Last Friday, Mer took me up to Cleveland for the second part of my Christmas present. We went back to the 14th Street Theater to see Joshua Seth, a “psychological illusionist.” Joshua claimed to be able to use psychological tricks to pick up on details about individual audience members and to share information with the audience. I was looking forward to the performance, as I like unusual things like this, and I like to try to figure out how things work.

The show started a bit late because the theater was having trouble with the sound system. They got that figured out, and Joshua came on stage and started the show by saying he could share a number with us. He said he was thinking of a number between eleven and fifty, where both digits were odd and both were different. The number thirty-seven popped into my head, and I remembered to look at his hands. His right hand was by his waist, but had three fingers extended. I did not get a chance to see his left hand before he asked how many of us were thinking of thirty-seven. Most of the audience applauded. It was a great example of how the brain can notice and process a ton of information without our being consciously aware of it.

Later in the show, he did something similar where he told the audience he was thinking of two shapes, one inside the other. He asked how many people were thinking of a triangle inside of a circle, and most people applauded. He shared that he had made a circle with one hand and briefly made a triangle with both hands near his waist, and he used that as an example of how his art worked.

He did another illusion, where he put band-aids over his eyes, and then put on a metal eye shade so that he could not see at all. He then had an audience member come up and draw five random cards, which he then named. He had a woman come up and write a word on a small whiteboard. She wrote “car,” and he then took the board, and drew a very rough-looking car before writing the word “car.” It was impressive.

He ended the first act by having all members of the audience write down names, a number of significance, and hobbies or jobs. He said that the “vibe” was easier to pick up if people wrote the information down. He had us put all the slips of paper in envelopes, collected them, and then put them in his bag on the stage. He then proceeded to call people up by name or by profession, which he claimed to be “seeing” in his mind. He would then ask them to think of their number or some other fact they had written down, and then would concentrate, and then “zoom in” on the information by getting closer and closer (like, “I’m sensing a fall month, like October…the middle of the month…the 13th or 14th…the 14th!”). It was excellent showmanship. He did it successfully six or seven times, and did have one audience member where he failed to guess anything, for which he apologized, saying his technique was not one hundred percent effective. It was very entertaining.

There was an intermission, and after the break, Joshua switched over to hypnotism. He had ten people come on stage, and he tried to hypnotize them. Of the ten, he succeeded really well with two of them. He put the two people though the paces. He made them be at a beach and be hot, and then made the temperature drop suddenly (the woman of the pair curled up in the man’s lap at that). He made them conduct an orchestra and play various instruments. The man on stage was deeply under, and so Joshua made him forget the number six, and then had him count his fingers. He made the man talk in a gibberish language, and made the woman an expert translator. He made the two of them drive their dream cars at three hundred mph (the woman put on eye makeup in the rear-view mirror going three hundred mph), and made them get pulled over by a cop, and try to get out of the ticket. At that, the woman pulled down her outer shirt (happily she had on two shirts). The man hit on the cop (who was played by Joshua), which was amusing. When Joshua woke them up, they remembered nothing at all. I am glad I was not on stage for that – it would seem a shame to pay for the show, but then not remember it.

It was a fantastic show and very entertaining. Over the next two days, I tried to figure out how he was doing some of the things he did, which could not have all been done by reading body language or the like. Here is my theory:

For the bit where Joshua was telling people their names, hobbies, numbers, etc., he was probably getting the information from a confederate backstage. Joshua wore an over-the-ear microphone that looked normal. But, it would be a piece of cake to put a small speaker behind the ear at the base of the microphone. Joshua had a remote on his belt that controlled background music. He always turned the music up when people came on stage. It is my theory that the music was being used to cover up the slim chance that an audience member on stage would overhear the small speaker. Also, the remote had too many buttons for simple volume-up, volume-down, and skipping to the next track. I think some of the buttons controlled a speaker behind his ear.

Also, Joshua made a big production of putting the envelopes with the audience information into his bag, which was near the back of the stage. He then came to the front of the stage and moved around a lot with a flourish. It would have been very easy for a confederate to pull the envelopes out of the bag if the bag had a false back. The confederate could then simply read the information to Joshua, who could make it more dramatic for showmanship purposes. I’m guessing that the one time he got it wrong with an audience member, it was probably a case where the woman had the same first name as someone else, and the confederate got the wrong card.

As far as the card trick and the word “car” on the board, that would be easy to spot by confederate using a camera or the like. In fact, Joshua said the man holding the cards was shuffling them too quickly for the images to register in the mind. I think the card shuffling was making it too hard for the confederate to see the cards using whatever method he was using to see them.

Lastly, it was interesting to me that the theater was having trouble with the sound system before the show. I think that Joshua’s wireless system for his speaker was causing interference with the theater’s normal channels for their sound system.

All of this is just a guess, but it explains everything plausibly. It does not take away from the fun of the evening, and the hypnotism part was quite real (I’ve seen a hypnotist before). I had a good time.