Performer Bio: 4 Question Interview with Comedy Stage-Hypnotist Giovanni Thodé

Oranjestad, Aruba. August 14th - 2013. 5:30pm. Sitting at Ruba Reggea, sipping on some Bailey's while savoring Djarum Black clove cigarettes, we begin the Interview: 

~"So as I understand, at the time you were successfully studying to make a Career becoming a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. 
And you dropped it all to take a risk studying Clinical Hypnotherapy while taking a salary dive becoming a Tour Guide for 8 and a half years?
What did it for you? What Inspired you to take such a bold career move, and pursue such a different and controversial study?"~
 
My Grandfather had Cancer in 2000. I wanted to help contribute to his healing. I wanted to have more nights sitting at the table with him playing Chess. I wanted him to see me achieve my Life's Goals.
I wanted more years to enjoy the privilege & the gift of the experience of his participation in my Life.

I sold all my MSCE study books to recoup a bit more than half my total investment and after stressing my head out for months on making a decision, I closed my eyes...and without looking back, invested it all in two different Hypnosis Schools of high calibre.  Committing to be the best of the best of the few and the proud, in the Art, for my Generation, on my Island...in a future. But for right then and there, in that moment in space and time,the objective needed to be about assisting the accelerated healing of the biggest role model I knew and Loved.

It did not go quite the way I planned, and he passed on. Sometimes when I feel like crying, I run stories where I victimise myself into temporarily believing I could have done something sooner to prevent it from happening. but there are only so many times you can use that memory to invoke tears. You don't easily escape the feeling, of having been left a hole behind that never healed. 
I used the pain of the loss to inspire me forward to become a more passionate student of the Art, often and frequently giving away my entire months salary, divided amongst bookshops around the World, in pursuit of rare and elusive knowledge in one or other aspect of the Art.
 
~" How did being a Tour Guide help you be a better Hypnotist? Or did Hypnosis help you be a better Tour Guide?How did Tour Guiding contribute to your Experience and studies? "~

Counting two bus or semi-submarine loads of people per day, you were talking about anywhere between 88 to 108 people a day, whose attention span you've got to get, hold and direct for an Intense 4 to 9 hours a day.
You learn to talk the Universal language in a way wherein people of diverse cultures are transported into a state of magic, fascination and  wonder, and left touched, moved and inspired to want to come back, and leave you good tips on the way out.
Being exposed to a crowd every day intensely accelerates your learning through experience. The experience alone was priceless practice that allowed me to perfect the delivery of suggestions through the mouths of impassioned characters I would create and develop, such as the "drama student working as a tour guide to develop a stand up comedy skit"  being a favorite role.

My tour scripts eventually became four and a half hour stand up comedy routines I had so ingrained in me through practice, that I could go on 'automatic pilot' whenever I did not feel like being 'fully present' to a crowd, and still deliver an amazing performance.
By being fully present living in the moment, and consciously participating in the ongoing creation of one or several effects simultaneously, weaved within, above and below my Tour Script  , I was able to consistently make 5 to 7 times my salary in tips.
Though I was making a minimum wage monthly, my tax free tips made sure I consistently had a good monthly income. 
I would review my performance and script at the end of each day, gauge feedback, rewrite, perform and record and rehearse over night, and come back the next day and test again and again, until I had been able to maximize reach and favorable feedback measured along many points, including, number of guests on the bus/semi-sub,nationalities present, ship name, demographics, languages, weather conditions of the day, etc,etc,etc,etc...including tips.

Weaving a successfully tested stand-up comedy script with the Island Tour script assured me a consistent good income as a Tour Guide. Laughter is such a powerful way to disarm spectators and lower their guards, as it's impossible to dislike anyone who genuinely makes you laugh consistently a few times. So I made my Island Tours into four and a half hour Comedy skits, with voice overs, character impersonations, voice effects in different ascents,and other misdirections,suggestions and showmanship. All which were customized and innovated upon daily to suit the unique group of cultures to which I was exposed. 
The environment offered me the unique venue to safely practice and perfect purpose driven language. Developing effective language patterns customized and designed to illicit very specific responses from the target audience and spectators. 

When I was given the books "Secrets of Contact Mindreading", "7 Deceptions",and "Psychological Subtleties" as gifts by a friend and magic bookshoppe dealer out of Texas,  I was set on Fire. Here were people achieving unprecedented results in their effects, magic and illusions by artfully weaving different arts together. Amazing ideas started to come to me in regards to how I myself could use this knowledge and these insights into my own performances. 
On the Island bus Tours I immediately started adding small Mentalism, and Mindreading set pieces such as mentioned and described in the books. Doing and practicing small, simple routines to perfection by rehearsing every day, and incrementally go building up experience and repertoire.

