Etched deep into my memory is the first day I watched a ventriloquist performance. I was 9 years old, and I was amazed by how the performer could sit there, without moving his lips and no expression on his face.. yet the dummy sitting on his knee was talking away, cracking joke after joke. After that performance, at a schoolmate's birthday party, I knew that someday I would want to learn to be a ventriloquist.
My parents never thought that I would actually get into something like that seriously, but they humored me by giving me a cheap ventriloquist for Christmas that year. I practiced as much as I could for the next couple of years, but I could never get the hang of talking without moving my lips. I always performed for my sister, who would shout, "Your mouth moved!" every time I attempted to talk for the dummy. After a while, I just got frustrated and eventually I gave up my dream.
Fourteen years later, I saw my next ventriloquist performance. It was ad a comedy club, with a very funny and vulgar dummy. It reminded me of how I used to sit in front of the mirror and my family on so many nights, trying to perfect my dream. That night, I decided I was going back to my dream, and this time I won't give up.
I bet that there are many people who are in the same boat as I am. You watched the performance and were immediately drawn to it. Well, don't just dream about it, why not get involved and learn how to be a ventriloquist? There are a few things to learn, but you must be disciplined about it.
You have to practice and commit to a schedule. Becoming a ventriloquist will not occur overnight. You have to be willing to keep trying and trying until you finally get it right. Practice in front of a mirror, or you family and friends. Set up a schedule, so that you will stay on top of your dialogues.
The trick is to learn different ways of pronouncing certain words without being detected by the audience. Some letters or sounds cannot be pronounced without moving your mouth, so you have to pronounce them differently, so that they sound very similar, yet you can keep you mouth unmoved. This is the art of the illusion of ventriloquism.
Perfect the art of "throwing your voice" before moving on with incorporating the use of a puppet. Using a ventriloquist dummy takes some of your focus away from your voice distortion. After you have perfected the voice technique, then you can afford to lose some focus to handling the puppet. Trying to learn both simultaneously from the beginning might just leave you in frustration.
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