Over the course of just a few hours, Wharton and Engineering junior Bryan Chao thought he was a ballerina, a spy and Jackie Chan's younger, "badder" brother.
Nursing freshman Alexandra Perrotto, under the guise of Britney Spears, gave a full rendition of "Oops! I Did It Again," complete with all the pop singer's signature midriff-baring, hip-rolling and booty-shaking dance moves.
And about 15 other randomly selected Penn students spoke like Martians, lost their rear ends and befriended pieces of fruit when they were hypnotized Friday night before an audience of about 500 in Irvine Auditorium.
It was all part of hypnotist Tom DeLuca's return to Penn as part of the "No Place Like Penn" weekend, a series of events organized to help students ease back into the school year.
The Sophomore Class Board sponsored the event and arranged for the critically-acclaimed DeLuca to come to Penn. DeLuca, who performs on college campuses and and at corporate events across the country, randomly selected volunteers from the audience, hypnotized them and instructed them to partake in numerous wacky routines.
"It was hilarious," College freshman Jackie Connor said. "People missed out if they didn't come."
DeLuca first had the hypnotized volunteers believe they were on a vacation, and then fishing, driving in fancy cars, milking cows and competing in a bodybuilding contest.
One group of volunteers was told that their rear ends had disappeared, and they went frantically searching around the stage for them. When DeLuca asked what was the matter, one participant cried, "No more butt!"
The crowd roared when DeLuca toyed with Chao. Thinking he was Jackie Chan's little brother, Chao jumped, yelled and kicked the air so hard he sent his shoe flying into the audience.
"I kick every single one of your buttocks!" he screamed at the crowd.
Another hypnotized volunteer was convinced that fruit had feelings, and when DeLuca took a bite out of an apple, he charged DeLuca and stole it, saying it was his friend, "Betsy."
A few minutes later, after befriending another apple, "Jane," and a banana, "Christine," the hypnotized student was told that he was extremely hungry. He took a big bite out of one of the apples and kicked the other off the stage, claiming, "She lied to me."
And then the banana got it.
"She's talking back to me!" he cried while tearing the banana into tiny pieces, throwing them on the floor and stomping on them. "She said I'll never make it to Penn," he said. "I'm in Wharton! Look at her. She's in Princeton, bitch!"
Later in the show, DeLuca had Perrotto thinking she was an alien from outer space, and she cried out in unintelligible gurgling and popping sounds. Another hypnotized participant translated, explaining that Perrotto had tickets to a Britney Spears concert, but her spaceship had crashed, and she was about to miss the performance.
"I don't really like Britney Spears that much," Perrotto said after the show, "and I don't consider myself a good dancer."
But she sure had the audience fooled when DeLuca handed her the microphone, turned up some music and convinced her she was Britney Spears herself. It wasn't long before Perrotto was dancing around the stage and singing at the top of her lungs, "I'm not that innocent!"
"It was definitely different from my normal personality," Perrotto said afterward.
The audience was laughing throughout the show, and even some skeptics found the performance convincing.
"At first, I was really skeptical," Wharton sophomore Lauren Selevan said. "I think they did a pretty good job of convincing me. One of my hallmates was up there, so I'll have to find out from her."
But Chao, who participated in both Friday's show and in DeLuca's show at Penn last fall, insisted he really was hypnotized.
"When [DeLuca] wakes you up two hours later, you feel like five or 10 minutes have passed," Chao said.
College sophomore Justin Roberts, the Sophomore Class Board's vice president for corporate sponsorship, was one of several class board members who got a closer look by assisting DeLuca on stage.
"I got a great angle at the whole thing," Roberts said. "It was amazing. People were definitely hypnotized."
DeLuca thought this year's show went very well.
"It's the people that are the interesting part of it," he said. "You have to figure out the personalities of the people, which is very difficult."
The "No Place Like Penn" weekend also included a jazz music block party at University Square and a "drive-in" movie at Wynn Commons on Thursday, Brazilian music at University Square on Friday and a beach barbecue at Wynn Commons and a DJ party at Houston Hall on Saturday.
