Ventura County Fair : Happy Hypnotist Makes Audience the Attraction : Entertainment: Susan Rosen puts ‘em under and soon they may be doing a song-and-dance--for starters.

When Susan Rosen speaks, people listen. And they yell, dance, sing, smooch their wives, fall asleep. And if she tells them to, they pretend to give birth to stuffed pigs on stage.

Rosen is a hypnotist. In addition to counseling patients on how to stop smoking or enhance their sex lives, the El Toro therapist takes her mind-melding talents on the road, most recently to the Ventura County Fair.

Rosen’s hourlong nightly shows brought audiences to their knees in bellowing laughter last week and back to their feet in feverish applause as she hypnotized dozens of fair-goers and made them do silly things.

“It was the funnest time since I’ve been here,” said Ted Carr, 34, of Santa Paula, whose wife was hypnotized during a recent performance.

“She said we were going to get relaxed, so that’s when I volunteered,” said 35-year-old Susie Carr. “After a while, it was like, ‘Oh God, what is she going to make me do.’ She was great.”

Rosen’s show goes something like this: She pulls volunteers out of the audience, between 15 and 20 people of varying ages, and seats them in a line on stage.

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As soothing music wafts through from backstage, she speaks slowly in a soft, even voice, lulling the participants into a sleepy daze. One by one, their heavy heads fall on each other’s shoulders under dim, pink light.

“Deeper and more relaxed,” she tells them. As they fall into the hypnotic state, Rosen wakes them from their groggy sleep and begins to issue her commands.

“Everything I say is the truth,” she told participants during a recent performance. “Sleep now.”

Rosen snapped her fingers and like dominoes the zombies fell back upon one another. Two girls looked like rag dolls slumped over in a strange man’s lap. Then she stomped her foot and they sat back up.

Later in the show, she zeroed in on one man at the end of the line. She told him that he was pregnant, then shoved a stuffed pig under his shirt.

With each command, she told him and the audience, he would gradually go into labor. To the chortles of the audience, the man splayed his legs, groaned and gave birth to a tiny piglet.

“We do that one all the time,” Rosen said of the piggie number. “The guys ham it up.”

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Rosen insists that she never humiliates anyone on stage. Like the participants, she is simply out to have a good time.

“You will not rob a bank for me,” she assured the crowd Monday. “No animals. You will never pluck like a chicken, quack like a duck or bark like a dog.”

Rosen, who has been a hypnotherapist since 1982, does not claim to be a magician or possess secret gifts. She is merely guiding people through deeper and deeper levels of relaxation.

“I put your conscious mind to sleep,” she said before Monday’s show. “And then we play with the subconscious.”

On Friday, Rosen targeted a man bound and determined not to be hypnotized--47-year-old Bill Guy.

“He was going to pull one over on her,” Guy’s friend Laura Robinson said. “She said, ‘I’m going to get him.’ ”

And she did. Each time she said “cocktail,” Guy methodically walked off stage to a nearby food booth and bought a drink. He then brought it back on stage, sat down and sipped it.

“Who is he with?” she asked the audience, who fingered Guy’s wife, Sheila, seated in front. “You married? You have kids? Want more? I’m a hypnotist, I can help you.”

Rosen then told the audience that she would return Guy to his seat--still hypnotized--and when she said “romance,” he would kiss his wife. “I’m talking lip-lock,” she said. “Oh! I’m talking tonsil hockey!”

Sure enough, when he walked off stage and sat down, Rosen said “romance” and Guy grabbed his wife and laid one on her, leading onlookers to stand on chairs and crane their necks to get a good look.

“When she says a certain password, you have to [respond],” Guy said after the show. “I tried to fight it.”

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Grasping a strong cup of coffee, Guy almost seemed still in a trance after the performance had ended. “I feel groggy,” he said.

Sheila was baffled by how Rosen made her husband and the others act that way. “I didn’t know if it was the power of suggestion or if they were just going along with what was going on,” she said.

Rosen says her hypnosis is no sham.

“It’s totally real. The only way to find out is to go up on stage.”

INSIDE

* FAIR CHAMP: Moorpark homemaker is the Ventura County Fair’s duchess of the domestic arts. B2

* SCHEDULE: Today’s events. B3