HYPROV: This Is The Powerful Show That Makes Audience Stars
When the Audience Becomes the Show: Inside HYPROV
Asad Mecci and Colin Mochrie have spent more than a decade turning hypnosis, improvisation and audience participation into an unlikely international phenomenon. As HYPROV returns to Toronto and some of Canada’s biggest stages, the one thing even its creators cannot predict is what will happen next.
A particular kind of anticipation happens when an audience member walks onto a stage.
They arrive as spectators. Moments later, they are performers.
There is no script to memorize, no rehearsal to fall back on, and, in the case of HYPROV, no guarantee of what will happen next.
That uncertainty is precisely the point.
Created by world-renowned hypnotist and producer Asad Mecci, improv legend Colin Mochrie, and producer Jeff Andrews, HYPROV brings together two seemingly unlikely disciplines: hypnosis and improvisational comedy. The result is a live theatrical experience in which audience members become part of the performance—and no two shows unfold in the same way.
What began as an experiment at Toronto’s Second City in 2015 has travelled considerably beyond its original home. HYPROV has appeared at Just For Laughs and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, toured across North America, played Off-Broadway at New York’s Daryl Roth Theatre, completed a Las Vegas residency at Harrah’s and sold more than 7,300 tickets during a two-week Toronto engagement presented by Mirvish Productions. The production has also taken its distinctive blend of hypnosis and improv to sold-out audiences in Australia.
Now, the show is returning to Canada as part of an extensive 2026–2027 North American tour, including performances at Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls, Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto and the National Arts Centre’s Southam Hall in Ottawa, along with dates across Atlantic Canada and the United States.
For Mecci, the format’s appeal comes down to a surprisingly simple equation.
“People are intrigued by hypnosis, and they love the quick wit and spontaneity of improv,” he says. “Put the two together, and you get an explosive combination.”
Unlocking the inner comedic genius
The premise may be entertainment, but Mecci’s interest in hypnosis reaches considerably deeper.
With more than 25 years of experience studying hypnosis, communication, creativity and human behaviour, he has built an international career exploring the power of the mind. His work has extended beyond the stage to include mental-performance training with Olympic champion coach Brian Orser and consulting with organizations on communication, motivation and peak performance.
Through HYPROV, that expertise is translated into a theatrical setting.
Audience volunteers are invited onto the stage, where Mecci guides them into a heightened state of creativity and imagination through hypnosis. The most responsive participants then join Mochrie for an improvised comedy experience.
The interesting part is what happens when people stop trying to control what happens next.
“Creating HYPROV has shown me what can happen when people let go of their inhibitions and stop second-guessing themselves,” Mecci explains. “I believe everyone has an inner comedic genius. It’s about unlocking it.”
That idea is central to the show’s appeal.
The participants are not professional comedians. They are ordinary people who have volunteered to step outside the familiar boundaries of being an audience member and into the uncertainty of the stage.
And once they do, something unpredictable can happen.
The ultimate improv partner
For Colin Mochrie, unpredictability is hardly new territory.
The Canadian comedy icon has spent decades working in improvisation, including his celebrated work on Whose Line Is It Anyway? But even for someone accustomed to creating comedy without a script, HYPROV introduces a particularly unusual challenge.
The people Mochrie performs with are not fellow professional improvisers. They are audience members whose responses can take a scene somewhere no performer could have anticipated.
Mochrie puts it rather perfectly:
“I have no idea what’s going to happen next either, so they’re in good company. It’s a comedy high-wire act.”
The difference becomes particularly apparent when he compares the experience with performing alongside seasoned improvisers.
“When I’m working with the guys from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, I have a sense of where they might go in a scene,” he explains. “With HYPROV participants, I have absolutely no idea.”
Rather than making the performance more difficult, that uncertainty appears to be part of what makes it so enjoyable.
“That unpredictability makes the improv so funny and off the wall,” Mochrie says.
And apparently, more than a decade into the show’s run, the participants have not run out of ways to surprise him.
