‘Hyprov’ takes Colin Mochrie back to his early days as an improviser

If you’re a fan of the long-running TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” and its star Colin Mochrie, you’ll know the magic of comedy improvisation.

On the show, four comedians, usually led by Seattle-born Vancouver resident Ryan Stiles, Georgia actor-singer Wayne Brady and Mochrie, perform in front of a TV audience without a safety net.

There are no scripts and rarely are there props, but the crowd itself plays an integral role, offering suggestions and scenarios that force the quartet to rely on spontaneity and wit to make it work, performing scenes that usually lead to unexpected hilarity.

But with the news that “Whose Line” is coming to an end with its final season on the CW this year, Mochrie is falling back on a new groove: “Hyprov,” a.k.a. Improv Under Hypnosis.

Improv dictates that you make it up as you go along, so does hyprov mean you make it up as you … sleep?

Not quite, says hypnotist Asad Mecci, who came up with the concept. He and Mochrie perform a sold-out show at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts on Friday; the Rose Theatre Brampton on Feb. 16 and the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts on Feb. 17.

“You can’t get stuck in hypnosis,” Mecci reassured recently during a conference call that included Mochrie, as I noticed my eyelids beginning to droop and shook off a bit of drowsiness.

“People are cycling in and out of trance states all the time.”

Mecci should know: he continually places people in suggestive hypnotic states. When he’s onstage during “Hyprov,” auditioning approximately 20 subjects before whittling it down to a handful, he looks for telltale signs that make them particularly good candidates.

“I’m looking for physiological changes,” Mecci explained. “I’m looking for changes in respiration rate, skin colour, skin tone, a shyness and dullness to the skin … there’s a checklist and if I see it, I’ll keep the person onstage.

“And if I don’t, I’ll remove them. I’m always calibrating. It’s sort of like what poker players are looking for when they’re looking for unconscious tells. When people come up onstage that are highly susceptible to hypnosis, they look at me with riveted attention. They don’t have an expression on their face and they’re really focused on me.”

The great thing about hypnotizing people is that “they’ll just carry out my suggestions without hesitation or without question. They react immediately,” Mecci said.

“So, for example, I say, ‘You fall madly in love in Colin and you’re going to propose to him. On the count of three you’ll be wide awake. 1-2-3!’ That person goes right into the experiment without hesitation, without question. They slide right into it.”

For his part, Mochrie said a participant’s lack of inhibition is refreshing and often unpredictable.

“Because the part of the brain that deals with self-reflection and self-criticism is gone, they just immediately react to everything we say and make extremely bold choices, which I find interesting,” the comedian noted.

“That’s what I love about working with these people. When I work with the ‘Whose Line’ guys — even though we’re improvising — I can usually tell, ‘OK, they’re going to go down this avenue’ …

“But these people have no idea. So it takes me back to my early days of improvising where I’m truly in just reaction mode and keeping the thing going.”

But Mochrie said that when people are under, the instructions can’t be too complex.

There are limitations.

“We set up a theme,” he said. “We get a romantic place from the audience, maybe from their home city. Asad sets it up so they can only propose to me when I’m sitting down. So it gives them an objective to try and get me seated and then propose.

“Sometimes we add in an extra level where an old girlfriend of mine shows up to interrupt things. Over the time we’ve done this show, it’s changed so much from our first show because we weren’t sure what we could do with them.

“Then we found out we can pretty much do anything as long as we keep their objective clear: ‘You have to propose to Colin,’ simple. ‘Your pet has died. You’re at the funeral.’

“They can’t do very complicated word games, for example. But something with a simple objective, they really go for and is really strong for them.”

Mecci came up with the hyprov concept while studying improv classes at Second City, where instructors would tell him that he was trying too hard to consciously construct comedy instead of just letting things happen.

And it got Mecci to thinking …

“Is it possible to hack this process?” he wondered. “Could I potentially hypnotize somebody who has no improv experience and turn them into great improvisers?”

Reaching out to Mochrie through his manager, the duo did a trial performance at Second City, which was well received, before taking it to Just for Laughs in Montreal for a sellout performance. Following similar successes at Just for Laughs London and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a 50-city North American tour followed before COVID-19 sidelined the act.

Once it was safe to perform again, an off-Broadway run of 70 shows led to this Canadian tour and what Mecci describes as “a pretty fast, action-packed, high-energy show.”

“It obviously hilarious because Colin’s involved with it,” he added. “It’s always funny to watch Colin be pitched into scenes with people who are ‘hypnovisers,’ people who are subjects who are hypnotized. And Colin performing with them is pretty wild.”

As is watching Mochrie perform in his natural habitat: improvisation.

“It’s really hard to beat,” he said. “It’s the perfect lazy man’s job. I don’t have to learn anything. I show up and the audience yells out the ideas. I work with people who are hypnotized and people who aren’t.

“I mean, I am very grateful to ‘Whose Line,’ to this show that allows me to do an occupation that didn’t exist when I was growing up. And it’s the only thing I can do: my only skill is improvising.”

As the conversation drew to a close, I was still a little suspicious about Mecci’s claim that being hypnotized doesn’t have any lasting effect.

The only thing I know is that the next time I see Colin Mochrie in person, I’m going to ask him to marry me … but only if he’s sitting down.

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