Dear reader,
the dvds haven't arrived this evening. Just to let you know...
Today one of our bosses told me she'd have a task for me. Before she could show me what I had to do, we needed to wait for another colleague to give me some additional papers I'd need. As we waited my boss asked me if I on what terms I was with that colleague. Now, in english there's just "you" and that's for everyone, strangers as well as close friends and family. In german we have a formal "you" (Sie), usually used by kids to address adults or generally to talk to strangers or people you're not that close with. There's another "you" (du) for friends and family or people you're more close to. So what she asked me was if I was on "du" terms with her with first names or not. I told her we were on "du" terms. I used that opportunity to ask my boss how we should keep it between each other and suggested that maybe we could make it "du" and first names. (I didn't tell her, but I'm working there now for over a year and we both like each other.) She said she'd like to do that.
I thought about asking her for some time now, although I never really knew exactly how to ask her. In retrospect I thought the way I actually did it now was rather clumsy. But that's how I did it now anyway.
I didn't yet talk about Gaston, my bat "hand puppet"! I bought it in april since Lucy and Fritzchen, like I've told you before, aren't that good to work with for ventriloquism. More on Gaston in another post... In a flash of "comfort shopping" I had bought 4 books on ventriloquism: Edgar Bergen's "How To Become A Ventriloquist", which I forgot to mention in my blog post yesterday, Paul Winchell's book and 2 books by Ronn Lucas and Chris Clober, which I also forgot to include in yesterday's blog post. I'll tell you more about the books another time. Inspired by one of Ronn Lucas and Chris Clober's books, I got this idea that I could offer my boss the "du" through Gaston. My plan was this: My boss up until now always addressed me with "Miss Grabke", which would kind of be Gaston's "cue". He would have said, "She doesn't dare telling you directly that she would like to be called Sarah." At that moment I would have used my free hand to hold Gaston's mouth shut and say something like, "He's cheeky, but he's right. Do we want to change over to "du"?
My plan was to write to Ronn Lucas after that and proudly tell him about it. Especially more so, since the words I would have put in Gaston's mouth work nicely without moving lips. (Not so much my english translation for this blog here, but even that is not that difficult to say without moving your lips really.) In the book that inspired me to this situation, Ronn Lucas writes that he would like to see readers actually doing some of the situations he suggests. I surely couldn't have recorded it. But I wanted to be able to tell him about it in an e-mail. On tuesday already I have had the opportunity to suggest the "du" to her in a harmless situation, but very consciously didn't do it. Now I muffed the opportunity. Darn.
Until next blog,
sarah
Thursday 28 June 2012
Wednesday 27 June 2012
I've Got A Pain In My Sawdust
Dear Reader,
the title of todays blog post is the title of an old song. It was written and published in the early 20th century in america and tells the painful story of a bisque doll. I came across that song recently. I had looked up Jeff Dunham at the famous internet website imdb.com to see what other movies he had been in. I found the documentary "I'm No Dummy". Through that I came to know first Jay Johnson and now I'm waiting, yes, with pain in my sawdust, for 2 dvds with Ronn Lucas.
I want to take the opportunity today to tell you a bit about some known ventriloquist... Oh yes, the song! In 2007 Jay Johnson had a role in a CSI episode ("Living Dolls"). He played a ventriloquist (no, he doesn't always play a ventriloquist in every single role he has in a movie) and lets his puppet sing the last verse of the song in a performance he gives. If you ask me that's the best way to perform that song. True, the suffering puppet isn't a ventriloquist figure, but which other puppet could sing for itself and a puppet should in fact do the singing herself, don't you think?
Now, famous vents. What follows is a small, personal, totally incomplete selection, in no particular order:
Edgar Bergen (1903-1978): he's best known with Charlie McCarthy. Bergen's lip control was hopeless. Probably because he did a lot of radio show work where of course the lip control didn't matter. But with Charlie McCarthy he created a boy, who seemed to have his own independent small personality. That was quite something. Most people may know Charlie with his suit, top hat and monocle. But don't be fooled by his appearance! This boy didn't mince matters. apart from the radio shows Bergen and Charlie McCarthy also played parts in movies, where they often portraid themselves. Even Charlie McCarthy often got credited with "as himself" or playing "Charlie McCarthy". Although Charlie McCarthy was the main character for Edgar Bergen, he wasn't the only one he had. There's also the slow thinking, often stupid country boy Mortimer Snerd.
