To See and Be Seen

I see you.

How did you read that sentence? I’m curious. Was it in a sinister tone? As if it were a, “I’m watching you.” Or did you read it as a sentence of connection? I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I’m with you.

This is the way I think about what I do. My name is Vinny DePonto and I think a lot about thinking, which I suppose makes sense considering I’m a mentalist. But this curiosity about what shape and color thoughts make, goes back long before I read my first mind. It began, I think, when I first understood that one day I would die. I was seven and listening to the radio in the living room where they were talking about the end of the world. I thought “I have an end?” An early existential crisis at seven years old but a powerful thought that stayed with me. You see, I’ve struggled with anxiety most of my remembered life (not specifically from that moment by the way). But I have, for as long as I can remember, felt thoughts control me. I cave under their enormous power and because of that I seek ways to control them before they control me. And for a while that’s how I lived in the world.

Vinny DePonto

My last show, Mindplay, was about this anxiety and the power of memories and the ways that they shape you. Mind Reader is a little different. For me, it began as an exploration of what happens when someone sees you.

So, here’s another question for you — what if someone could hear the thoughts in your head? Would you be terrified? Or relieved? Knowing you’re not alone. I see you. Or… I see you.

I have spent a lot of time with a simple idea — seeing someone is a powerful thing. What do I want to do with it? I could be a master manipulator and perhaps embarrass someone on stage — make them look like a fool for falling for all the wizards’ tricks. Or I can use these tricks to create a collective effervescence. A kind of magic. This is what I want to do with my work — to unite people through thought. So that when you leave the theatre you might feel in your heart that the notion that we live in our own little isolated bubbles is truly just one of the greatest tricks of the mind.

We’re constantly confronted with deceptions in the world — and when paired with our own deceptions about ourselves — it can be really hard to begin to think freely and easy to fall into the same old loops that we play over and over in our heads. I want to create experiences that allow people to not only feel good about releasing their thoughts but to also be released from them.

To be a mind reader means you get to live in someone else’s head for a while. To truly get to see them. And that’s all we want, isn’t it? To see and to be seen.