Introducing Maher Ventriloquist Radio
Welcome to something brand new here at Maher Studios – Maher Ventriloquist Radio!
Every Monday we will now publish a new audio episode right here on the blog. You can listen here, or download the MP3 file and listen when time permits. After the third episode, we will even submit the show to iTunes so you can subscribe to the podcast there.
This is your chance to sit down, laugh and have fun with Mark, Ken and me. Plus we’ve solved the blog comment problems so you can leave us a message in the comments below. Tell us what you think. Let us know what you’d like us to talk about. Then prepare for a ton of fun!
To Download This Episode Right Click And Save This Link!
If you subscribe to podcasts through an RSS Feed, you may do so below:
We will be submitting the podcast to iTunes in a couple of weeks, until then, we hope you’ll continue to come the blog every Monday for the latest episodes!
Note: Mark’s blog articles will now be published on Wednesdays. Don’t forget to check back!
This is great, I look forward the next show.
Great to get to know you guys a little better. Keep up the good work.
I felt over dressed listening to you guys! Great show.
Dadgum guys ya’ll sounded great! I hope ya’ll add some of your characters in your podcast as time passes.
Well, I think you have made a beginning in educating learners/students and taken a step BEYOND lip-control and the puppet-vent (P/V) relationship. I an encouraged to continue listening.
Frankly, it is a relief to hear you guys go beyond historical and reminisical (that’s a new one!) ‘yack’, to focus on where the rubber hits the road on the journey of going from naïve vent. learner to continuing and learning professional performer.
In this programme I think you began this job after Ken Groves mentioned that performing as a vent is NOT about learning ‘to string ten jokes together’, and he put your conversation on course to discuss one constellation of actions in the preparations of producing a show/act – namely the flexibility and looseness that is one requisite for ventriloquial ‘entertainment’.
And this began your brief conversation about ‘planned ad libs’ and ‘improvisation’ and saying these two are different.
So, of course, since your radio audience is a bunch of vent learners/students, next job on your list – which I’m sure you have covered – is to provide some cues, directions, explicit learnings, practices about ways in which students can gain/acquire the components of this ‘flexibility’ and ‘looseness’ in and around this stuff called ‘entertainment’.
In this regard you might direct them to Jay Johnson’s ‘The 2 of us’ and to Nina Conti’s autobiographical dvd where each, in their own ways, discuss (although neither of them use this or similar words) aspects of developing the different aspects of looseness in their relationships with their main puppet/figure
# ‘flexibility’ and ‘looseness’ of ideas and of mouth/face/lip and shoulder/arm/hand/digits come from familiarity – frequent and comprehensive use. This is part of what the mantra of, ‘Practice, practice, practice’, means….repetitions…..literally tens of thousands of them. This is what the educational research evidence tells us – doing the same thing in slightly different ways and slightly different environmental circumstances develops abilities/skills/strengths.
Flexibility breeds familiarity and ‘easiness-naturalness’; AND, ventriloquial flexibility can be learned/acquired.
Flexibility refers to ‘moving easily/with ease’. Aspiring vents needs to learn (make 1000s of repetitions in) the several elements of voice, elements of the face/mouth and what is inside the mouth (!), shoulders/neck/arms/hands as well as in the vent-figure relationship … So, students can be directed to folk/dvds like Liz VonSeggen ‘Fun with character voices’; and to Steve Petra’s dvds – for learnings about flexibility ( and related ‘versatility’) of actions on-stage/in performance and through-out an act/routine throughout a show.
All power to your elbows and thanks again for the radio show.
CORRECTION to my POST:
Paragraph 8 needs to be read, of course, as “Repetition breeds….”, not as “familiarity breeds… “. And human repetition – after all – is really NEVER repeating EXACTLY the same action. Only machines do that and becoming a vent is the opposite of becoming a machine
Great to learn a little more about you guys and how you got maher studios to where it is today. Looking forward to the next and hope to see some more listeners on the forum
Hi. I heared the audio on your blog about this episode, I like it That was a lot of fun.