Some Edgar Bergen bits can be found on youtube. Short movies like "Nut Guilty" for example or "The Eyes Have It" and (at least for now) the complete movie "Letter of Introduction" in full length and one piece! I'm still checking him out myself and finding things I haven't seen yet. One other movie I can recommend to you already is "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man" in which Bergen and Charlie work in a circus. The director is a miser ripping off everyone he can, including his own staff. Charlie wanted to leave him for a long time already. But when the director's daughter once visits the circus and Bergen gets a crush on her, he himself could stay for a bit longer...
Paul Winchell (1922-2005): Not only was he a vent, but also an inventor! The first construction of an artificial heart is his invention, complete with patent even! As a kid he got polio and had to spent lots of time in bed. Instead of being depressed about it, he took the opportunity and bought info on ventriloquism after reading an add in a magazine. Reminds me a bit of Milton Erickson, who too got polio when he was young and also was forced to be in bed for a long time. Paul Winchell also did the voice of Tigger for the Disney Winnie Pooh movies. As a vent he was most famous with his figures Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. Over time he got to be a vent for kids mostly and did tv shows for and with kids. If you want to become a vent yourself and are creative and are reasonably good with handcrafts, you should get Paul Winchell's book "Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit". It's informative for beginners, entertaining to read lots of anecdotes of Paul Winchell's own life and also has a very detailed step by step description of how to build your own figure, as you wish either out of papier-mâché or wood! There are many clips with him on youtube for you to watch, too.
Jimmy Nelson: inspired and still supports young people, who want to learn ventriloquism. He got famous for his Nestle ads with Danny O'Day and the dog Farfel. He also published 2 lps showing people how they can learn ventriloquism themselves.
Jay Johnson (b. 1949): I already mentioned Jay Johnson before. Like many other vents, he started to learn this art when he was young. He's a dyslexic, which made school not very fun for him. To have a hobby where he suddenly didn't have many people to compete with him, certainly was a positive experience for him. Like I said in my previous blog post, Jay Johnson got most famous playing the role of the vent Chuck Campbell in "Soap". As a result of that Bob got famous, too, and continues to be his most famous partner. Before Bob also was Squeaky, but like Jay Johnson tells in his one-man-show "Jay Johnson: The Two And Only" (for which he won a Tony, by the way!), Squeaky was too sweet for the producers to play the part of the big mouth Bob. Edgar Bergen was always with Charlie McCarthy and Paul Winchell was always with Jerry Mahoney. Now Jay Johnson couldn't be with Squeaky anymore. At first he thought, after he finished "Soap", he could go back working with Squeaky. But Bob was the figure he got famous with in "Soap". Many clips with Chuck and Bob in Soap as well as Jay Johnson with other of his partners (Darwin!!!) can be found with the corresponding key words on youtube. Because Jay Johnson will be performing his Broadway show again in september to film it for the release of the dvd, I'd like to mention a couple of pages: "Jay Johnson: The Two And Only" auf youtube, where Bob will also vlog about the preparations to the show. Jay's "normal homepage" and the "Jay Johnson: The Two And Only" page.
Ronn Lucas (b. 1954): I mentioned him before in my earlier post, too. It's difficult for me to really name one or two of his figures, because he has so many interesting ones I've seen already. Two of his most famous ones certainly are the cheeky cowboy Buffalo Billy and the fire-breathing dragon Scorch. Some clips with Billy and even more with Scorch can be found on youtube, including the 3 episodes of Scorch's own series (called "Scorch"). apart from Billy and Scorch Ronn Lucas also can turn a sock into a simple, but very effective sock puppet in full view of the audience. Ronn Lucas is so creative and broad as a vent that he is called "the man, who can make anything talk". That's including a microphone, which once pissed off by him, makes him speak out of sync. I personally find it refreshing that he did afternoon shows for kids in Las Vegas and still is entertaining for adults, too. I didn't yet find complete episodes of his "The Ronn Lucas Show", which he did in 1990, although youtube has bits and pieces of them. He also had guest appearances in several tv series. I personally enjoyed him most in "L.A. Law", although he was a vent with a rather sad history in that one. Watching him as his figure was raving in the court room and towards the end totally got himself down too while he is barely moving his lips at all, I can watch that again and again. Here's the link to his youtube channel with several clips and his homepage also includes an appearance with Scorch that made me get a total crush on Scorch, namely the MDA Telethon appearance. Also check out his eBay page, where he sells his toy Scorch and his two dvds. Yes, the shipping is also to europe and I got the movies I'm longing to get any day now from there.
