Executive Director of the VentHaven Ventriloquist ConVENTion, kidshow ventriloquist Mark Wade, shares the history of the conVENTion in this clip from our nine part interview.
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Click here to continue to part 4 of my interview with ventriloquist Mark Wade!
Video Transcript:
Ken is Ken is awesome uh and you guys
have worked together on that convention
for how long oh gez well this is my 13th
year as executive director and I worked
with him before that when I was just
convention chairman the old days we had
a convention chairman and executive
director well the executive director
usually was somebody on the ven Haven
director’s board and then when Dorothy
mure one of our past curators quit we
didn’t do the convention for about two
or three years there and John brooken
called me said can you come and do it
would you put it together again I said
yeah but I want to consolidate this no
more chairman that changes hands every
year we had new chairman every year so
everybody couldn’t really get a feel for
it and they were done I said I have to
run the whole thing as executive
director which he agreed and it was a
good marriage doing those two things
fantastic so when you first started
going to the the convention can you talk
a little bit about the difference uh
from back then to what it is now I I
have I’m not bragging but just have to
tell you that I’ve been at every
convention I’ve been to every one of
them from the outset i i in fact I was
even at the meeting before they had the
very first convention Jimmy Nelson
invited me to come down to the meeting
and I went down the meeting and they
were talking about what they’re going to
do and um in those days it was really
kind of loosely organized you know and
what we do was well who’s going to be
there so hey you want to do a show while
you’re here yeah I’ll do 10 minutes for
you do you want to do a lecture what are
you going to do it on I don’t know and
so it kind of was put together as we got
there but actually it was more like a
reunion in those days which was a lot of
fun uh and so we put it together that
way and then later on we started getting
bigger and bigger I I remember at one
time we said gosh if we can get 80
people here this is going to be super
and this last year we had 638 so that’s
where we came from from 80 up to 638 I
said 610 I’m miscounted we actually had
a little bit more than so we had had
that fantastic yeah so um when it was
being run like a reunion kind of thing
were there any classes or what did you
guys do when you got together well there
were some classes there were some some
people would do lectures and some of the
individual ventriloquist had done
lectures at Magic conventions on how to
a lot of introduction uh beginning
stages how to do ventriloquism Bob
neller came who was an expert Master
ventriloquist doing a distant voice and
baby cry especially the distant voice
and he taught a class on that I went to
that with with both ears wide open and
so he came and Bill buy did some classes
and they asked me to do a class and so
um we we kind of divied it up that way
and then as we kept going every year it
kept growing a little bit bigger and
getting a little bit more organized
until they said we need an actual honest
and goodness chairman to run it the
early days Bill boy ran a lot of them
and then I worked with Bill and he kind
of showed me the ropes and I kind of
learned some things of him plus I was on
a magician’s convention board learn from
them got to put all those things
together.
To learn more about kidshow ventriloquist Mark Wade, continue the interview by clicking below!
Previous Article: An Interview With Mark Wade – Part 2
Start of Interview: An Interview With Mark Wade – Part 1
