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I've ben messing around with a bit of ventriloquism with my kids and i've found that it really get's them in tears laughing. (I'm not sure if they're enjoying it or just laughing at me )
I'm thinking of eventually adding a ventriloquism act to my kid's show. Other than playing around with my own kids, I have no experience whatsoever in this regard.
Do any of you do this. If so, what would be a good place to start. I'm going to buy "Ventriloquism Made Easy" by Kolby King and start from there. Any advice, websites, books that have helped, etc. would be appreciated.
How long does it usually take to get this mastered enough to perform it?

Thanks

I can't personally help much, but one of the younger magicians at the Ipswich Magical Society is a very talented ventriloquist. If you like I will ask him when I see him next (probably next Monday).

I will say though that he uses three of the Axtell puppets and they are absolutely amazing. http://www.axtell.com/

Forget the old lord charles style of puppets - or even Sheri Lewis's socks. (remember lamb chop?)
http://www.elearningtoys.com/page/elear ... ROD/A15083

the axtell puppets will have the kids spellbound without a doubt. check out the dragon. not cheap I know...(but a dragon is for life, not just for xmas...)

That would be great. Thanks
I had a look at Axtel's site yesterday - some really good stuff. Also some advice on ventriloqism. I agree with you about their puppets.
I do remember lambchops

ok doing a vent act for kids is easier than you may first imagine by virtue of the fact that the kids don't care were the voive comes from, which meens you can concentrate on animation of your puppet, just look at kids playing with dolls and you will see that the talk for there dolls naturaly yet believe its the doll that is speeking.

well thats the psycoligy done with now to the practical matters with kids the larger and bolder the puppet the bigger the reaction, i personaly now have a gennie puppet its big blue about 30" tall and came from a charity shop, its a basic handpuppet.
i use him for basic pic a card type tricks and for change bag routines, i practised vent work for six months to get the right mouth shape and to exagerate my own lip movements but found when performing the kids just don't care, no kid has ever come up to me and said i saw your lips move or talk for the puppet please so i deference to the highly skilled practitioners.
practise animating your character and developeing a voice for them rather than spend hours with apencil in your gob trying to relearn to talk, if you intend to follow roger decorsy then by all meens lock yourself away and practise for atleast a year before performing till all your v's sound like b's and you can make your desk lamp talk.

if however you want to add a bit of fun to your kids act then go do it, look at sooty or the telly tubbies, perfect lip sync is not nescisary well atleast it hasn't been for me anyway.

Cool - that's great advice (as usual)
Judging from my kid's reaction to making one of their toy ducks talk (and I could get the mouth to move I just bobbed the head up and down) looks like it's the humour and what the character says that's important.
Thanks

I’ve just been reading through some old Abra’s and I came across an interesting article about puppets in the Nov 4th 1989 issue (no. 2284).

It was in one Maurice Day’s “The Wizard’s Den” articles. In case you are not familiar with these they usually concern a mixed bunch of magicians discussing every day magic issues, where one of them (Uncle Twinkle) will normally end up giving some sound advice on the question in hand.

Anyway – to move on, I will try to extract out some of the many useful points raised.

1. It starts off with a reference to a book by Ron Bishop, called “Laughter All The Way”. I’m not sure but it was implied that this book discusses patter – specifically I think with regard to children’s shows.

http://www.joyalstack.com/Pages/DejaLu/ ... shopR.html

I can’t find out much more about it at the moment, but maybe other members know of it?

2. Give the puppet a name, but more importantly give it a character. Make the puppet live up to it’s name.

3. Outside of the performance, wear the puppet as much as you can, talk to it, let it react to what you say, and Keep it moving. (That last bit was highlighted)

4. Look at your puppet when you talk to it, and make it look at you when it responds.

5. Have it whisper something in your ear and then tell your audience what it said.

6. Let the puppet be the comedian and you be the straight man.

7. Have something to keep him in, a box or a bag maybe. Note there are many objects that can be modified with a hole in the back so it appears that the puppet is inside the object. Examples could be just a box or a bag, but what about a briefcase, or a flower pot? You can then induce lot’s of funny business getting him to appear, or waking him up.