Other vents you should have heard of:
Lynn Trefzger: on her homepage you'll find videos, among them one with the boy Noah, who had a brain tumor, who she went to see. I think it's a very nice of her to do that! Jeff Dunham made ventriloquism popular again recently for many people. Since many of you probably know him already, I won't write much about him here now. (his homepage) Another female vent I want to mention is Nina Conti, who began doing ventriloquism when she was almost 30. Of course she has her own homepage, too. Dan Horn is also known, although I don't know much about him other than his name and I've seen a few clips with him on youtube. In the documentary "Dumbstruck" they follow him and also Terry Fator, who got famous after his breakthrough through "America's Got Talent". Since there are rather few woman in this field, I'd also like to mention Carla Rhodes. I came to know her after watching her in the movie "Dummies!", which I stumbled upon on the internet the other day. Although then still a teenager, she came across as quite charming to me and judging from her homepage, she seemed to have made it actually and found her place in comedy, music and ventriloquism.
Okay, if you can make it and really keep your eyes on the lips of the vents I mentioned here, you'll probably see slightly quivering lips with all of them once or twice. Nobody is perfect, but all of the vents I mentioned in this post, I think, are all well worth watching. Like I said, Edgar Bergen is a lost case when it comes to lip control, but that doesn't make him less worth watching. All of them here are great artists, who have kept and keep this old art of ventriloquism alive. Time will tell how much I will be one of them...
Until next blog,
sarah
the title of todays blog post is the title of an old song. It was written and published in the early 20th century in america and tells the painful story of a bisque doll. I came across that song recently. I had looked up Jeff Dunham at the famous internet website imdb.com to see what other movies he had been in. I found the documentary "I'm No Dummy". Through that I came to know first Jay Johnson and now I'm waiting, yes, with pain in my sawdust, for 2 dvds with Ronn Lucas.
I want to take the opportunity today to tell you a bit about some known ventriloquist... Oh yes, the song! In 2007 Jay Johnson had a role in a CSI episode ("Living Dolls"). He played a ventriloquist (no, he doesn't always play a ventriloquist in every single role he has in a movie) and lets his puppet sing the last verse of the song in a performance he gives. If you ask me that's the best way to perform that song. True, the suffering puppet isn't a ventriloquist figure, but which other puppet could sing for itself and a puppet should in fact do the singing herself, don't you think?
Now, famous vents. What follows is a small, personal, totally incomplete selection, in no particular order:
Edgar Bergen (1903-1978): he's best known with Charlie McCarthy. Bergen's lip control was hopeless. Probably because he did a lot of radio show work where of course the lip control didn't matter. But with Charlie McCarthy he created a boy, who seemed to have his own independent small personality. That was quite something. Most people may know Charlie with his suit, top hat and monocle. But don't be fooled by his appearance! This boy didn't mince matters. apart from the radio shows Bergen and Charlie McCarthy also played parts in movies, where they often portraid themselves. Even Charlie McCarthy often got credited with "as himself" or playing "Charlie McCarthy". Although Charlie McCarthy was the main character for Edgar Bergen, he wasn't the only one he had. There's also the slow thinking, often stupid country boy Mortimer Snerd.
Some Edgar Bergen bits can be found on youtube. Short movies like "Nut Guilty" for example or "The Eyes Have It" and (at least for now) the complete movie "Letter of Introduction" in full length and one piece! I'm still checking him out myself and finding things I haven't seen yet. One other movie I can recommend to you already is "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man" in which Bergen and Charlie work in a circus. The director is a miser ripping off everyone he can, including his own staff. Charlie wanted to leave him for a long time already. But when the director's daughter once visits the circus and Bergen gets a crush on her, he himself could stay for a bit longer...
