Heroes

George Boosey, British Ventriloquist God. At one point he shows the mechanical workings of one of his dummies. He made what were basically animatronic robots without any formal training. He was a true artist, and a wizard with wheels and cogs...

Values

Theatre of the Absurd

Dummy Dragshow

There is apparently some kind of compulsion that drives people to dress ventriloquist dummies up as girls. They do in fact make female dummies, but for reasons I do not fully understand, I have found more of these than "real" females. I'm sure part of it is because it's cheap and easy (insert dirty joke here) and part of it is for "comedy" reasons. But in my travels on the highways and byways of puppetdom, I keep running across these ladies - I think there's something more to it. My research of this sub-species will contiinue.

Do your fingers ever dream?

From the team at Mucky Puppets comes a fantastic nightmare dreamt by some fingers

The Passion

An exerpt from a french film where the child characters just happen to visit a puppet show. Why do I love this clip so much? The kids faces. Reading the joy, the surprise, the suspense, and all the other lost emotions stripped from childrens' entertainment so we could replace them with newer, hipper emotions like greed and envy. If you don't know what I'm talking about try watching any pre-teen crap from Disney Channel or Nickelodeon...

My Heroes

Bill DeMar
One of the greatest ventriloquists of all time. Which for some may be like saying it's the best festering boil you've ever had, but for me, the first time I saw him I fell in love with his work, because he's really not a ventriloquist - his characters don't talk. He is THE master of manipulation. His Feldon the frog was a proclaimed inspiration for Kermit. He can extract depth of emotion with the most subtle of gestures and make it all look so damn easy. He's the equivalent of Andy Serkis using only his voice to imbue the pixels of Gollum with a true soul.