VIVA LAS VEGAS
The Little Black Book of Stage Hypnosis Secrets – Michael Johns and Richard K Nongard
This book was one of the first batch photographed for the Cosmic Pancakes! blog, but it’s taken me years to get around to reading it!
Published in the USA in 2007, The Little Black Book of Stage Hypnosis Secrets by Michael Johns and Richard K Nongard harks from when Kev and his Head Hacking co-founder Anthony Jacquin were working on a stage hypnotism show. Johns and Nongard are stalwarts of the Las Vegas stage and entertainment hypnosis scene, so this is amongst a stack of US stage hypnotism classics from Kev’s past.
I find perceptions of what constitutes a ‘British’ stage hypnosis show fascinating... We’ve explored Victorian and vintage lenses via this blog, plus I’ve interviewed contemporary British hypnotists and mentalists/magicians on their use of entertainment hypnosis. I’m privileged to have glimpsed some behind-the-scenes stuff, too.
My sense is that modern British stage hypnosis is uniquely ‘phantasmagorical’ because of its Victorian ‘music hall mesmerist’ past. Perhaps that’s why the glitz and glam of Las Vegas stage hypnotism calls to me..? The dazzling smiles and big Tony Robbins energy of Vegas hypnotists and mentalists/magicians makes them distinctly impressive to me as someone who studies prestige and showpersonship from afar. The Little Black Book makes no secret that we’re learning from two of the best on ‘The Strip’, so I finally tick it off my ‘to-read’ list.
Johns’s Vegas stage show, and the thinking behind it, provides the book’s ‘red thread’. So we move through preparing and performing a show based on his work, with plenty of scripting and skit offerings. Co-author Nongard’s background in hypnotherapy, psychology, and magic shine through. There are plenty of insightful, if dated, audience- and participant-handling observations included, and I appreciated the nuance between sharing a prepared script versus a recorded transcript of what was actually said during an average show.
My sense is that Nongard generated a lot of the book’s content, as everything is presented via his considered, caring, professional lens. Plus editorial flourishes like the following made me appreciate Nongard’s magic mentor, the great wizard Eugene Burger, and his potential influence on his student’s thinking and writing! “People have to know the truth about hypnosis – that it is a natural phenomenon, and that the devil is not going to climb inside their mind and suck out their souls during the induction process.”
Where the devil has climbed into our authors’ minds is in the pseudoscientific explanations for what hypnosis is and does. I’m sure their positions have advanced considerably in the 17 years since the book’s publication. And I appreciate that, at the time of writing, Nongard and Johns are seeking to educate “conscientious” readers about ethics, values, and duty of care, etc, to raise the bar of what constitutes ‘professional’ stage hypnotism. But the unnecessary propagation of myths about ‘states’ and ‘trance’ among entertainment performers is counterproductive. The book is also smattered with nonsense pop-psychology, and it reports the theories of Ormond McGill and Dave Elman as if they are fact rather than the confirmation biases of deceased men and mindsets.
I’ve spent sufficient time in the company of performing hypnotists and mentalists/magicians to know that a few have wondered: is there any cash and glory to had from a stage hypnosis show performed by this Amy person..? I can’t deny that I have accrued sufficient knowledge, and can muster the necessary pinch of chutzpah, to give most men in hypnosis a run for their NLP-ranting money. Perhaps some shambolic Britain’s Got Talent or Penn & Teller: Fool Us hypnotic appearance starts to come into view in my crystal ball..? Ugh, no – what an unbearable prospect! So, balls to that! Instead, this book has inspired my retro-futuristic hypnosis stage spectacular, set to appear in a British seaside town near YOU in the year 2044!
I’ll start with a classic 1930s rope induction, of course. My semi-willing stage volunteers shall be silently shaking heavy ropes for a good 20 minutes while the audience watch on in *awe* and *childlike wonder*. (Adders tongues and otters noses will be available for purchase.) I, meanwhile, shall be emptying the Think-a-Drink cabinet while my subjects fatigue and bore themselves ‘into hypnosis’ because I’ll be 64 by this point and being a Dreamer of Dreams is tiring work. So instead a drummer with an intense gaze shall move through the audience, drumming them to a full yet joyously peaceful chaos of internal life while their socially conforming outer shells watch the stage volunteers crumple down into hypnotic slumber among the coils of heavy ropes.
Next maybe something like this, as described by hypnotist Desmond Dunne in 1959..? “Girls would be made to slither and slide on imaginary ice; to act as if intoxicated; to lament at the imagined funeral of a loved one or to dance with reckless, childish abandon. Men would be made to “make love” to umbrellas under the impression that these were their favourite film stars; to howl like infants; to crawl round on all fours and make appropriate animal noises or divest themselves of part of their clothing.”
Finally, when the drumming reaches a sufficiently frantic beat, I shall rouse from my drunken stupor somnambulistic trance and shout “YOUR HAIR IS FULL OF BEES!”, and watch the audience erupt accordingly. Just as I conduct people to cease their wild clapping and move to leave, a flash mob bursts into the auditorium and nails the doors shut!
And that’s when we all realise: we are all already trapped in The Greatest Show on Earth, and this performance has only just begun…
It’s a work-in-progress. And somehow I suspect I shall always lack that Vegas professionalism and sheen despite the enduring usefulness of books like this.