Paul Winchell (1922-2005): Not only was he a vent, but also an inventor! The first construction of an artificial heart is his invention, complete with patent even! As a kid he got polio and had to spent lots of time in bed. Instead of being depressed about it, he took the opportunity and bought info on ventriloquism after reading an add in a magazine. Reminds me a bit of Milton Erickson, who too got polio when he was young and also was forced to be in bed for a long time. Paul Winchell also did the voice of Tigger for the Disney Winnie Pooh movies. As a vent he was most famous with his figures Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. Over time he got to be a vent for kids mostly and did tv shows for and with kids. If you want to become a vent yourself and are creative and are reasonably good with handcrafts, you should get Paul Winchell's book "Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit". It's informative for beginners, entertaining to read lots of anecdotes of Paul Winchell's own life and also has a very detailed step by step description of how to build your own figure, as you wish either out of papier-mâché or wood! There are many clips with him on youtube for you to watch, too.
Jimmy Nelson: inspired and still supports young people, who want to learn ventriloquism. He got famous for his Nestle ads with Danny O'Day and the dog Farfel. He also published 2 lps showing people how they can learn ventriloquism themselves.
Jay Johnson (b. 1949): I already mentioned Jay Johnson before. Like many other vents, he started to learn this art when he was young. He's a dyslexic, which made school not very fun for him. To have a hobby where he suddenly didn't have many people to compete with him, certainly was a positive experience for him. Like I said in my previous blog post, Jay Johnson got most famous playing the role of the vent Chuck Campbell in "Soap". As a result of that Bob got famous, too, and continues to be his most famous partner. Before Bob also was Squeaky, but like Jay Johnson tells in his one-man-show "Jay Johnson: The Two And Only" (for which he won a Tony, by the way!), Squeaky was too sweet for the producers to play the part of the big mouth Bob. Edgar Bergen was always with Charlie McCarthy and Paul Winchell was always with Jerry Mahoney. Now Jay Johnson couldn't be with Squeaky anymore. At first he thought, after he finished "Soap", he could go back working with Squeaky. But Bob was the figure he got famous with in "Soap". Many clips with Chuck and Bob in Soap as well as Jay Johnson with other of his partners (Darwin!!!) can be found with the corresponding key words on youtube. Because Jay Johnson will be performing his Broadway show again in september to film it for the release of the dvd, I'd like to mention a couple of pages: "Jay Johnson: The Two And Only" auf youtube, where Bob will also vlog about the preparations to the show. Jay's "normal homepage" and the "Jay Johnson: The Two And Only" page.
Ronn Lucas (b. 1954): I mentioned him before in my earlier post, too. It's difficult for me to really name one or two of his figures, because he has so many interesting ones I've seen already. Two of his most famous ones certainly are the cheeky cowboy Buffalo Billy and the fire-breathing dragon Scorch. Some clips with Billy and even more with Scorch can be found on youtube, including the 3 episodes of Scorch's own series (called "Scorch"). apart from Billy and Scorch Ronn Lucas also can turn a sock into a simple, but very effective sock puppet in full view of the audience. Ronn Lucas is so creative and broad as a vent that he is called "the man, who can make anything talk". That's including a microphone, which once pissed off by him, makes him speak out of sync. I personally find it refreshing that he did afternoon shows for kids in Las Vegas and still is entertaining for adults, too. I didn't yet find complete episodes of his "The Ronn Lucas Show", which he did in 1990, although youtube has bits and pieces of them. He also had guest appearances in several tv series. I personally enjoyed him most in "L.A. Law", although he was a vent with a rather sad history in that one. Watching him as his figure was raving in the court room and towards the end totally got himself down too while he is barely moving his lips at all, I can watch that again and again. Here's the link to his youtube channel with several clips and his homepage also includes an appearance with Scorch that made me get a total crush on Scorch, namely the MDA Telethon appearance. Also check out his eBay page, where he sells his toy Scorch and his two dvds. Yes, the shipping is also to europe and I got the movies I'm longing to get any day now from there.
