Kellie Karl has performed as a singer and a dancer, but her celebrity for many years now has been attached to her performances as a hypnotist in Las Vegas where she lives, as well as her performances in other parts of North America. It is a career that started when a friend who was the assistant to a hypnotist was moving and asked Kellie Karl if she would like to take over for her. Eventually, she got the bug, studied hypnosis and when the hypnotist that she was assisting moved she took over his show.

When asked if she had any preconceived notions about hypnosis, prior to her involvement Kellie Karl replied, “I wasn’t suspect. I wasn’t the type of person who said, oh that’s just not real. I had really never seen a hypnosis show, so I was pretty open-minded about it. When I saw his (the hypnotist that she assisted) show I was very intrigued, because I had always known about the power of the mind. It is something I have always embraced and I had done my own study about it.

Once I really got into hypnosis I realized my aunt taught me hypnosis when I was eight years old. I had been doing progressive relaxation on myself since I was eight.  I thought I had this super-duper power. I would tell all of my friends, if you have a headache I can get rid of your headache. I would do progressive relaxation on them and they would not have a headache anymore.  It was pretty amazing when I realized that I had actually been doing this my whole life. 

This is what I was meant to do for sure. I absolutely believe in the power of the mind. People can help themselves and people can change themselves by accessing the self-conscious and wanting change or improvement. It is an amazing thing.”

Life for Kellie Karl started far from Las Vegas. She grew up in New Orleans, as an only child, quite a different start than her mother had for she grew up as one of ten children in the small town of Marksville, Louisiana.

I think it probably was (culture shock) for my father (getting used to being around my mom’s big family) and he is really shy. He was pretty reserved and it was a lot of people for him to deal with. He didn’t have to deal with them on a constant basis, because we lived in New Orleans and most of them lived far away. There was one sister who lived in town and she only had two daughters, so that was really comfortable. When it came to family get togethers my dad was just like I’m going to go sit in the corner over here (she laughs). He had a few of his favorites that he talked to. It was such a cool family. Cajuns are really friendly, warm and inviting. It was just a really great family for get togethers and things like that.”

Karl recalls “I was super shy like my dad, very, very shy as a child, so dancing was wonderful for me. It was a wonderful outlet for me to interact with other children my age when we weren’t just talking or playing, but we were doing wonderful dancing together. I was a bumble bee, a princess and a little Indian and all that kind of stuff with the ballet and tap dancing.

I didn’t really start singing until I was thirty. I would sing in shows and things like that, but that was as part of a chorus line of girls and things like that. I always had a knack for acting and along the way I would do different shows and theater productions.

I started live theater when I was probably fourteen or fifteen, but I did plays throughout the years. I was the star of my kindergarten play. That’s pretty special right? (she laughs).  Looking back at it I want to say that the teacher probably put me in that position, because I was the shyest kid in class and I would like to think that she was thinking ahead and going, she’s really shy, so maybe this will get her out of being shy. It did get me out of my shyness, but it also gave me this energy and love for live performing and theater, singing and dancing, the whole thing. I guess I have her to thank for that. I never really thought about it like that.”

As she got a little bit older Kellie Karl started performing in school productions and summer productions, but a turning point came when she began taking dance lessons from Bunny Adams.

“Bunny was from Hawaii and she and her then boyfriend were performing together in Las Vegas. They had a nightclub act and they came to New Orleans to open up a nightclub and a school. They were doing a big anniversary party and it was going to have a Hawaiian theme, so they needed a few extra girls to fill out the stage. They asked me to be in the Hawaiian performance. I was so excited, because I had just started taking classes over there. I can remember that moment like it was five minutes ago. I was way in the back of the stage, because I was one of the new girls and I had my little corner or section of the stage on the left. I knew exactly at that moment that this was what I was meant to be doing for the rest of my life.

Bunny became my mentor and one of my best friends throughout my life. She recently passed away. She was so supportive. She was like a mom sometimes. Not only did she teach me to dance, but she taught me how to sustain myself in the business of entertainment. She taught me how to get work, how to stay working and how to mix and mingle. It was an amazing life changing moment. It was just that little corner of the stage doing Bali Hai at The Frankie Brent Club. (She giggles) It was pretty special,” she says.  

