VentFest’s unique community draws the world’s best ventriloquists back to Spencer

After the inaugural VentFest, Tony Award winner Jay Johnson told organizer Steve Withem that he had spent the entire weekend trying to pinpoint what made the fledgling festival special.

“It finally occurred to me,” Johnson told him on the drive to the airport. “This was the first time in my life I got to hang out with a number of ventriloquists who were all working, performing ventriloquists.”

That feeling has become the festival’s calling card, now in its fifth year.

It’s why Ronn Lucas, who was the first ventriloquist to have a residency in Las Vegas and was dubbed “the world’s best ventriloquist” by The New York Times, wanted to come back.

And it’s why Jim Barber wanted to be part of this year’s lineup.

“For me, the reason to come back a second time was what I’d heard from other ventriloquists — the camaraderie. To be in a room with maybe five or six other people who do exactly what you do, you don’t even have to talk shop,” Lucas said, despite his first experience including a power outage that left him stuck at the airport for five hours. “There’s just a certain communication, a certain feeling of ‘Oh yeah, we’re all in this together,’ and it’s very rare.”

Lucas said that sometimes he thinks of ventriloquists as solo artists, as they serve as their own writers, directors, producers, puppet builders, promoters and costumers, among other roles.

“I think, on a very unconscious level, we all want to think we’re the only one in the universe who can do what we do, and it jars us when another ventriloquist shows up,” he said. “But in this case, there was no competition. It was just all camaraderie. It was great, and I thought, I’ve got to come back to this.”

Barber, who will be performing at VentFest for the first time, echoed the sentiment.

“Rarely do I get a chance to perform on stage with my peers, my fellow ventriloquists. Usually we’re in different places on the same nights performing, and all of these folks on the bill this year are friends of mine that I’ve known for years and years,” he said.

But the feeling of community is only part of the event’s success. The other crucial part is Withem himself.

“I think the reason I’m enjoying it so much is actually Steve Withem. He’s a very passionate person,” Lucas said, who had VentFest recommended to him by one of his mentees, Nikolas Bushi. “The group that he keeps calling together is just really good, solid family entertainment.”

This year’s festival may feature the strongest lineup in its history, with Johnson, Lucas, Barber, Willie Tyler, and other internationally recognized performers joining veteran favorites and rising stars.

“I’ve got ventriloquist friends of mine who are coming from around the globe—Australia, Canada, Europe, São Paulo, Brazil—to come see this lineup because they know how historic and extraordinary it is,” he said.

He said he hopes local residents will come check out the festival.

“The art form is honestly so unique. It’s so hard to do, and it’s rare to find good performers. That’s just not the sort of thing people think of. It’s not the sort of thing they think to do. They think of going out and listening to music. They think of going out and watching a movie. They even think of going out to a comedy club, but not a ventriloquist show, which is comedy,” Withem said. “But it’s a very unique form of comedy, and when it’s done well, I think it’s one of the most entertaining art forms there can be. But it’s so hard to do and so rare to see it done well.”

Lucas also talked about the perceptions associated with ventriloquism.

“If you just mention I’m a ventriloquist, I’m a magician, I’m a juggler, there was an automatic negative connotation, or at least there was a direction to that,” he said, adding that in the past folks had to know they were good first.

But Lucas said there is more curiosity as a result of the success of folks like Jeff Dunham and other ventriloquists.

“So there’s been a serious turnaround, at least for ventriloquism, and definitely for magic, where everyone is kind of expecting and hoping that you’re going to be a good performer, so that’s what’s happened in my lifetime, and Jeff has been a big part of that,” he said.

The prevalence of the art form in recent times is also something that Barber touched on.

“Ventriloquism, I think, is stronger than it’s ever been, thanks to some of our younger, upcoming artists like Darci Lynne [Farmer] and even Tansy [Lou] Davis, who’s going to be on our show this year,” he said.

That being said, Lucas stressed the importance of constantly challenging the art form.

In fact, his business card last year said: “Ventriloquism is a dying art, and I’m helping to kill it.”

He said he was asked if he really felt that way.

“I said, ‘Well, as long as we keep innovating and keep changing and keep adding things, then it’s going to be okay.’ My version of killing it was: not really contributing anything new to the art form,” he said. “But I’ve always done that. What makes me different is that I’ve always come up with different ways of trying to perform, different ways of approaching the art form.”

Barber challenges the art form with a bit of a role reversal with his main character, Seville.

“My main character, that I’m known for, is called the Barber and Seville, and Seville is actually a six-foot-tall ventriloquist holding a little dummy, but my head is on the dummy, the little body, so it looks like a switch when we walk out on stage,” he said.

The full lineup for the July 24 to 26 festival and tickets for each show can be found at ventfest.org. Performances will kick off with a show at 7 p.m. Friday evening, continue with both a 2 p.m. matinee and a 7 p.m. evening show on Saturday and conclude with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday.

“You’re going to come and see a bunch of professionals that were handpicked by Steve Withem, and he is very much a ventriloquist aficionado. He picks really, really good people, and people that are different from each other. So you’re going to see a variety show, which is going to basically pivot around the art form of ventriloquism,” Lucas said.

Barber said he thinks first-time attendees will walk away excited for next year’s festival as they see several different takes on the art form.

“Comedy can go in a lot of different directions, and so can ventriloquism,” Lucas said. “I think the power of ventriloquism is you create a character that is once removed from reality, which means that everything he or she says, meaning the puppet, can bump people, but never really leaves a bruise.”