Late Thursday afternoon (July 8) I arrived in Bourbonais (pronounced "Bur-Bon-ay) Illinois for the last 3 days of the International Puppet Festival on the campus of Olivet Nazarene College.
I-fest, as it's called, is a week long "camp" on a college campus for church puppet team leaders and their team members. It's mostly a performing arts youth camp. It has classes and competitions for puppetry, ventriloquism and interpretive dance.
It was my 2nd time at the festival. When I went, for the first time, in 2008, I had such a great time I decided to go back. All though it goes on for a week the last 3 days are called "Superfest". Its 3 days of classes and competitions that gives those who can't be there for the entire week the opportunity to come and enjoy I-fest.
After I checked into my hotel, I went to the Superfest orientation and the evening rally. I saw a pretty cool puppet presentation by a church puppet team. The featured performers, were a husband and wife team who did a combination of puppetry, ventriloquism and magic. The wife presented a very unique object lesson using an old fashion folding ruler. I think I may use it sometime in the future.
I concluded my first night at I-fest by attending the experienced ventriloquism competition. There were 5 ventriloquists in the show. "Experienced" means they have been performing for 4 years or more. As I watched in my mind I felt that I was probably just as good or better than 3 of the 5. I regreted not signing up for the competition myself. But I would get a second chance to rectify that the next day.
On Friday I went to several ventriloquism classes including one about using music to enhance your performance. The facilitator of that class was Steve Parker. He's a pretty good ventriloquist. What's unique about Steve is that his "everyday job" is in law enforcement in Iowa. He's also the voice of the McGruff the crime dog. I'm sure you've seen the character on TV over the years. McGruff is one of my favorite characters. Steve even had a McGruff puppet that he used during the class.
The afternoon was spent in classes about building a ventriloquist performance with a storyline and advanced performance techniques. That last one included information on performing the distant voice, the baby cry, holding a long note and the trick to drinking water while a character is singing. I plan to use that last one in the future as well.
With the afternoon/early evening scheduled as "free time" with no classes available I decided to go to a local mall to see a movie. I went and saw the Disney movie "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time." I liked it. It wasn't the perfect movie or the best I've seen this summer but I enjoyed it. Also I was only 1 of 2 people in the theater.
When I went back to I-fest I planned on attending the novice ventriloquist competition. When I found out that there was still room for people to participate I asked to be put on the list. I had brought both Cecil the Turtle and Ruben Nathaniel Young puppets with me all the way from Kentucky. I wanted to use at least one of them while I was there. So I decided to do my Roux-N-Y routine with Ruben.
I didn't have any time to rehearse but I knew the routine so well that it wasn't much of a problem. I was nervous as I went out on stage but did the best I could. The competitions at I-fest aren't so much competitions as they are evaluations. In my case there I did a 6 minute presentation and was "judged" by 3 expert ventriloquist judges. They filled out a form regarding my performance which I received the next morning at the AM rally.
Everyone was impressed with my unique way of presenting my weight loss testimony. I got a lot of complements. It was a very nice night for me despite not being very prepared. I went back to the hotel and fell asleep with a good sense of satisfaction.
On Saturday morning, I went to the AM rally in the main hall. I went on stage with all the others who were in the novice vent competition the night before. (see picture above). My fellow competitors included a 13 year old boy named Spencer Overbay. He is from Nashville. I gave his dad my business card and told him to look me up on facebook. We were all given our evaluation sheets and were told that we would be receiving our trophies in the mail.
That's right I won a trophy for my performance. Its what they referred to as a "bronze trophy". I guess it's based on your combined judges scores. My score averaged 81.
The last class I attended was about how to perform the distant voice. I have been wanting to learn how to do this ventriloquist "trick" almost ever since I started ventriloquism back in 2006. See the post from December 8, 2009 for details on my hopes and experiences with the distant voice.
Steve Parker was the teacher in this class as well. He took us through some of the exercises and techniques used to develop the distant voice skills and how to use them. It was very encouraging. I think I've learned some things that will help me learn and use "distant voice" in my act in the future. I just need to learn to practice and refine it.
At the conclusion of the class, I looked at the daily schedule and realized that there really wasn't anything left on the agenda that I really wanted to see or do. There was a closing ceremony and performances by the "dream teams" of puppets and ventriloquists but I wasn't interested in them.
What I was interested in was getting back home before it got dark. I had a ventriloquist performance scheduled at a local church the next morning. I wanted to get home before it was very late. I had a 6 hour drive ahead of me. So I very quietly left I-fest and headed back down interstate 65, through the wind turbine field again and back to Kentucky.
I-fest 2010 was over. I had a very good time and felt proud about my performance. Going to the festival gave me some time around fellow Christian ventriloquists. That's a rare thing for me. It also reignited the spark of enthusiasm and optimism for the future of my ventriloquism ministry and career. I am now going to focus on getting better at my craft and working as many performances as I can.
I thank God for the opportunity to go to I-fest again this year and for the blessing of being able to go to the 2 baseball games before hand as well. My prayer is that God will give me the motivation to keep working hard enough to advance my ministry. I want to look back on attending I-Fest 2010 as a turning point in my service as a ventriloquist.
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