8. Experiment with facial expressions. Much of the time the puppet doesn’t even have to speak…

9. Have a think about what magic tricks you could do with a puppet. This is almost another topic all in itself, but if nothing else the puppet could be blindfolded and just reveal a card, or something else. I wonder if Die Cipher can be done one handed for example. I will have to try that.

--

The article went on, and wasn’t just informative it was also very amusing. These were the main points made though.

Have a think about what magic tricks you could do with a puppet. This is almost another topic all in itself, but if nothing else the puppet could be blindfolded and just reveal a card, or something else. I wonder if Die Cipher can be done one handed for example. I will have to try that.

I wonder if Die Cipher can be done one handed for example. I will have to try that.

yes you can but my genie's not that acurate he needs lots more practice.

Adding ventriloquism to your magic show could be one of the most rewarding additions you ever make. Mastering the art of performing vent depends very much on how determined you are to succeed, and how much practice you are prepared to put in. In all, no one can truly say how quickly you could be up & running, but rest assured, if you practice to a high standard & seek to develop the best ventriloquial skill you possibly can, then your performances will astound your audiences.

I recommend you using the feely available resources via axtel.com They are great for gaining the basic skills & are a good tuition tool to follow. Other teaching aids are available. I have heard that Mark Wade, and Bil DeMar have both produced videos/DVD’s & books which other professional ventriloquists rave about. The Maher course of ventriloquism is another seemingly industry standard for pro’s in America, although as I am self taught I cannot personally recommend any of them but have heard they are good. Just check the format of DVD or Video is suitable for use in the UK before you purchase!

MagicDiscoMan said : ok doing a vent act for kids is easier than you may first imagine by virtue of the fact that the kids don't care were the voive comes from, which meens you can concentrate on animation of your puppet, just look at kids playing with dolls and you will see that the talk for there dolls naturaly yet believe its the doll that is speeking.

I disagree. Kids DO care where the voice is coming from. Ventriloquism is used to give the illusion that the voice is coming from the puppet. They will be checking your lips & re-checking your lips until they are satisfied that it is the puppet who’s talking. If they do not see your lips move, then they will experience your illusion for real. Think back to when you watched Keith Harris & Orville on the telly, weren’t you too watching to see if his lips moved? Imagine how cheated you’d have felt if you saw them moving, but because you didn’t, you were entertained by the perfromance, and although you knew Orville was a puppet, Keith Harris still created for you the Illusion that Orville was real. Do you think he’d have had as much success if his lips did move?
Kids talking for their own dolls & action men during times of play has NOTHING to do with ventriloquism. They are in PLAY mode, to suggest that they will not care if they see your lips moving because of this is ridiculous.

MagicDiscoMan said : i practised vent work for six months to get the right mouth shape and to exagerate my own lip movements but found when performing the kids just don't care, no kid has ever come up to me and said i saw your lips move or talk for the puppet please so i deference to the highly skilled practitioners.

Personally I feel this is BAD advice. Kids DO care if they see your lips move. If during your puppet routine they see your lips move, the illusion of life in your puppet is shattered and you go from being a man with a real puppet on your lap, to a man who is pretending that he has a real puppet on his lap.
Not only will you ruin the rapport you should have established with your audience, your puppet routine will also become a NEGATIVE talking point, either during the show or after. I have seen many kiddies whispering to each other during the show that they can see the ventriloquists lips move. In that moment their attention has gone, and no matter what the climax of the routine is intended to be, it has already lost the overall impact because to them, “you are trying to fool them into believing the puppet is real” - “You now look stupid”.
Also, after the show, the kiddies will talk amongst themselves & to their families & say how there was a puppet on the magicians lap but it wasn’t real because they could see the magicians lips moving!
Come on, you know how cynical kiddies are - you know how eager they are to spot the slightest indications that “it’s a trick”
Personally I take the same pride & perform to the same highest professional standards no matter if I’m performing to an audience aged 4 or 40. Children deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect & afforded the same dignity that you’d perform to your peers.
For example, you wouldn’t perform a coin vanish with an attitude like “the audience won’t care if they catch a glimpse of the coin in my palm” because you know damn well they would! Ok, some might afford you the politeness of not saying anything to you because they feel sorry for you - but after you’ve gone, they’ll be thinking just how c*** (not the best) your coin vanish was. It’s the same with ventriloquism, and to perform with the attitude that “the kids won’t care if they see my lips move” is utterly outrageous. People will perceieve you and your performance in many ways. Don’t let them perceive you as someone with a sloppy attitude.