Other vents you should have heard of:
Lynn Trefzger: on her homepage you'll find videos, among them one with the boy Noah, who had a brain tumor, who she went to see. I think it's a very nice of her to do that! Jeff Dunham made ventriloquism popular again recently for many people. Since many of you probably know him already, I won't write much about him here now. (his homepage) Another female vent I want to mention is Nina Conti, who began doing ventriloquism when she was almost 30. Of course she has her own homepage, too. Dan Horn is also known, although I don't know much about him other than his name and I've seen a few clips with him on youtube. In the documentary "Dumbstruck" they follow him and also Terry Fator, who got famous after his breakthrough through "America's Got Talent". Since there are rather few woman in this field, I'd also like to mention Carla Rhodes. I came to know her after watching her in the movie "Dummies!", which I stumbled upon on the internet the other day. Although then still a teenager, she came across as quite charming to me and judging from her homepage, she seemed to have made it actually and found her place in comedy, music and ventriloquism.
Okay, if you can make it and really keep your eyes on the lips of the vents I mentioned here, you'll probably see slightly quivering lips with all of them once or twice. Nobody is perfect, but all of the vents I mentioned in this post, I think, are all well worth watching. Like I said, Edgar Bergen is a lost case when it comes to lip control, but that doesn't make him less worth watching. All of them here are great artists, who have kept and keep this old art of ventriloquism alive. Time will tell how much I will be one of them...
Until next blog,
sarah
Sunday 24 June 2012
so ventriloquism – have you eliminated every other possibility of employment?
Dear reader,
the headline for today's blog is what a journalist asked the ventriloquist (or short "vent") Jeff Dunham about his job decision. I read an interview with Jeff Dunham on the internet today, in which he said, "When somebody who is 9 years old comes to me and says they want to be a ventriloquist, I think that's great because it's a great hobby. ... When somebody who's 28 years old comes to me and says they want to be a ventriloquist, I think, have you eliminated every other possibility of a hobby? And I just think that it's kind of sad because really, your life's gotten to the point that you're going to pick up a doll and make it talk for other people? That's really sad dude." Jeff Dunham, you're playing with dolls yourself. And you're wrong.
My interest in ventriloquism started with Jeff Dunham. In 2008 or so I saw something with him on youtube and thought it was quite entertaining. Back then I watched it purely for entertainment. What he did there or the question of "how" never came to my mind at that time.
In spring this year I found our two therapy puppets to work with and ventriloquism was interesting for me now. I watched Jeff Dunham again. This time not for entertainment. The therapy puppet girl was the one I worked with first. It became obvious to me very fast that those kind of puppets are not quite good for the use I had in mind. You can stick one of each of your hands in either of her arms and use her hands that way. And you can stick a hand in her head to move the mouth. You can even stick a finger in her tongue to make it work: for example stick out the tongue at someone. So you really need three hands to work the puppet. I borrowed Lucy for about a week to take her home with me. At least I'd have someone to work with. Every other hand puppet of sorts I found at home didn't have a moving mouth. Where's the fun in ventriloquism with a puppet with no moving mouth? Soon after that I took the boy, Fritzchen home with me. He was somewhat different, although he works the same way Lucy does. I used him even still at work with my colleague and the intern that worked with us at that time. Both reacted to him instantly. I thought to myself, "I almost don't need to learn to talk without moving my lips! They don't look at me, they look at him!" I thought of a word used in magic: misdirection. The magician makes you look somewhere, for example using one of his hands and with the other he secretly does whatever makes the trick work. Ventriloquism is nothing else. When you're not moving your lips and next to you is a puppet moving his or her lips, the whole attention goes to the puppet.
