By: Dani-elle Dube
“Are you ready?” asks Bill Kitchen, events programmer of the Students’ Association.
In the backstage shadows stands a man, tanned, bald and packed with muscle. Shaking his arms at his side and rolling his neck from left to right, he grabs the microphone from the stand.
“Let’s do this,” he says.
“Hello Algonquin,” yells Lee. “Are you ready for a fucking ride?”
Starting the show with one of several hundred F-bombs to be said throughout the night, the crowd’s applause gets louder and rowdier with every curse, signaling to Lee that these college students are ready for a crazy trip, or so he has them think.
Marking his 16th visit to Algonquin and 6500th performance in 27 years, Jan. 29, 2013 marked Lee’s first time performing his award-winning act in the college’s new state-of-the-art Commons Theatre.
“I remember one time when I was here at Algonquin and one guy mooned the audience and when he did a little piece of toilet paper flew out of his butt,” Lee recalls of his most memorable performance before the show. “I remember picking it up and making everybody on stage think it was the most valuable thing they had ever seen and this girl ended up winning it and putting it in her pocket and taking it home.”
A former Mr. Canada bodybuilder and radio host, Lee first learned that hypnotism was a natural ability of his when he tried to prove to his girlfriend that it wasn’t a real science. One night at a bar, he joked around and with a deep monotone voice, Lee accidently hypnotized his girlfriend.
“I thought a hypnotist was a guy who had a bus-load of actors and he’d plant them in the audience and everybody who would come up would be actors,” said Lee. “But after a couple of minutes of fooling around she fell over and I was like, ‘No, really?’”
Throughout the night, hypnotized students were put through many scenarios. From being chased by velociraptors in Jurassic Park while on mushrooms to watching their imaginary pet pig being turned into bacon at the hands of Lee, laughter and shock were steady reactions from both the hypnotized and onlookers.
“The audience can expect pretty much anything where their imagination wants to take them or wherever we set the imagination to go. It really is limitless.”
The students seemed to agree.
“I really liked the show,” said Samantha Liacls, first-year public relations student. “The part where they had to pretend to give oral sex, I would say that was a crazy moment.”
“(Lee’s hypnotism) actually worked,” said first-year pre-services firefighting student Carly Crake, who was also one of the 21 hypnotized volunteers. “It was weird how he could access my brain. I didn’t know it was possible.”
“Looking back it was embarrassing,” laughed third-year advertising and marketing student Jessica Wright, “but it was cool. I just felt like my whole body was relaxed and at peace. There were no restrictions. I can’t believe I had an orgasm on stage. That was not good.”