Kellie Karl’s life took yet another turn, “While I was married, my husband and I helped to run a nightclub. One night, there was a man at the nightclub who owned a restaurant in the French Quarter. He was talking to my husband and his partner about the possibility of hiring them as consultants for his restaurant. That night I was producing a dance performance and other entertainment for a private function. I didn’t even realize the man was there or that he was watching me or anything like that. The next day I got a call from him and he said that he liked the way I worked and he wanted me to produce a show in his restaurant. He was going to give me all of this money to do that! I thought this doesn't happen every day of your life! (She laughs) I went over there and I ended up producing a New Orleans theme show with Can Can dancers called The Southern Spice Revue. Prior to that, my very first full time professional dance job was working in a club called Charpentier's Can Can Cabaret in the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans. It was so much fun to do that show. We worked five nights each week and three shows a night. Can Can is really hard to do. It was very physical.

It was after that when I met the gentleman who wanted me to produce a show in his restaurant, so that's when I created The Southern Spice Revue show which was a New Orleans themed show with Can Can dancers, tap dancers and a few singers. When that show closed, I had all of these costumes, all of these dancers, and all of these singers, with a bit of notoriety, so I created Southern Spice Productions and provided dancers, singers, musicians, jugglers, clowns, stilt walkers for events. All of that started, because someone saw me performing at the nightclub one night.”

An opportunity arose for Kellie Karl to audition for a New Orleans style show that was being staged in Laughlin, Nevada near Las Vegas. She was hired as one of the dancers and over the next three years she fell in love with Las Vegas and the surrounding area.

“I just felt wonderful out here. I then moved back home (to New Orleans) and a few years later I moved to Las Vegas (permanently). I felt with my production company (in New Orleans) I was successful, but other dancers and singers were getting work. I ended up being the one in the black pants or the suit writing a check and saying okay you are hired here and I wasn’t performing. I was hiring someone else to perform, because somebody had to run the show. I was going through a divorce and I decided this was the perfect time to just move and to see what I could do in Las Vegas.  If I got work great and if I didn’t at least I tried. I moved and I have been here since 2002. It was a different environment and a fresh start.

I was very fortunate that I had a job offer and a job waiting for me when I came here, because most of the times when people move here they don’t even know where to start (looking for work). There was a lady I had worked with in a couple of shows in Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans when I was one of the original cast members in that show and she was a wonderful singer named Lucy.  She was opening a new show in Las Vegas and that is how I ended up with a job waiting for me in Las Vegas.  She called me up,” she says.

Karl also worked in a couple of dinner theater productions in Las Vegas.

“Sometimes I was the lead, sometimes I was the girl that got drunk, sometimes I was the girl who came out of the cake and sometimes I was the dancer. Every night it was a different thing, which was great. I also worked in another show that was called The Soprano’s Last Supper. It was a parody on the Sopranos and I played Dr. Melfie, a psychiatrist. That was a lot of fun. Each one of those shows was a couple of years,” says Kellie Karl.  

As for her dinner theater experiences when she was called upon to play a drunk she says, “It can be really difficult (to play a drunk) and one really, really important thing is you can’t play drunk, you have to play like a drunk who is trying to be straight. (She then demonstrates the difference). I can’t tell you how many times my boss would come up to me and he would take a sip of my drink.  I would say what are you doing? He would say I was sure tonight that you were drinking.  I would say, you know I don’t drink ever, come on. I had customers come up to me afterwards and they would ask were you drinking or not? I would say no it is a character that I was playing and they would say oh we just lost a bet. We had a bet with the people at the table next to us and we said you were really drunk and they said no, she’s acting (she laughs). I had one person who wanted to go out with me and I met him at a restaurant or something like this and he could not wrap his brain around the fact that I don’t drink, because my character was so tipsy in the show.  He said you don’t drink at all? I said no I don’t. It is just a character that I played and it was not who I am. This is who I am and that is who I was on stage,” she laughs while relating those experiences.

We wondered how one goes from being on the dancing and singing side of the entertainment industry to becoming a hypnotist? Someone with whom Kellie Karl had worked had also been working as the assistant to a hypnotist in Las Vegas and she was leaving to work on a cruise ship.

Karl says, “She approached me and asked if I would like to go and audition in her place, because she didn’t want to leave him hanging. I said that I would like that and I went that week, auditioned and I got the job. I thought that I would do it for a while until I found something else that was more permanent, but I ended up staying with him for about ten years. It was so much fun and he was such a great guy. Soon after I started being his assistant the other girl quit, as she was moving out of town. 

I started to train to be a hypnotist, because I just fell in love with it. Then I started performing in his absence, because he moved to California to take care of his mother who was very sick. It all worked out just wonderfully.

Many people will just leave their job and go oh well find a replacement. It is because of her (the woman she knew) that I am a hypnotist and a hypnotherapist. It is pretty amazing how things work out.”

