Stage Hypnosis

Stage hypnosis is a show where people perform acts that are used to entertain an audience. Since the purpose is usually to hold the audience's interest and to entertain them, the participants are carefully selected and screened for a high level of hypnotisability before the stage demonstration begins.

Once this is established, the next step is to determine that the volunteer endorses the "rules of the game" of stage hypnosis, which is to entertain an audience.

It is implicit in this "contract" that the stage volunteer has a mandate to behave in a manner that might, ordinarily, be embarrassing by normal social conventions. Indeed, hypnotised individuals will be returned, rapidly, to the audience if they are undemonstrative and do not engage in the antics suggested by the stage hypnotist.
In other words, the stage context provides a license to "act out" a variety of ordinarily proscribed behaviours in public, without fear of reprisal. In such a situation, what appears to be a demonstration of power exercised by one person over another is, in reality, a willingness on the part of the hypnotised person on stage to abide by the license to entertain an audience.