Two Michelle Obamas, Elmo giving the president moral support and a performance by Drake, the hypnotist, Chris Jones, turned many skeptics into believers at the latest Friday Night Fever event.
Friday night’s show was a full house. “I have done shows for 200-300 people up to 5,000,” Jones said.
The show began with audience hypnosis to pick out the people who were more susceptible. There were roughly 12 people from the audience that stood up and were completely zoned out and responded by doing what Jones told them to do.
At the end of the show, none of those hypnotized remembered what they had been doing for the past two hours. Jones was able to get them to believe that they had been at a Drake concert, so that is all they remembered. As they woke up Jones played a Drake hit and proceeded to play the role of Drake, even throwing in the “drizzy-hand.”
One of the people hypnotized was Amy Rowan, a freshman majoring in education with a minor in theater.
“Well, I saw Drake in concert, it was so much fun. I got a picture with him. I don’t really like Drake but that was so cool,” Rowan said. Rowan was still under the belief that Drake had just performed in the Union Ballroom when she said, “Like a big time name like that here, people might recognize us now.”
While Rowan was still hypnotized, Jones gave her the idea of talking like Elmo, Rowan interpreted this to mean that she should yell Elmo, which she did at the fake Obama press conference.
Margaret Gormley, a freshman majoring in theater, was hypnotized as well. In confusion amongst two hypnotized, Gormley was convinced she was one of two Michelle Obamas. Once Gormley had walked out the door, all the events that had occurred in the last two hours came flooding back into her mind. A mix of embarrassment and astonishment covered her face.
“That wasn’t drake. Did you know? You’re so mean. You all knew,” Gormley yelled at all her friends and fans. Margaret described the experience as being like a dream. “It’s kind of fuzzy but kind of clear at the same time,” she said.
Chris Jones has been performing hypnosis since 2010 and he has been performing at UW for the past four years.
“I’ve seen people graduate,” Jones said. Jones attended graduate school and learned hypnosis while there. “I graduated, worked for one year at a big kid job, and then I moved all my stuff to my Dad’s and said ‘Dad, I’m gonna leave the house and become a hypnotist.’ He was nervous and was like gonna s**t a brick, um, and it was a really good choice,” he said. Jones explained that his two best choices in life were buying a Prius and becoming a hypnotist.
“This was a really good audience. I was laughing 90 percent of the time. When I wasn’t talking, I was laughing my ass off,” Jones said.
