Here's what the audience experiences:
Two Choose Your Own Adventure books are introduced by the performer. He/she explains what they are and how they are written.
"The second-person writing allows the reader to step inside the story and become the character. This highly visual language is perfect for tests of telepathy..."
Two participants are brought up onstage. The first participant chooses a random page, and focuses on something they can visualize from their selected page. A person, place, or thing to imagine in their reality.
The second participant chooses a page, and focuses in on an emotion or feeling of the story at that random point.
Phase 1
The performer divines the visual element that the first participant is thinking of by drawing or describing it. The participant returns to their seat.
Phase 2
The performer experiences the very emotion the second participant is mentally sharing and conveys it to the audience. The participant returns to their seat.
Phase 3
A third participant is brought onstage and similarly chooses a random page from a chosen book. They read the page silently to themself and gets a sense of the story at that point.
The performer puts the participant into a trance like state, where their reality becomes the scene they are thinking of.
Taking out a notepad, the performer asks a question about the imagined scene and has the participant answer in their mind. The performer writes an answer on the notepad for the audience to see. The participant then answers aloud, matching the performer's writings identically.
This is repeated for two other elements of the scene in the participants mind as if the performer and participant are communicating telepathically. Finally, the performer describes the entire scene, filling in gaps to reveal even details the participant didn't read but merely imagines.
Full Transparency: The above describes what the audience walks away having experienced. In reality, the page selections for the first two phases are through a page riffle (a'la Flashback), and the third phase page is selected with a second book, similar to the classic Hoy Book Test (but without a miscall).
This routine is something I have been working on for a long time now, built on a number of principles that you likely are familiar with already, but into a routine that will blow audiences away.
