Comedy

David Strassman, probably the world’s greatest ventriloquist, doesn’t like my puppet. I have had worse knocks in my life, but for some reason I feel a little sorry for my daughter’s puppet, Charlotte.

‘It’s weird,’ I admit. ‘I didn’t like shoving her into a plastic bag this morning to bring her here. It made me feel claustrophobic for her.’ ‘You’ve anthropomorphised it. Given it human feelings,’ he sighs. I’ve obviously made a rookie’s mistake.

‘I have purposefully kept my puppets at an arm’s length all my life,’ he says, without acknowledging the irony. ‘I don’t play with them at home. I’ve always referred to them as “puppets”. Some ventriloquists call them “figures”. Fuck that! They’re just puppets.’
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We are chatting in his rehearsal room the day before his UK tour begins. The floor is strewn with marionettes like corpses on the battlefields of Flanders, body parts twisted at unnatural angles. As we talk he does some quick running repairs to the back of the head of his most famous character, Chuck Wood, a classic old-school-style vent doll. He lifts up its little wig and pulls a huge chunk of skull away to uncover a head stuffed with wires and animatronic wizardry. Over the years, his shows have grown increasingly more technologically sophisticated, as have his on stage companions.

Tim and an inconsolable Charlotte

‘When we created Kevin The Alien I wanted him to have no seams. I wanted to exploit the same special effects they use in movies. Kevin’s made of a foam latex outer skin and under that there’s the core and the robotics. It’s just like the “Walking with Dinosaurs” stuff. Remember I was doing that back in the ’80s,’ he says with justifiable pride. ‘I wanted something you couldn’t tell was a puppet.’

So when did he start venting? ‘When I was about 14 in ’72 or ’73. A teacher at my high school was a ventriloquist and he convinced the school system to let him teach ventriloquism. I signed up and excelled in the class,’ he explains. ‘I sent away for a mail order Chuck from a catalogue, put some adverts in local papers and started making money doing kids’ birthdays. My mates were having to shovel snow, rake leaves and cut lawns for $5 a day and there I was getting 35 bucks and all the cake I could eat.’

Can he teach me some of the basic techniques? ‘Okay, first you have to find your ventriloquial voice.’ I look confused. ‘It’s at the back of your throat. You have to constrict your vocal chords. You can’t talk in your full voice, it just won’t work. You need to make the voice emanate from further down, then you can articulate with your tongue.’

I make a strange noise that sounds like I’m gargling live eels. I end it impressively with a coughing fit. ‘Try to talk like Kermit. Say “ee” and then constrict it and push from the diaphragm. Relax your mouth, with your teeth slightly apart.’ I don’t feel relaxed. ‘You don’t need your lips for the vowels or for the non-plosive letters like C, D, G and H. They won’t move when you use those. The trickiest letters are the plosives like F, M, P and V. “Br” is the hardest; I try to avoid it at all costs. For instance, I’m fucked with “Gordon Brown”. Just can’t say it. “Tony Blair” was only a little bit easier.’

Although I’m only sitting a couple of feet away from him and looking straight at his mouth, there is no discernible mouth movement at all. It’s extraordinary. I can just about make out his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, but apart from that his face is a perfect mask. I ask him if he’d show me how to manipulate Charlotte properly.

As I hand her over I see him recoil ever so slightly. ‘It’s weird putting someone else’s puppet on. I should wash my hand first, do you have a rubber glove?’ He slowly pushes his hand into the back of her neck, and begins to make her look around the room. ‘This puppet has no character. A puppet has to look alive when it has a hand in it; this one looks like a dead face.’

He takes her off and hands her back to me. To show me the difference he picks up one of his most popular creations, Ted E Bare. Instantly there are three of us in the room. Curiously, it checks me out. With the smallest of hand movements he brings this sad-looking teddy to life, expressing a huge range of emotions just by angling the head this way or that. With his skills it’s easy to see why he’s been dubbed the world’s greatest ventriloquist.

‘It’s not hard to maintain that title though. My peers in the States are so candy-sweet and whitewashed. They don’t challenge anything. There’s no sense of hidden evil. I like to walk that line in my show. It’s funny and sick and twisted. That’s what I love.’

David Strassman will be at Hackney Empire on Feb 27, and at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre on Mar 2.