If you try Ventriloquism and find that it is not for you, or you don’t really have the time to practice the art to meet the necessary standards needed for a good quality performance, then by all means feel free to use a puppet and let it whisper in your ear! Let it come out with all the outrageous comments & cheeky comebacks you can dream of. Go on to make a real success of performing this way. Let it join in with your tricks, Let it’s personality shine through in the way it interacts with you & by the actions it carry’s out in your show. Allow it to become the silent star of your show that gets you repeat bookings!
I guarantee that anyone who performs with a puppet this way will achieve SO MUCH MORE SUCCESS than anyone doing ventriloquism badly because of their sloppy attitude towards the audience’s perceptions of their performance.
Take a lot of pride, both personal & professional in the way you approach using a puppet in your act, and develop a style which is comfortable for you & beneficial to your performance.
If you can do ventriloquism without your lips moving - go for it!
If you can’t but want to use a puppet and just have it whisper in your ear, Go for it! Either way can be equally entertaining. In fact in my professional show I use 3 puppets. With 2 of them I use ventriloquism to bring them to life, the 3rd is a silent puppet & although I am quite skilled at performing ventriloquism, I chose for this puppet to perform without a voice. Instead I use nothing but manipulation & interaction to give the illusion that it’s real!

Bananafish offered some very good advice…

Give the puppet a name, but more importantly give it a character.
Outside of the performance, wear the puppet as much as you can, talk to it, let it react to what you say, and Keep it moving.
Look at your puppet when you talk to it, and make it look at you when it responds.
Have it whisper something in your ear and then tell your audience what it said.
Let the puppet be the comedian and you be the straight man.
Have a think about what magic tricks you could do with a puppet!!

I will go as far to say, give your puppet a personality. Messing around with your puppet in the privacy of your own home will help develop its personality/character. Mess about with it while rehearsing some of your magic routines & see what routines could be adapted to use your puppet in.
This may sound a little weird, but in time, through constant interaction & rehearsal with your puppet you may will end up thinking separately. For you & your puppet. You will be able to have fluent interaction/conversation with your puppet & when you do, capturing those moments on tape will provide some of the most inspirational material you could ever hope to buy from any shop or dealer - you will inadvertently become your own source of material.
Personality to a puppet is everything. If it doesn’t have a personality then it may as well be a saggy bit of cloth or an old Barbie doll that no-one gives a monkey’s about. Through practice & practice the personality of your puppet will come through naturally. You will probably find that its personality it in fact one of your own subconscious alter ego’s.

Good Luck travelling on your road to the art of ventriloquism, I honestly hope you find it as rewarding as I do. This time next year it may be the highlight of your show too.

Best Wishes

Puppet man

that should have said no child or adult has complained that the could see my lips move and in deference to seriose ventuiligists, you should not let the technical aspects stop you from adding a puppet to your act.

it works for sooty and bill and ben so haveing a magicians assistant you don't have to pay and feed is a bonus wile you perfect your vent skills if that what you desire in the long term.

my puppet rarely speaks and is not the center of my act, he is meerly a performance tool for young kids to focus on wile the older kids wach the magic, i had aspired to be a ventuilakist but for reasons that my signature should make clear was not to be so to thoughs that want to go the extra mile well played and more power to your elbow and for thoughs who want and interesting way to hold there wand or produce a silk, blow up a balloon, thats ok too.

Nice post puppet man. Some excellent advice.

that should have said no child or adult has complained that the could see my lips move and in deference to seriose ventuiligists, you should not let the technical aspects stop you from adding a puppet to your act. it works for sooty and bill and ben

Sooty is just a PUPPET. He has nothing to do with ventriloquism. Neither do Bill & Ben.

I think you are missing the point - If you can't do ventriloquism, there is nothing wrong with putting a puppet in your act. Puppets are great, but there is one fundamental difference between them and what you originally posted about. What I'm saying is please don't make yourself look a tit by trying to perform ventriloquism if really you can't. Maybe you haven't mastered the basic skills yet, in which case, wait until you are ready, then GO FOR IT!!! . The sloppy attitude about 'no one caring if your lips move' is absolute codswallop! people DO care. Deep down inside of us we all know that to be true.

