Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (June 28/02) - Entertaining and making people laugh is not an easy job, but some spend their lives perfecting their craft.

Last week Inuvik got a glimpse of such a performer with magician-hypnotist Attila.

Born and raised in Budapest, Attila started his show business career at 17, working as a stage hand for a magician.

"It got me curious and I knew that early in life I didn't want to be a working person," Atilla said. "I was always drawn to theatre, stage and being in the spotlight and the centre of attention -- I still do."

He would help the magician load and unload his props and other equipment and would always look closely to find out what made secrets made the props magic.

Messed up

Attila said his first time on stage was less than a success, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

"I messed it up so bad, because I was so nervous," he said.

"My hands were shaking and I knocked over my table and people thought I was doing some sort of comedy and they were laughing."

He apprenticed with a master magician and went to artists school and gained accreditation.

"In a communist country we have to have professional licensing; it's not like anyone can just go and be an entertainer -- you have to have the proper schooling and join the artists' union," he said.

The union decides what an artist can charge for a performance and it wasn't long before Attila was earning top wages, but not exactly the life his parents thought was a real job.

It's a living

"By age 20, I was married and making a living at this," he said. "My parents were printers and they didn't think this was a proper way to earn a living, but I was making more money than my entire family."

He started getting contacts outside the country and has now worked in eight different countries, but calls Canada home.

He started hypnosis when he met world champion hypnotist Juliana Chan and later, Reveen.

"Watching him perform, I thought, 'If this is real, I have to learn it, if not, he must be the devil himself," he laughed.

He read about hypnosis and practised on friends at parties at home and later went to school to become a certified hypnotist.

Now he teaches hypnosis and also provides clinical hypnotherapy at the Alberta Hypnotism Institute in Sherwood Park, Alta.

With the title World's Fastest Hypnotist, Atilla says he can have people in a hypnotic state in as little as eight seconds.

The show usually lasts a couple hours and he never seems lacking volunteers, who also enjoy the show.

"I'm proud of my act, because it's clean; it's not humiliating or degrading and people always feel good afterwards," he said. "They leave the stage with a feeling like they are a little bit tipsy."