Joshua Seth is a member of the National Guild of Hypnotists and was certified as a Master Stage Hypnotist by the Dean of American Stage Hypnosis. Seth also works as a voice-over artist in Hollywood. He tours worldwide with an interactive comedy hypnosis show. And at 7:30 p.m. this Friday, he will perform at Cubberley Auditorium. Daily staff writer Barrett W. Sheridan had a chance to talk to Seth yesterday.

BS: Your Web site bills you as a comedic hypnotist, but senior Joey Natoli, who’s organizing the event this Friday, calls you an “erotic” hypnotist.

JS: Maybe he was just turned on by my stage presence. My objective is to get people to laugh, but some wild stuff tends to happen on stage. At the Stanford show last year we had guys thinking they were Chippendale dancers and it was all I could do to keep them from stripping onstage and jumping out in the audience. I had to hold them back. I had one guy auditioning for an adult film with a chair as a partner. He was pretty talented.

BS: Does fruit become involved at any point?

JS: We had a segment with bananas and some lovely ladies doing things with the bananas. I had to have the younger children leave.

BS: Have you ever erotically hypnotized a girlfriend?

JS: Yeah, why not? Wouldn’t you, if you could?

BS: Absolutely.

JS: It makes for a more interesting night.

BS: Do you get really good deals when you buy a car?

JS: Hypnosis can be applied to sales techniques and all areas of human influence, so it’s very useful when closing deals, negotiating rates, romancing people. In just about every business it comes down to your ability to use influence and intuition.

BS: You were at Stanford last year for a performance. Did you notice a greater than normal level of subconscious sexual repression among Stanford students?

JS: No, but it always makes my job easier when there are creative, intelligent, focused people onstage and in the audience. A lot of people have a misperception; they think it takes weak-willed people to be hypnotized. It’s the complete opposite. They have to be able to focus completely on my instructions, and then use their creativity to interpret them well.

BS: So Stanford students are easier to hypnotize?

JS: I think you guys are maybe halfway hypnotized already. You guys are in class all day and studying all night, so it doesn’t take that much extra effort to put you guys to sleep. Being in a hypnotic state is very relaxing. One hour of hypnosis sleep is equal to eight hours of real sleep.

BS: I never get selected to go on stage during hypnosis shows, even though I always volunteer. Any tips?

JS: Stop pissing off the hypnotist.

BS: But I don’t even get to the stage, I don’t have a chance to piss him off.

JS: At Stanford last year, there were about 400 people in the audience, half of them trying to rush the stage, and I can only handle so many. A hypnotist is looking for genuine enthusiasm. I give hypnotic pretests, where everyone in the audience gets to experience it. The key to being able to be hypnotized is to want to be hypnotized. If people are there just to try to prove they can’t be hypnotized, they’re just working against themselves.

BS: You did some vampire voices for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Could you use hypnotism to kill a vampire? Or do you need a soul to be hypnotizable?

JS: What are they putting in the water up there that you’d think of such a question?

BS: What would happen if two hypnotists engaged in hypno-battle?

JS: That’d be pretty cool. It’d be sort of like Gandalf and Saruman, fighting in the tower. It’d be like that but with more sleeping.