Making students believe that the chair in which they are sitting on has a mind of its own, or that they are a mathematician incapable of counting to ten; were a few of the tricks performed by mentalist Brian Imbus March 29 at the Showcase Theater. Imbust began the night by talking about his goal of the night: to entertain the audience, and not to turn nonbelievers into believers. And entertain he did. Laughter and astonishment sprung throughout the performance. The tasks which Imbus was able to do were beyond belief. He was able to read the minds of audience members, and guess the words selected by students Natalie Cano and Britny Hintergardt from a 180-page book. To the surprise of Cano and Hintergardt, as well as audience, Imbus used body behavior to deduct that the words chosen were jackhammer and photographer. “It’s surprising how he figured out the words the girls picked out with barely just looking at them,” Marycarmen Perez said. Imbus put his abilities of mind-reading to further use, by reading the minds of audience members. With eyes taped shut by six strips of tape, blindfolded and a piece of tape over his nose, Imbus was able deduct the thoughts of the audience members who had written on it. (On what??) The thoughts ranged from family members, four digit area codes, and questions about life. Student Fabiola Fraire described her first impression of the act as being “fake, but as it continued I thought it was amazing when he was, in a way, reading people’s minds. Conny Hernandez described the act as “freaky, but fun.” From mind-reading, Imbus moved to hypnotism. Michelle Duford and Sydney Cicchetti volunteered to be hypnotized and entertain the audience. Highlights of this act included Duford being a highly intelligent mathematician who was unable to count to ten due to not remembering the number seven. Cicchetti was made to believe that the chair in which she was sitting was being rude to her, as well as being unable to remember her name even when offered money for it. “I liked everything about the show. This was the first time I came to a performance. Hopefully I can come next time the college has another hypnotist,” Fraire said. The show concluded with Imbus’ final act, which left people mystified. According to Imbus, two nights before the performance he had a dream. In this dream he saw the model, color, and license plate number the audience members would describe. He wrote down this premonition, and placed it inside a pocket in his wallet. Two volunteers retrieved the paper from the wallet, which Imbus had not touched during the performance, and read it to the audience; to the bewilderment of everyone present what the audience had described Imbus had dreamed two nights before. Francis Brown, director of achievement center, said she was left wondering about the authenticity and reality of the acts performed by Imbus. The next day, the topic of conversation was the idea that perhaps Brian Imbus does have mental reading capabilities.