The more I thought about it, the more things I found in common for magic, hypnosis and ventriloquism. In hypnotherapy there's a method called "my friend John technique". This method is great when you don't know how the other person will react to what you want to say, but you want to say it anyway. You tell it as a story, like something that happened to your friend "John" or someone. You can use quotes that way, too. Mark Twain once said, "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." Even if you don't agree with what Mark Twain said, you won't be angry with me. I didn't say it, Mark Twain did. I directed the possible disagreement of this statement away from me. A ventriloquist figure (that's the professional term they use for the puppets, although most people don't know that term) works just that way. Jeff Dunham can let Achmed the dead terrorist say, "Silence! I keel you!" and the audience will cheer. Let a real terrorist do that once. The figures can be nasty like nothing else and get away with it. They can say things a normal human can't say that easily, if at all.
The vent Ronn Lucas remembers a situation where a heckler was really annoying. So he let his figure heckle him back. This got to a point where the heckler stood up and lifted his fist to beat... no, not Ronn. The guy went after the figure! After all the figure had heckled him! What a nice compliment to give the vent, isn't it? For the guy the figure was real and alive.
Jay Johnson is a vent, who became famous in america in the late 1970's with the tv series "Soap". As you may have guessed, he played a vent, with his figure, Bob. The thing with Chuck and Bob was treated as a real person by almost everybody, who had something to do with him. Just from the way Bob behaved there wasn't any other way of reacting.
Jay Johnson also was in an episode (A Riddle for Puppets) of the series "Mrs. Columbo". There, too, he played a vent. In that episode he went to a children hospital to entertain the kids. As we learn over the course of this episode he was a kid when he learned about ventriloquism. Back then he was a very sad kid and had heard noises from a building. So he went in to find a puppet maker at work. He taught the boy all he knew about ventriloquism and also made the boy his own figure. The boy naturally couldn't pay with money. The man told his student to find another kid, who was just as sad as he was back then and make the child happy. That would be his way of paying him back.
Surely, a fictional story. But a very beautiful motivation for your work, I think. P. T. Barnum was a guy, who created a circus with a little bit of everything. He wanted the visitors to have fun, because they'd find at least one thing they'd really enjoy. Barnum once said, "The noblest art is that of making others happy."
That's what I want to do. I don't want to do inclusive education. For many of us it means "repairing" or "fixing" and not respecting the people for who they are the way they are. There are already clowns going into children hospitals to entertain the kids. I also heard of a group of old people doing magic for old people. I think I want to learn ventriloquism really to make other people happy. That's my plan. When I use the my friend John technique, I don't even need a qualification in hypnotherapy to tell stories with my vent figures. The positive effect to help and heal will be like magic. :-)
Until next blog,
sarah
the headline for today's blog is what a journalist asked the ventriloquist (or short "vent") Jeff Dunham about his job decision. I read an interview with Jeff Dunham on the internet today, in which he said, "When somebody who is 9 years old comes to me and says they want to be a ventriloquist, I think that's great because it's a great hobby. ... When somebody who's 28 years old comes to me and says they want to be a ventriloquist, I think, have you eliminated every other possibility of a hobby? And I just think that it's kind of sad because really, your life's gotten to the point that you're going to pick up a doll and make it talk for other people? That's really sad dude." Jeff Dunham, you're playing with dolls yourself. And you're wrong.
My interest in ventriloquism started with Jeff Dunham. In 2008 or so I saw something with him on youtube and thought it was quite entertaining. Back then I watched it purely for entertainment. What he did there or the question of "how" never came to my mind at that time.
In spring this year I found our two therapy puppets to work with and ventriloquism was interesting for me now. I watched Jeff Dunham again. This time not for entertainment. The therapy puppet girl was the one I worked with first. It became obvious to me very fast that those kind of puppets are not quite good for the use I had in mind. You can stick one of each of your hands in either of her arms and use her hands that way. And you can stick a hand in her head to move the mouth. You can even stick a finger in her tongue to make it work: for example stick out the tongue at someone. So you really need three hands to work the puppet. I borrowed Lucy for about a week to take her home with me. At least I'd have someone to work with. Every other hand puppet of sorts I found at home didn't have a moving mouth. Where's the fun in ventriloquism with a puppet with no moving mouth? Soon after that I took the boy, Fritzchen home with me. He was somewhat different, although he works the same way Lucy does. I used him even still at work with my colleague and the intern that worked with us at that time. Both reacted to him instantly. I thought to myself, "I almost don't need to learn to talk without moving my lips! They don't look at me, they look at him!" I thought of a word used in magic: misdirection. The magician makes you look somewhere, for example using one of his hands and with the other he secretly does whatever makes the trick work. Ventriloquism is nothing else. When you're not moving your lips and next to you is a puppet moving his or her lips, the whole attention goes to the puppet.
