzuick then moved into an infamous part of his act, as slow, romantic music began to play. He told his volunteers that as soon as he asked them to dance they would fall deeply in love with him. He then began asking the girl volunteers to dance alongside him one by one. Excited, Kristen Lazatin stood up, dazed by the invitation. As she was told to sit down, Yuzuick asked another girl and soon enough Lazatin’s jealousy became strong enough to evoke tears. Eventually Kyle Long was asked to dance. As Long approached Yuzuick, he stroked his face and led him in a mixture of ballroom dancing and ballet.
As the ending scenario students were given a certain word that would trigger their final performance. The volunteers were asked to go back to their original seats in the audience and wait for their cue. When hearing the word “Pedro,” Adam Mikolajczyk stood up from the stands and made his way down to the center and did his interpretation of Napoleon Dynamite, incorporating many butterfly hand gestures. After hearing the word “dinosaur,” JD Denniston and Josh Kurtzman stood up and began to roar and walk around their friends and classmates. Aryn Douroudian recalls Josh as being “intensely in character. I could not stop laughing”. After hearing the term, “rock-n-roll”, Kelly Jamshidi posed as Lady Gaga and danced to “Bad Romance” along with her backup dancers.
At the end of the show, the volunteers were bombarded by friends and family asking what it felt like to be hypnotized. Chanelle Wikoff described the experience as, “Extremely weird. I had complete control but I couldn’t help but to do everything he asked me to do. It’s so funny to look back at what I did because I can barely remember. I loved it.”