Karl was able to very quickly establish herself as a hypnotist.

“Fortunately, everybody knew that we had been a team for so many years, so they were Scott or Kellie it is still going to be a great show.  His fans became my fans, which was really cool and I was really excited about that,” she says.

A lot of people might assume with such an accomplished and experienced performer that Kellie Karl would be a natural to step into the role of a hypnotist on stage, but that was not necessarily so and she explains why, “It is yes and no. I had to rethink myself on stage.  Many hypnotists come from the world of hypnotherapy and they don’t have any stage experience.  It becomes very difficult for them to develop that. I had spent many years developing my stage persona or developing my stage experience, so that was the easiest thing for me. I could go out on stage in front of any number, two people or two thousand people or twenty thousand people and I am comfortable.  I am fine, so I didn’t have to overcome that. I did have to change how I was on stage. When you are a dancer you are one way on stage. You are dancing in a group with other people, so you all try to develop a symbiotic thing. You are all kind of equal and you look the same and dance the same. You are part of a team. Depending on the show you are the second line with the first line being the singer, the performer or the instrumentalist and then the dancers back up the singer.  You spend a lot of time trying not to pull focus from the main action. You are supporting the main action. You are doing the best performance with other people doing an equal performance and trying to look altogether the same, kicking the same height and moving the same way.

When I was singing I put out a certain persona. You are flirtier, you are freer and it is very casual. As a hypnotist, people trust you with their minds, so I developed a whole different way of performing on stage and how to present myself. I knew people could trust me and I knew I wasn’t going to do anything to embarrass or humiliate them, but it was very important for them to pick up on that right away. I could never risk giving the wrong impression or persona. I had to immediately come out exactly the way that I wanted them to perceive me. When you are doing a show and in a big theater with all of these people potentially being volunteers for you, you want to make sure that they know who you are right away and that they can trust you and that you have their best interests at heart. It was about my third or fourth show when I really developed my stride. I know it was because I had all of the years of experience on stage and I was able to read audiences and to know what they expect (of me) and I know what I expect of them.

It is also a lot of fun when you can tailor the show to the specific group that you are working with. When you work on a regular basis it is always more fun to do different things every night.”

Kellie Karl also performed for eight years on cruise ships as a hypnotist, but the two weeks out of port, two weeks on land and the accumulated time out of the country amounting to between six and eight months each year led to another decision.

“Now I have made a decision to balance it out a little bit more and I made a decision to open up a hypnotherapy practice, which I have been putting off for a long long time. I have done seminars and sessions, but this is a formal practice. I will do some ships, do some corporate and I will do some special events. I have worked in Canada and all over the U.S.

People are so intrigued with hypnosis and they always have a million questions and I love answering them. I like showing people that it is not some other worldly state of consciousness.  It is just a natural thing that happens to everyone every day of their lives and they don’t even realize it. It is a pretty amazing thing that can help you to improve or change your life,” she says.

At the time of our interview Kellie Karl had decided to open up a hypnotherapy practice and she was still contemplating whether or not to join an existing clinic or to open up an office of her own.

“I really like bringing this to people and letting them know that it is possible to make changes or improvements in their lives, just simply by using their own minds. As a hypnotist I am not forcing change upon them and I am not telling them what to do. I am opening up their minds and the abilities inside their own minds to make those changes themselves. It is wonderful when you achieve that with someone.  People have that potential and it is just a matter of making them aware of it. Not everyone is aware of it. Many people may not believe it and you have to assure them that they have the power and that they can. Some people do believe and they just don’t know how to access that part of their minds. There are so many different things that can go on.  That is why it is so interesting, because everyone is different. Helping different people to help themselves is really rewarding.”

As entertaining and as fun as Kellie Karl’s hypnosis shows are, she wants people to know, “I wish people would take hypnosis more seriously, because while hypnosis shows are fun and funny and entertaining, as a hypnotist you always have to understand how serious it is and how important it is for you as the hypnotist for you to maintain control of the stage and to know what is going with each and every person up there on your stage.  I am responsible for everyone up on my stage. I want to make sure that they are all taken care of and treated with respect.”

You can follow Kellie Karl on her official Facebook page.                                     Return to our Front Page

This interview  by Joe Montague  published April 25th, 2016 is protected by copyright © and is the property of Riveting Riffs Magazine All Rights Reserved.  All photos are the property of Kellie Karl and are protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved. This interview may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine, All Rights Reserved