“Constantly,” he says. “They come at me with things out of left field all the time. I often think, ‘There’s no way a trained improviser would have come up with that answer in a million years.’ They keep me on my toes.” For an improviser, there may be no better creative challenge.
Where hypnosis meets improvisation
At its core, HYPROV depends on the chemistry between two very different performance disciplines.
Hypnosis creates the conditions for participants to let go of their inhibitions. Improvisation then takes whatever emerges and turns it into a scene.
It sounds straightforward.
In practice, it requires an unusual level of trust between Mecci, Mochrie and the people who volunteer to participate.
Mochrie has his own typically unconventional explanation for why the combination works.
“Two art forms that people think are fake come together, and two negatives make a positive,” he says.
Then comes the punchline: “That’s a math joke.”
But there is another element to their chemistry: the relationship between the two performers themselves.
Mochrie admits that when HYPROV first began, he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the concept—or perhaps even of the hypnotist standing beside him.
“At first, I didn’t really know what to think, but after knowing Asad for several years, I actually like him,” Mochrie says.
Then, with the kind of deadpan timing audiences have come to expect from him, he adds: “No, he didn’t hypnotize me to tell you that.”
The joke captures something important about the partnership. Behind the unusual premise is a creative relationship that has developed over years of performing together, allowing hypnosis and improvisation to become complementary rather than competing disciplines.
From Second City to the world
There is something particularly fitting about HYPROV returning to Toronto.
The story began here, on a much smaller stage at Second City in 2015.
Since then, the production has moved through some of the most recognizable comedy and entertainment destinations in the world. It has appeared at Just For Laughs and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, made its Off-Broadway debut at the Daryl Roth Theatre in New York and completed a Las Vegas residency at Harrah’s.
The live show has also travelled extensively across North America, the UK and Australia.
Its reach has now extended beyond the theatre as well. According to Mecci, the HYPROV comedy special is available on Apple TV and Prime Video in 130 countries, giving the concept an international life beyond its live performances.
For Mecci, however, the show’s growing international footprint makes its return to Toronto even more meaningful.
“It’s been an absolute joy to see something that started on a small stage at Second City grow into an international production,” he says.
“Seeing how far it’s come makes bringing it home to Toronto especially meaningful.”
The appeal of the unpredictable
There is perhaps another reason HYPROV feels particularly relevant now.
Audiences have become accustomed to polished, edited and carefully curated entertainment. Social media allows people to rehearse their public identities before presenting them to the world. Streaming platforms allow performances to be watched, paused, and replayed.
Live improvisation offers the opposite experience.
It cannot be completely controlled.
It cannot be edited in real time.
And, in HYPROV, even the performers do not know what is coming next.
That is what makes the audience more than passive observers.
They are part of the creative mechanism.
Every participant brings a different personality, memory, and imagination to the stage. Every response creates a different possibility for Mochrie. Every reaction gives Mecci something new to work with.
The result is a performance that cannot be precisely duplicated.
Bringing it home
More than a decade after HYPROV began as an experiment at Toronto’s Second City, the production is preparing to return to the city where it all started.
Toronto audiences will have their next opportunity to experience the show live on November 6, when HYPROV takes the stage at Roy Thomson Hall. The Toronto performance is part of an extensive 2026–2027 North American tour that has already taken the production to venues across Canada and the United States, with upcoming Canadian dates also scheduled in Kingston, Ottawa and communities across Atlantic Canada.
For Mecci, bringing the production back to Toronto carries a significance that goes beyond another stop on a tour.
“It’s been an absolute joy to see something that started on a small stage at Second City grow into an international production,” he says. “Seeing how far it’s come makes bringing it home to Toronto especially meaningful.”
The venue may be considerably larger than the stage where the experiment began, and the audience may be thousands of kilometres removed from those early performances—but the fundamental premise remains unchanged.
Put people onstage.
Permit them to let go.
Let a hypnotist create the conditions.
Let an improviser respond.
And see what happens.
Perhaps that is ultimately what makes HYPROV so compelling. The stars may be Asad Mecci and Colin Mochrie, but the show has always depended on a third performer—the audience itself.
And unlike the performers, that third performer never rehearses.