Lets not confuse the issue though. Performing ventriloquism and Performing with a puppet might seem similar, but the two acts are different. In a Ventriloquial performance, with someone reasonably skilled at ventriloquism, the puppet appears to speak with its own audiable voice which can be clearly heard by the entrie audience.

In a performance with just a puppet, and someone not skilled at ventriloquism, the puppet certaily doesnt talk out loud. It can whisper into the magicians ear & scribble notes down on bits of paper and do everything else & more that a ventriloquists puppet can do, but it will not have its own audiable voice which can be clearly heard by the audience.


As long as you can't do vent and your happy to work that way with a hand puppet or full bodied style puppet then go for it. Just look how successful sooty & his operators have become working that way alone.

Things could have been very different though! Imagine if, way back when sooty first started, instead of being used as he still is today, Mr Corbet decided to give him an actual voice. Lets imagine that Mr Corbet's ventriloquism skill was not refined and indeed looked sloppy.
Lets imagine he did his act with sooty this way and wobbled his lips everytime sooty gave him a bit of back-chat! When the Kiddies looked, they would see Mr Corbet's lips moving. They'd think "RUBBISH". They'd feel let down, They would no longer be being entertained!!! There would be no magic about Sooty and no one would feel intrigued to watch as they'd have known that operating him was a twit who was convincing himself that people were "buying into" what he was doing.

Luckily for us, Mr Corbet knew his weaknesses on the ventriloquial side, and left them alone. Instead, he concentrated on Maximising his strengths. And what were they? The ablility to shove his hand in a puppet, and wiggle it around enough to give it life of its own. Not only that, he developed sooty's personality, pretty good considering sooty can't even speak! He gave him a magic wand, made him do tricks that went wrong, gave him a water pistol to squirt, introduced a couple more friends called Sweep & Sue and before anybody knew it, went on to make a Sooty a household name and earned himself a fortune in the process.

What a success story huh? All because he knew what his limitations were. But instead of being held back by them, he worked on a way to turn them to his advantage!

I guess the moral of this story is, If you can do vent, then use thge skill in your act & glean the rewards. If you can't do vent but want to use a puppet anyway then do so, But DON'T pretend you can do vent. It will be your downfall. Instead use your puppet like a puppet and maximise your own skills & capabilities with it. Go ahead and do so & become just as successful as sooty.

Best Wishes
Puppet Man

I guess the moral of this story is, If you can do vent, then use thge skill in your act & glean the rewards. If you can't do vent but want to use a puppet anyway then do so, But DON'T pretend you can do vent. It will be your downfall. Instead use your puppet like a puppet and maximise your own skills & capabilities with it. Go ahead and do so & become just as successful as sooty.

once again someone has put into words what my rambleing was trying to get across

I am suitably humbled.

Thanks for the recomendation - I'll certainly add that to my to-get list.
For the record - since first making this post, I have practiced a lot and bought myself a muppet type puppet. He has a tremendous amount of character and it suddenly just made my vent attempts come alive.
I have now done 3 shows with 'Nigel' and the response is tremendous. I find myself really living into the role and even though I know I'm doing all the talking - I find myself half forgetting it and laughing at the puppet's jokes and getting dumbstruck by some of the comments he makes. He has a 'magic trick' where he simply puts his foot in his mouth - it brings down the house from both adults and children
I'm having fun

for anyone confused - puppetman posted a review of The Art of Ventriloquism, By Trevor Burch just prior to the last message being posted, which I moved to the reviews section. (perhaps prematurely )

Way to go Taneous!!

I hope your also letting Nigel watch TV with you... You'll be amazed at how much comentary a puppet can give. Before too long, you find probably notice him bleeting out coments that you never knew he was capable of.

Its true... If you allow time for your puppet to come out.. maybe 20 minutes to an hour each night and sit with you while you unwind and NOT try to CREATE any vent dialogues... Before too long, your subconcious merges into the puppet and it really does have a life and in fact an entire thought process ALL of its own. It will become so independant so quickly it will scare you. . .

Just make sure you lock it away at night !!!!!

Keep up the GREAT vent work

Best Wishes
the Puppet Man