The more I thought about it, the more things I found in common for magic, hypnosis and ventriloquism. In hypnotherapy there's a method called "my friend John technique". This method is great when you don't know how the other person will react to what you want to say, but you want to say it anyway. You tell it as a story, like something that happened to your friend "John" or someone. You can use quotes that way, too. Mark Twain once said, "Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." Even if you don't agree with what Mark Twain said, you won't be angry with me. I didn't say it, Mark Twain did. I directed the possible disagreement of this statement away from me. A ventriloquist figure (that's the professional term they use for the puppets, although most people don't know that term) works just that way. Jeff Dunham can let Achmed the dead terrorist say, "Silence! I keel you!" and the audience will cheer. Let a real terrorist do that once. The figures can be nasty like nothing else and get away with it. They can say things a normal human can't say that easily, if at all.
The vent Ronn Lucas remembers a situation where a heckler was really annoying. So he let his figure heckle him back. This got to a point where the heckler stood up and lifted his fist to beat... no, not Ronn. The guy went after the figure! After all the figure had heckled him! What a nice compliment to give the vent, isn't it? For the guy the figure was real and alive.
Jay Johnson is a vent, who became famous in america in the late 1970's with the tv series "Soap". As you may have guessed, he played a vent, with his figure, Bob. The thing with Chuck and Bob was treated as a real person by almost everybody, who had something to do with him. Just from the way Bob behaved there wasn't any other way of reacting.
Jay Johnson also was in an episode (A Riddle for Puppets) of the series "Mrs. Columbo". There, too, he played a vent. In that episode he went to a children hospital to entertain the kids. As we learn over the course of this episode he was a kid when he learned about ventriloquism. Back then he was a very sad kid and had heard noises from a building. So he went in to find a puppet maker at work. He taught the boy all he knew about ventriloquism and also made the boy his own figure. The boy naturally couldn't pay with money. The man told his student to find another kid, who was just as sad as he was back then and make the child happy. That would be his way of paying him back.
Surely, a fictional story. But a very beautiful motivation for your work, I think. P. T. Barnum was a guy, who created a circus with a little bit of everything. He wanted the visitors to have fun, because they'd find at least one thing they'd really enjoy. Barnum once said, "The noblest art is that of making others happy."
That's what I want to do. I don't want to do inclusive education. For many of us it means "repairing" or "fixing" and not respecting the people for who they are the way they are. There are already clowns going into children hospitals to entertain the kids. I also heard of a group of old people doing magic for old people. I think I want to learn ventriloquism really to make other people happy. That's my plan. When I use the my friend John technique, I don't even need a qualification in hypnotherapy to tell stories with my vent figures. The positive effect to help and heal will be like magic. :-)
Until next blog,
sarah
Friday 22 June 2012
Hello world!
Dear reader,
I'm starting this blog today to share thoughts, point out interesting things I came across or just mention whatever else new discoveries.
In 1997 I started writing stories. Now I'm writing this blog here. ;-)
In 2009 I became interested in magic. I had a magic box as a kid, but nothing serious came out of that. In my studies at the university (studied inclusive education, that's helping disabled people), they talked time and again about the need to be aware of our own body language and have an "open" body language. But how exactly do you do that? Or how do I know if clients hold back information? What does it mean when they're sitting in a certain position across from me or have a specific look? We never talked about that. So I began teaching myself. Lately if you read on body language sooner or later you come across three letters: NLP. Neuro-linguistic programming. I wanted to know how others use it and what can be done with it. I don't quite remember what I typed in, because if you just type in "nlp" at youtube, you don't get what I found and which eventually lead me to magic again. Which was a video with the "psychological illusionist" (his own words) Derren Brown. The video description read this: "The heist was an experiment hosted by Derren Brown to see if he could get people to rob a bank." What the heck? To get normal people to rob a bank? Can this really be done? I had to see that! So I watched his program on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdkivIk1NiY (part 1 of 5)
What can I say? The program was interesting and I started to like Derren Brown. I saw more videos with him, and bought his book "Tricks of The Mind". In it he gives basic introductions to many of the techniques he uses for his tricks: from magic with cards and coins to tricks to remember things (mnemonic) and hypnosis.
