Lincoln's Tony Lucero opens a new year with a reality show pilot, shows around the world and a new home at the Rococo Theatre
L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, January 8, 2009 12:00 am
Tony Lucero is the Mojo Master.
He’s an expert hypnotist who regularly performs across the country, making people laugh night after night in city after city.
But Lucero wants to do more than just play the comedy club/corporate party circuit.
“I want to be the person who takes hypnosis mainstream and in doing so educate people about what hypnosis is and is not,” he said.
“Everyone can be hypnotized and everyone can do it. Priests hypnotize people, motivational speakers hypnotize people. If you cry at a movie, that’s a form of hypnosis. … All it is is a state of relaxation, a state of focus.”
To that end, Lucero, who lives in Lincoln, has filmed the pilot for a reality TV show that’s being pitched to cable networks. The hourlong program will combine elements of “Punk’d,” his stage performances, street hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
But he’s not sitting around waiting to find out if the TV show gets picked up. He’s planning for another year of about 140 performances around the country, starting Friday at the Rococo Theatre.
Lucero, who had worked as a trainer and motivational speaker, has been doing hypnosis for six years, since he and his wife, Rhonda, attended a show titled “Hypnosis Gone Wild” in Las Vegas.
Before the show, he met hypnotist Michael Johns and told him, “‘I would love to do what you do.’ He said ‘Really? Come to see me after the show.’ My wife and I went back after the show, and he said he’d teach me everything he knew. My life changed that quickly.”
A month after meeting Johns in Vegas, Lucero was with him for a week on the road in Iowa. He returned to Lincoln on a Thursday night. His first show was the next Sunday at the Joyo Theater.
“I actually was really, really good,” he said. “That show was when I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ I had like 12 people on stage and the crowd was really laughing. You would have never known it was my first show.”
Now he plays comedy clubs from New York to Las Vegas, corporate parties with crowds of up to 2,000 people, post-prom parties and benefit shows.
Friday will be his first show at the Rococo. After starting at the Joyo and doing some performances in one of the auditoriums at the Grand movie theater, Lucero moved to the State Theater, where he regularly attracted a capacity crowd. With the closing of the State, he’s moved his local venue to the Rococo, where seating will be limited to the lower levels.
“About 250 to 400 (people) is ideal,” Lucero said. “You want an intimate space. You want the audience to be able to see their (the volunteers’) eyes, so they can see what’s really going on. That’s the education part of it. I try to take people who don’t believe and turn them into believers.”
The toughest part of the show for Lucero is the first 15 minutes, when he has to get the volunteers on stage to relax and trust him. Once that happens, the show is on.
“What a hypnotist does is literally bore the conscious side (of the brain) so it shuts down,” he said. “Once the conscious mind is bored, the subconscious is open to messages. The subconscious mind believes whatever you tell it is the truth. But you will never do something under hypnosis that you would not do in real life. I can’t get you to rob a bank or hit somebody or anything like that.”
That openness to messages is what allows Lucero and others to conduct hypnotherapy, helping people to lose weight or stop smoking, for example. But it’s also what provides the basis for the laughs in Lucero’s stage show as, for example, he tells a man that he’s Shania Twain and gets him to “perform.”
Benefit shows are G-rated. His post-prom and corporate shows are PG/PG-13 affairs. His club performances are adult oriented.
“My most popular show is my adult show, obviously,” he said. “People want to see something funky once in awhile.”
Friday’s Rococo show will be of the adult variety.
“If you’re offended by sexual content, profanity or inflatable sheep, you might not want to show up,” Lucero said.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.