Joining the ranks of 180 years of entertainers...

Last Friday evening I had the privilege of performing for the Littleton Lyceum in Massachusetts. What made this special for me was the fact that this Lyceum has been in existance since 1829. For those that do not know what a lyceum is; Wikipedia defines it as a "public hall used for social events". *Founded in 1829 when Littleton, MA was a rural farming community, the Littleton Lyceum is the oldest continuous lyceum in the country. Rooted in the past, with an eye to the future, the Littleton Lyceum adds to the quality of life of each and every citizen. With the financial support of regular subscribers, two endowments and many local businesses, the Lyceum brings affordable, enlightened entertainment to the residents of Littleton and surrounding towns. Although this show was performed in the high school auditorium, it did not detract from the notion of what history was taking place. Not that my act itself was historic but I was honored to continue the tradition.

What made this show memorable was the vast age difference of the volunteers, 12 years old was probably the youngest and a gentleman in his 60s was the oldest. (I hope I did not insult him with this guesstimate of his age. He could have been a little younger or a little older). Anyway I would like to thank all those that came out and watched, laughed and/or participated.

On a side note, being that I enjoy history, I was wondering what different type of acts over the last 180 years was hired to perform for the lyceum. I know there have been singing and dancing acts, poetry reading, lecturers and many type of variety acts and I am aware of other hypnotists, but coming from a background as a magician, I am curious to research what famous magicians performed for Littleton residents. I am very sure that during the early 1900's magicians such as Howard Thurston and Harry Houdini toured regularly on the lyceum circuit. I will research through magic history to find out.

To find out more about the Littleton Lyceum please visit their website at http://www.littletonlyceum.org/ and tell them Steve Wronker sent you.

The coming months of May and June have shaped up to be the busiest May and June in my 22 years of performing. May is a great month because it is the beginning of the all-night prom shows, campgrounds shows, senior week performances and at the end of the month the kick-off for the high school all night graduation parties. It's a really crazy schedule with some senior week shows starting at 8:30 AM and the graduation parties (a few nights 3 shows) starting at 11:00PM, 1:00AM and 3:00 AM. Yes you read that right, performances throughout the night. As each year passes and I get another year older, these shows are still as fun as when I started doing them in 1988. The only thing that gets to me is the drive. Some shows are a 3 hour drive each way. I do a lot of napping in my car. But boy do I love May and June.

I think I'll take a short nap now for practise... so until next week,

See ya !

*taken for the Littleton Lyceum website

Thanks Alex and a Sweet 16

This was a slow week with only 2 shows. Last Tuesday I performed at a high school , one of my favorite schools. This night was as wild as ever. Let's see; we had the 3 amigos Andy, Ryan & Mitchell, who kept falling from their seat, Lindsay who couldn't remember her first name but has a beautiful middle name Rose and then we had Haley who thought she needed her boyfriend's permission to be hypnotized. She got it. Alex thanks for being a great sport about all the teasing! And then we had the rest... they were all very animated and did a TERRIFIC job. Lots of photos on my web site and on my Facebook, page. But here's a few to wet your whistle.

And last night I had the pleasure of entertaining 14 young women during a sweet 16 party. Everyone knew I was coming but the birthday girl. She went nuts! Altho she chickened out to volunteers, 5 of her friends did and we had a great time. Especially as Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. I don't get to perform in this intimate of a setting as offen as I would like. These kind of shows can be ad-libbed and we all had such great fun.

Big show this week in Littlton, Massachusetts. See you there!

Driving home... I was feeling great !

Slow week for me, only one show and that was yesterday, Saturday night. It was a private party, a 50th birthday party. It was set at a yacht club on Long Island. The sunset was gorgeous as it set over the cove, an inlet to the Long Island Sound. I should have brought my camera, it was a perfect setting. Anyway, my show was after the dinner and birthday cake was served. Total number of people in the room: 17 family members. This small amount of people was a recipe for disaster for a hypnosis show as I am used to being in front of many more people. They invited me to eat dinner with them. This was very much appreciated and unexpected. Thank you very much. When it was time for me to start I was apprehensive but showed an air of confidence that we would have a good show. And boy did we ever.

Earlier that evening, I had twittered that the room was so small, no where to set up my sound system and absolutely no room for the volunteers to perform and I did not know what I was going to do. But when it was time to start, I realized I knew exactly what to do. And that was to be myself and put on the best show I know how. I talked to them a little bit about hypnosis and then asked for volunteers. I got 7 volunteers.

To make a long story short, they all passed my testing, they all got hypnotized and they all performed throughout the show. Not one woke up. I had no microphone so I had to talk very loudly, a small boom box that I hooked my iPod up to for music. I did my normal show and I had a ball. And so did the 7 volunteers and the 10 family members that made up the audience.

This show statistically should not have worked but it did, and to great success. The show was video taped and as I left, they all huddled around the video camera to watch the show again.

As George Peppard used to say on the A-Team TV show... "I love when a plan falls together!"

As I was driving home, I was feeling great!

Happy Passover and Happy Easter to all!

Steve

ps... you can follow me on Twitter; search for SWFB

Small Town America Has Moxie

Another weekend of shows, another 600 plus miles on the car. My show Friday night had real Moxie. That's because the show was up in Lisbon, Maine. This is the hometown of the soft drink Moxie. (It's an acquired taste!) The show was a fundraiser for the middle school but what I really enjoyed was that the entire town was invited to attend. For a seven dollar admission you received a spaghetti dinner and the show. The organizers were surprised more people didn't show up. Maybe next year now that they know what my show was all about. Sometimes going into a small town, a hypnosis show can be daunting because most people have preconceived ideas about a hypnosis show. You know; how dirty and embarassing they all are. I'm glad that those that were there thought very different. The turn out was still pretty good and I know that those in attendance had a really good time. One of the things I really love about these open to the public town shows is the different age groups of volunteers I get. There were middle school students, high school students and quite a few adults. And these different age groups respond to suggestions differently from each other. I love that.

I really do hope we get to do this again next year. I know the turn out will be much bigger. Where else can you get a huge spagetti dinner for seven bucks. Here's 3 photos from that show.

My Saturday night show is always one of my favorite schools to perform for. Over the years some of the best groups of volunteers came from this school. Saturday was no exception. Especially since one of the stars of the show was the son of the person who hired me this year. Way to go Jonathan, you were TERRIFIC ! One of the biggest supporter of the athletic booster club could not be with us this year. He is deployed as a Department of the Army civilian in Kuwait. We missed you but send you our best wished to stay safe and be home soon. He has seen all of the photos from the show and has said how much he enjoyed them. I hope he will be in attendance next year.

Another fun item about this show. I have been creating a facebook event about each of my shows. This school had 254 RSVP's. Not everyone had said they were attending, but the fact that there were that many students responding was overwhelming. I hope this works for the rest of my shows. it is a great way to get momentum going.

Here's three photos from this show.

Well that's it for this week. All the photos from these and other shows can be found on my web site: http://www.swfb.net/ Take a look and give me your comments and reviews.