Hypnosis. People who read on NLP will also learn about hypnosis and hypnotherapy. After all one of the people the founders of NLP studied was the psychotherapist Milton Erickson, who not only was incredibly creative, but also used hypnosis as part of his therapy. In the spring of 2011 I did a google search for online courses on hypnosis and found Stephen Brooks. On his website among other things, he also offers a free one year course in the theories and principles of Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP. Free sounds good, right? Can you trust it? Yes! Stephen Brooks is one of the leading experts and well known around the world. He didn't meet Erickson in person, but studied Erickson and his methods through and through.
Spring 2012. I'm working for an organisation offering day care for people suffering from dementia. They are brought there in the morning and go home in the late afternoon every day. I needed this whole year to realise that the 2 therapy puppets we had are never used. It became obvious for me that if they shouldn't sit around in a corner looking bored, I had to do something about it myself. Take the puppet, stick a hand in the head to operate the mouth and at the same time move your own mouth to talk for the puppets? It works. It's easy. Too easy. Why talk for the puppet, if you can let them talk for themselves? With ventriloquism. How I learned and learn it and my thoughts on that will topic of my next blog...
Until next blog,
sarah
I'm starting this blog today to share thoughts, point out interesting things I came across or just mention whatever else new discoveries.
In 1997 I started writing stories. Now I'm writing this blog here. ;-)
In 2009 I became interested in magic. I had a magic box as a kid, but nothing serious came out of that. In my studies at the university (studied inclusive education, that's helping disabled people), they talked time and again about the need to be aware of our own body language and have an "open" body language. But how exactly do you do that? Or how do I know if clients hold back information? What does it mean when they're sitting in a certain position across from me or have a specific look? We never talked about that. So I began teaching myself. Lately if you read on body language sooner or later you come across three letters: NLP. Neuro-linguistic programming. I wanted to know how others use it and what can be done with it. I don't quite remember what I typed in, because if you just type in "nlp" at youtube, you don't get what I found and which eventually lead me to magic again. Which was a video with the "psychological illusionist" (his own words) Derren Brown. The video description read this: "The heist was an experiment hosted by Derren Brown to see if he could get people to rob a bank." What the heck? To get normal people to rob a bank? Can this really be done? I had to see that! So I watched his program on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdkivIk1NiY (part 1 of 5)
What can I say? The program was interesting and I started to like Derren Brown. I saw more videos with him, and bought his book "Tricks of The Mind". In it he gives basic introductions to many of the techniques he uses for his tricks: from magic with cards and coins to tricks to remember things (mnemonic) and hypnosis.
Hypnosis. People who read on NLP will also learn about hypnosis and hypnotherapy. After all one of the people the founders of NLP studied was the psychotherapist Milton Erickson, who not only was incredibly creative, but also used hypnosis as part of his therapy. In the spring of 2011 I did a google search for online courses on hypnosis and found Stephen Brooks. On his website among other things, he also offers a free one year course in the theories and principles of Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP. Free sounds good, right? Can you trust it? Yes! Stephen Brooks is one of the leading experts and well known around the world. He didn't meet Erickson in person, but studied Erickson and his methods through and through.
Spring 2012. I'm working for an organisation offering day care for people suffering from dementia. They are brought there in the morning and go home in the late afternoon every day. I needed this whole year to realise that the 2 therapy puppets we had are never used. It became obvious for me that if they shouldn't sit around in a corner looking bored, I had to do something about it myself. Take the puppet, stick a hand in the head to operate the mouth and at the same time move your own mouth to talk for the puppets? It works. It's easy. Too easy. Why talk for the puppet, if you can let them talk for themselves? With ventriloquism. How I learned and learn it and my thoughts on that will topic of my next blog...
Until next blog,
sarah
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