Want to know what it’s like to see your friends cracking jokes under a spell?
You can while sitting in the Ed Mirvish CAA theatre while watching Hyprov with Who’s Line Is It Anyway? star Colin Mochrie and hypnotist Asad Mecci.
Hyprov is like its name – a mix of improv and hypnosis, except the people on stage are 20 random audience members.
The show was created in 2015 at Second City Toronto and hit the road for major festivals like Just for Laughs London and Edinburgh Fringe. In 2019, Hyprov planned a 50-city tour and has now performed over 100 shows in North America.
The first half hour is dedicated to Mecci hypnotizing participants and the rest of the show is led by Mochrie’s storytelling and skit ideas on the spot, which include imagining they’re trying to solve a case of someone’s missing toenail or murdering each other with donuts.
Mochrie also walks around the audience members sitting in front of the stage and asks them questions to help inform the direction of the next scene based on the kinds of characters the participants are directed to act like.
Live musician John Hilsen improvises the soundtrack for the entire production.
Mochrie told Now Toronto he’s passionate about bringing the improvisation experience to everyday people.
“Improvising is what we don’t do in life — listening and hearing people,” he said.
Selected volunteer participants sing, dance, laugh, and fake cry with Mochrie on stage and to Mecci’s command. Many of them don’t even come from a comedy background.
Participant Alyssa Brubacher said she felt like she was waking up from a good nap while improvising under hypnosis.
“You lose your inhibition in a state like that which I think makes the format so successful. As for why I wanted to participate, once my friends and I heard the show was coming we thought it would be funny if one of us participated because most of us grew up watching Whose Line Is It Anyway?”
Hyprov is a family friendly show. Some people sit next to children on one side and elderly couples on the other side.
Many members not on stage were “deeply entrenched” while watching the show, an audience member told Now Toronto. “It’s an incredible merge of two mediums bouncing off each other on stage.”
Torontonians can attend Hyprov now until April 21 and after that Mochrie and his crew will be heading to their next city.
