Nicole Gerszberg: What is your show like?
Tom DeLuca: The show is a celebration of the imagination. It allows people to let their imaginations go in an intimate way. I make people do silly stuff, but I don’t try to take advantage of them onstage. I try to make it joyous.
NG: What do you find to be the highlight of your shows?
TD: The people who are in them, the ones with good imaginations. Sometimes there are people up there who are really interesting and that comes out. I think that’s the magic of the show, seeing people’s imagination and character displayed with limited inhibitions?
NG: What is it like to be hypnotized?
TD: It’s very relaxing and kind of detached, yet focused on suggestions.
NG: Can you make a hypnotized person do anything, for good or for evil?
TD: Not really, if it is morally abhorrent to him, he won’t do it. There is kind of a safety mechanism built in. They have to trust you to some degree, but there is a limit to what the subconscious will allow.
NG: Why do you think that there are some people who are more likely to become hypnotized than others?
TD: Less fear, really good imaginations. There probably is a confluence of things that make one person better than the other, but a lot of it is in the hypnotist. If I engage people properly so they get over whatever fear or doubt they have, then I can let them go very deeply into their imaginations. It’s a really nice experience; I’ve had people who are into yoga tell me that they’ve never felt anything like it.
NG: Why did you choose to become a hypnotist?
TD: I didn’t really choose it; it chose me. I got involved with a professor who really liked me and was into hypnotherapy. He trained me to hypnotize his clients, usually to lose weight, and he told me that this is what I should do, that I had a really good knack for it, and he inspired me. I’ve been hypnotizing people ever since.
NG: Why hypnosis? Why do you think this is something that people are really interested in?
TD: That is the root of what I do; there’s an amazement factor. You keep re-amazing people. There’s a difference between being hypnotized and play-acting. I could have people onstage just playing along, but the audience would notice it. And that’s the thing; there’s a little magic when you can tell it is actually happening. You can see that it’s real; you can see the people who’ve chosen to be up there, and now they are involved with a suggestion of what is a reality. There’s something really magical about it. You are seeing people so fully engaged with their imagination that they’re oblivious to everything else and there is something very interesting about that from an observational point of view.
