Talking to Myself for a Living

This past Thursday evening I stepped off the stage at the 50th Annual Vent Haven International Ventriloquist conVENTion in Erlanger, Kentucky.

The positivity, support, and applause are still ringing in my ears as I try to come up with an appropriate “Thank You” to my peers who live, drive, and survive working in this funky, odd, peculiar niche of show business.

The event took place just minutes from the legendary Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, KY, and believe me: this was not just another gig where I flew in, sound checked, performed, and left town.

This was more like a homecoming mash-up - with a family reunion combined with an awards show for the best-in-the-business.

Jeff Dunham, Darci Lynn Farmer, Willie Tyler and Lester, Jay Johnson, Britain’s Max Fulham (if-you-know-you-know) and a few hundred others, including me, the wannabes and lifers, beginners and part-timers, young children with parents who attended out of curiosity and bewilderment.

(You can almost see the thought-balloons above their heads as they walk into the hotel lobby: “Wait… there is a convention for ventriloquists? Fine. I brought my child. But if things get weird we are outta here! Oh… so it’s not weird? This is nothing like what I expected. It’s as if people take it seriously. And some of them actually make a living! Plus, I can’t believe I am saying it, but this is so much fun! No wonder my kid is into it!”)

For the past half-century, hundreds of ventriloquists from around the planet gather at a hotel by the Cincinnati airport and celebrate an ancient skill set (research The Oracle at Delphi and we’ll talk) that has seen a resurgence in popularity over the past 20 years.

I had the immense honor to perform - and talk shop - right in the middle of the proceedings. Humbled? Please. I am sheepishly grateful.

A dynamic I cannot describe hit me the moment I dragged my bags into the lobby of the hotel.

To its credit the Holiday Inn in Erlanger, Kentucky has embraced the annual get-together - so the staff is nonplussed by adults carrying wooden-headed, slot-jawed “dummies” (more fiberglass and composite today, but you get the vibe) on their arm. They’re kibitzing in the lounges and lingering around the main entrance hoping to grab a selfie with one of the superstar/celebrities in the business.

One of the endearing qualities of the convention is that less than one degree of separation separates household-name ventriloquists and your 11-year-old beginner. It is a unique quality to ventriloquism - something you don’t find in music, dance, theater, television or the motion picture industry.

If you want to meet that pretty girl who won your heart on America’s Got Talent, or the person who sells out basketball arenas all over the USA doing a 2-hour ventriloquist/comedy act, you will probably have that chance at the Ventriloquist Convention.

Looking for hubris? Not here.

“The Dealer’s Rooms” are combination documentary, history lesson and functional future-of-the-business-examples and samples.

Puppet builders, agents, sellers of books and artwork and collector’s items (collectors are a big part of the ventriloquist world) vie for space and attention.

The terminology is not so much inside-baseball as utilitarian. We call our imaginary friends “characters” (I maintain that my ‘characters’ have more personality than some real humans). Vaudeville meets TikTok. Wanna create a ventriloquist figure that no viewer will ever forget? These are the people and the specialists who can make that happen.

Workshops run nonstop during the four-day conference. Dan Horn is a master and his classes on figure manipulation (making something inanimate come to life with rod arms and theatrical movement) are CANNOT MISS. Vocalization, using music in your presentation, writing content, building the beginning, middle, and end to your first audition is examined, explained, and taught.

Then there is the Vent Haven Museum (see image). Bucket list it. Go. Housed in a modest suburban home, the Vent Haven Museum offers tours with helpful, insightful, well-versed hosts who know the stories and history and background of the “dummies” who shaped American entertainment for a century and a half. You are in the same room with legendary iconic pieces of art, breathing the same air because they’re not behind glass. They’re right there in the same room with you.

My turn to hit the stage came on the second night.

The host of that two-hour spectacle was Jim Barber, a ventriloquist extraordinaire who works out of Branson, Missouri and handled the not-so-easy hosting job beautifully. He does an excellent Donald Trump impersonation and used that to close the showcase where I performed. I followed Jack Williams - an America’s Got Talent Finalist - and the stunning Lynn Trefzger and Friends, whose audience participation routine is summed up with one word: KILLER.

The audience was not a comedy club or corporate party. This wasn’t a cruise ship group or theater crowd looking for a fun night out.

These were the people who know just how hard it is to bring something from the edge of your imagination to the stage and give it life. They get the difficulty where two or three voices, coming from the ventriloquists barely-open-mouth, work in unison.

They appreciate the hours spent alone in a hotel room in front of a mirror practicing labial sounds without lip movement, writing jokes (OH NO! IT’S LIKE HOMEWORK!), memorizing scripts, and doing the mandatory rehearsals that nobody will ever see or hear.

Unique character development, flawless technique, broad-referenced content - these are the basics, the pillars for success in ventriloquism… and the Ventriloquist Conventioneers “get it.” They are a pleasure to work for.

Thank you to Al Getler, Mary Ann Taylor and her daughter Melissa, my friends Al Moessinger and Chuck Lyons, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Wade, and a long list of ventriloquists, puppet builders, and creatives who keep this entertainment form dynamic, fun, and contemporary. Hope to see you next year!

Thanks for reading!

Taylor

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