Theresa Caputo ‘Live: the Experience’ comes to the Save Mart Center

There is a moment in the movie “Little Shop of Horrors” where the plant antagonist has completely taken on a life of its own, raging around the shop, demanding to be fed.

Sometimes, Theresa Caputo feels that way about her career trajectory.

“I never thought or dreamt it would be this big,” says Caputo, the New York-born psychic medium-turned-reality-television star, whose show, “Long Island Medium,” is in its seventh season on TLC. The show has spun off into two successful books and an arena tour in which Caputo does psychic readings and shares stories from her life. “Theresa Caputo Live: The Experience” comes to Save Mart Center on Saturday, Oct. 3.

Caputo is still wowed by the fact that she spends time away from the show traveling the country in a tour bus, doing live readings in front of thousands of fans. Before TLC, Caputo was sought out for her gift, which she says she first experienced at 4 years old and only began to fully understand in her 20s.

But it was mostly by word of mouth.

Her client list has grown. These days, she gets thousands of emails each week and has a list of people waiting to be seen. She’s not sure how long the list is, but it’s not the two-year wait she’d heard rumored.

The people on the show are real clients, she says.

“It’s my life. It’s what I do.”

Because people will ask: Caputo says she doesn’t choose anyone in advance to read during the arena shows. The only way to get a reading is to buy a ticket and be in the audience, although the selections are random and limited. Throughout the night, Caputo walks in and out of the aisles, going “wherever the spirit takes her.” Giant screens broadcast the encounters to the rest of the arena.

No one leaves untouched, she says.

She’s heard from fans, even those who come to the live show hoping to be picked, that they leave with the sense of experiencing something extraordinary.

For many, it is a feeling of relief.

“There are so many people who carry burdens of guilt” in dealing with the loss of a loved one, Caputo says.

“There is no wrong way to grieve,” she says.

To be clear, the goal of the show has never been for people to believe in her gift. This is about people believing in themselves and restoring their faith in whatever they choose to believe, Caputo says.

“There is more to life than what’s here on the physical plane.”

This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 4:00 AM.