Venting About Venting (cont.)

Both Jeff and Jay have a staple of familiar characters they use in their shows. The best known of Jeff's include Peanut (a goofy, off-the-wall "Woozle" from Micronesia, which is the only puppet built by Verna Finley and not by Jeff himself) and Walter (a cantankerous old man who opens his sets by telling his audiences to "Shut the hell up" and once told Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show that "It'll be a cold day in Hell before I come back.") Recently, Jeff introduced two new characters to his show: a man who can only be described as "white trash trailer park" named Bubba J. and Jeff's smooth new manager/pimp Sweet Daddy D, a character that presented an interesting challenge to Jeff, he said.

"I had to be the actor researching the part, and I had to talk to black comics and try and understand their sense of humor, and just understand where they were coming from and understand what's different from black comedy and white comedy and/or how do you merge those two things together so you can entertain both audiences," Jeff said. "It's something when you first think about it, people would think that's not a smart decision, that could be dangerous but that's exactly the reason I do it."

"[Puppet maker] Bergen told me that he made the mistake many times of trying to create a puppet from the outside in, and I knew exactly what he was taking about because if you look at a character and fall in love with that face, there's nothing there, no heart and soul," Jay said. "But to create one from inside out, you know that person, you know that personality, you can attach wardrobe and makeup just like an actor does. Then you have a character that's got depth."

Jeff has also become his own character. He opens his shows, his DVD and his new special with his own stand-up. He said it gives him a chance to be funny before his "friends" steal the show.

"It's basically to establish my own character and to make people know that I'm a person by myself and then when the dummies come out, then they're focusing on them..."

Jay includes Bob from Soap in his shows, a dark, edgy, angry puppet that Jay calls a grown up version of Mr. Squeaky. He also created a slew of new characters since Soap, including a vulture named Nethernore "The Bird of Death" that came from an annual Halloween comedy show he did with friend and actor Harry Anderson, and an energetic, wise cracking monkey named Darwin that Jay said lets him explore his wild side.

"That's really the inner part of my core, the unbridled soul that is primitive," Jay said. "He can do anything because it's primitive. You don't get upset when a dog humps your leg because it's a dog. You don't get upset when a monkey goes crazy because it's a monkey."

Jay said he prefers performing in theaters than comedy clubs because his audiences don't just expect him to make them laugh.

"When you set foot onto a theatrical stage, the audience has given you a box of Crayolas, and it's the big box of Crayolas," Jay said. "It has every color that you can imagine and they say paint with those and let's see what you can do. So you have all these colors and some of them are black, some are happy, some are sad and they expect you to paint with all of them."

Jay hopes to continue doing that with his one-man show. He performed at a high school benefit where he reconnected with old friends Paul Kreppel and Murphy Cross, who formed the Wetrock Entertainment theatrical company. Jay's performance excited the audience, and the two approached him about a one-man show the following year.

“Murphy said, 'What will it take for us to get the show working?' And I jokingly said, 'If somebody will call me up and say we have a theater and here's the date and you better be ready.' So she called me up an hour later and said 'We have the Whitefire Theater on April 19, you'd better be ready.’ I literally had my bluff called."

He wrote the show on a cruise ship gig, performed it at the Whitefire Theater, and performed it again for show backers from New York City, who scored him the Helen Hayes Theater.

Jeff said his DVD produced by Image Entertainment and one-hour TV special has been a long labor of love but another important step for his career, just like his first Tonight Show appearance and the first puppet he got from his parents for Christmas.

"This isn't one moment in time, it's been a huge long process putting it together," Jeff said. "But when it hits stores on April 11, that's going to be equal to The Tonight Show. That's a proud moment."

Jeff said just like any job in show business, there isn't one way to make it to the top as a ventriloquist. It's harder for budding comics to get more exposure on the road to stardom in this day and age when shows have to compete with more than two networks.

"In the days when Carson was at his peak, you could get a stand-up comic and he could do one shot on 'The Tonight Show' and he'd be water cooler talk the next day and he was a star," Jeff said. "That doesn’t happen anymore. There are too many choices. There's too much on TV."

Jay said it's particularly hard for variety artists like ventriloquists, magicians or jugglers when stand-up comics, not well-rounded entertainers, host variety and late night comedy shows.

"Carson was an amateur magician and a ventriloquist," Jay said. "The rest of the guys: Leno, Letterman, Stewart, Maher. They're all stand-ups so I'm not sure they will ever appreciate an artist that has another sort of act rather than someone who just does stand-up or witty comedy."

Jeff said that lack of exposure is why he feels ventriloquism isn't flourishing right now.

"There's not much visibility," Jeff said. "Basketball would die out as a sport if it wasn't on TV, and I think television is obviously a very big influence on our culture, That's one reason I'm really excited about this Comedy Central special. The main reason is to get the laughs and succeed with the comedy, but guess what? If a bunch of younger people happen to see these cool dummies on TV and that looks like fun to them, there's going to be a surge of interest in the art and there's going to be a handful people who say that would be kind of fun to do."

Jay said ventriloquism has gotten a bad rap recently, and he's not sure why. But he said it is something that will never die, and that shows like his and Jeff's can show audiences just how entertaining it can be. As long as the audiences are entertained and/or enthralled, then they have done their jobs.

"If people come to see my ventriloquism and say, 'Wow, ventriloquism is something I never thought about before,' that's a great thing. If they come away going ‘Wow, Art Sieving was a great talent and no one ever heard of him,' that's a good thing," Jay said. "I know that in some way they'll be touched by it because it's a show about every artist and every relationship he has to his art form. It's about finding your voice and throwing it."

Visit Jeff Dunham's official site at www.onastick.com

Visit Jay Johnson's official site at www.monkeyjoke.com
 

Danny Gallagher (www.dannygallagher.net) is a freelance writer, reporter and humorist living in Texas who can sing "Sweet Adeline" while he drinks a glass of water.