Flip Orley, an Entrancing Comedian

By Christina Talcott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 10, 2006

Mark was laughing, even though he couldn't remember who he was. Comic hypnotist Flip Orley had asked him and the other volunteers sitting onstage, "What's your name?" One by one, Orley went down the line, and all he got were confused stares and stutters. With a snap of his fingers, though, the names came back -- except for Mark's.

So Orley prompted him: "Mark, if I gave you a hint, would you remember, Mark, what your name is? Mark, how about if I tell you it rhymes with Mark?" Nothing. The audience went wild, and Mark laughed right along.

The rest of Orley's show at the Improv last fall went on in the same vein -- squeaky clean and good-natured. There were no animal sounds, no raunchy pantomimes, no embarrassing secrets spilled. That is a crucial part of his act, Orley says, and one that seems to charm audiences. (The 8 p.m. Saturday shows are sold out for Orley's visit to the DC Improv, from Thursday through March 26.)

What is hypnosis? Orley sums it up: "Once your mind is cleared, once you're relaxed, your mind becomes really receptive, and that's when the window's open to change. Your mind basically knows your perceptions." That's why hypnosis can help people break bad habits, such as smoking, he says. "Part of the identity of who that person is, is that person's a smoker. When you alter their perception of how they identify themselves, they stop identifying themselves as a smoker."

But how boring would it be to watch Orley help people try to quit smoking? He is, first and foremost, a comedian, so he goes onstage night after night to make people laugh.

Orley delivers a brief monologue, mostly poking fun at himself, before calling for volunteers to be hypnotized. After putting the most susceptible ones in a hypnotic state, the show begins. Since, like Dame Edna's act, his performance involves audience members, it's different every time.

When Orley is not working, he tries to see other comic hypnotists' acts, and he usually cringes at what he sees. "I find that a lot of hypnotists will tie the chairs together at the base, have spotters on the side of stage. . . . They'll hypnotize by domination -- knock people together, throw them around onstage."

That's not his style, Orley says. He wants people to have fun. "I'm constantly reminding them [the participants], you can feel good, you can feel relaxed without losing control of your body."

Instead of embarrassing volunteers, Orley tries to make them laugh. He has his hypnotized charges play games, role-play, tell jokes and respond to sensory suggestions: "When you open your eyes, you'll start to smell something awful" or "When I turn toward the audience, you will notice that the back of my clothes have fallen off." At times, he prompts the volunteers to laugh uproariously, which makes the audience laugh even more.

One of his tricks is to make the audience disappear -- at least for the hypnotized few. How does this work? Negative hallucination, he says. It's like looking for your car keys when they're right in front of you. "Your mind alters what your eyes see." That's the how. The why of the trick? "I just think it's funny to make a roomful of people disappear."

Not all participants can see that, though, because not everyone can be hypnotized by Orley. There are lots of reasons, one of which is the willingness of the participants. When he calls for volunteers, he insists that he doesn't want anyone who does not want to be hypnotized, or who doesn't believe in hypnosis, to come up.

Even so, it's the technique the hypnotist uses that makes a difference: "Some people, if you dominate them, they'll resist," he says. Others won't relax "if you give them too many options; you need to be more demanding, more dominant." In private sessions, a hypnotist can take the time to learn how a patient will best respond, but that's not an option in a show: "You've got an audience that's waiting," he says.

Orley prefers to warm up the crowd himself instead of having an opening act. ("There's a perception that people have when it comes to comedy [clubs]," he says. "People almost want to get there late to bypass the opening act.") The bonus: "By the time I'm ready to do the hypnosis, they know me a little."

Orley's not shy about sharing details of his life. He grew up in Arizona and lives deep in Cajun country in Lafayette, La. Hooked on hypnosis at a young age, Orley, now 40-ish, has a bit in his show about his grade-school strikeouts using the book, "How to Pick Up Girls With Hypnosis." (His luck with women, according to his monologue, didn't change until he met and married his third -- and current -- wife.)

But hypnosis was a side interest: "From the age of 4, 5, 6, I wanted to do something comedic," he says. "You do enough silly things in your life, and you get attention. And then when I was 18, I started to do open-mike nights. I had enough good nights in a row that I had an inflated sense of self-confidence. When the bottom fell out and I had a couple of really bad shows, all the bad responses and quiet audiences and heckling, when your ego really gets a bruising, those good shows really keep you going."

Soon enough, his dual interests, hypnosis and comedy, converged, on a dare from a friend.

"When I was 20, 21 years old, I had been doing hypnosis, doing stress tension . . . personal-improvement things. My roommate from college started harassing me to do hypnosis onstage, and I finally gave in and did it. I was fully prepared to fail, and it was quite by accident that it kind of morphed into a career," he says.

He dredges up his past at the beginning of every show, partly because he finds it relaxes people and makes them trust him. Plus, he says, "I set myself up as the butt of the joke because I'm not going to take it personally."

He talks about his personal trials in his show, seeing every tragedy as fodder for his act. "An entertainer goes through a divorce, and he thinks, 'This is terrible, painful, expensive,' and [then] he thinks, 'Hey, that's five minutes!' "