~"What successes did you Experience?"~

In the Atlantis Semi-Submarine where I was also it's narrator (where the spectators are five and a half feet below the waterline in the belly of a boat lined with windows staring out into the ocean), where I had a soundtrack to support my narration, I had many wonderful opportunities to practice and perfect Clinical Hypnotherapy type delivery of suggestion with the aim of helping guests that were secretly afraid of water or closed spaces their entire lives.  And after an hour long Marine Tour  found themselves walking away cured of a phobia that in the past robbed them of many great experiences, while leaving me with a wide smile and a $80 tip shoved into my hand.
Those little successes encouraged and inspired me to take Clinical Hypnosis to the streets after work, where I spent another several years helping crackheads and homeless experience varying degrees of success. 
I in turn got great experience practicing and honing the delivery of long progressive inductions, until I realized there was a faster way to do it.

On the Bus Tours I got a different environment to practice on and adapt to. It was a four and a half to five hour tour, with 3 to 4 stops during the Tour where people would get off the bus, walk around and get distracted then get back on the bus to head on over to the next stop,until we got back to the Cruise ship. On these tours I became conscious of the need to do re-inductions after everyone was back on the bus after each stop.
When I achieved a soon and sudden result while delivering a "Twisted Palm" I was left blown away and inspired some more. 
The person started to see the lines on their palms moving much sooner than I expected, and it left me with the revelation that indeed more could be done with less words.

It encouraged me to be more fearless in the experimentation of artificially producing trance phenomena. So I slowly started weaving suggestions for hallucinations on my tours on days where Nature did not cooperate with my script. 
So on those days where in places along our Tour, normally a dozen or so goats(or lizards) could be found and we arrive with a great tour group at that spot and behold...just one or two goats staring at us, totally contradicting and ridiculing the "Herds of Goats/Packs of Lizards" I mentioned we would be seeing 3 minutes earlier, i would then start to launch the relevant key words out, and play with time and silence ....and within a few minutes a few guests on the bus would start to see a few more goats appear that were not there before. Confidence is truly key, next comes showmanship.
It was soon after i was able to consistently deliver and achieve successful group hallucinations for Iguanas, birds, dogs, cats, centipedes and other creatures, plants, colors and things along the Tour route.
I was on a roll. I was hungry and curious to push the boundaries a bit more every day.

The first time I experimented with " for Andruzzi" was with a shore excursion manager for the "Ocean Village" cruise ship, who also happened to be a Nurse.
She let go a sudden shriek and puzzled look when she could not locate my pulse anymore, and after the Tour she had a great Tour Review faxed to the office, and later asked me if I ever thought of performing on the ship, though flattered but which due lack of repertoire at the time, I politely declined. 
These little successes kept boosting my confidence, and the increased confidence allowed my performances to appear more natural, effortless and spontaneous, further increasing effect.

Tour guiding filled all those learning & experience gaps in ways I was so fully satisfied that when it was time to move on I had a hard time letting go. You can only stay in school so long. There reaches the time you've got to take what you know and make the best of it, in the form you Intend it to Be. You beat Life into shape, instead of having life beat the enthusiasm and curiosity out of you. 

I took a career break from Tour Guiding to enter the Retail industry, where I got to practice using  hypnotic language within entirely new  Contexts and directions. But that;s another story.

~"Why Comedy Stage- Hypnosis? What do you want to Do with it, and Where do you want to take it?"~

I intend on contributing fun and laughter as tools towards removing fears and eliminating misconceptions about Hypnosis in my Community.!
No matter the form, that's basically it, in a nutshell.
Effectively de-mysteyfing the Art of Hypnosis  through exposure and awareness.

Presenting and performing squeaky clean family oriented shows filled with fun and laughter, aimed at provoking astonishment and thought, fascination and wonder. inspiration and respect towards the Art.

I intend on being the best of the best of the few and the proud in the Art like this hemisphere has never previously seen before. Pushing the limits of what is possible with its artful use in ways never imagined before. Producing results beyond what was once possible, and then in turn taking that to another level.

Seeing the invisible and doing the Impossible...
 



Requesting quotes for Private Performances or performance itinerary, Please Email: Giovanni.Thode1@gmail.com