Neale Bacon ventriloquist from Canada shares the experience of entertaining at the Venthaven Ventriloquist ConVENTion, and talks about his other experiences with the event.
Video Transcript:
So Neale, tell me—you’ve done different things at the convention. You’ve been on the show. What was your first time getting up there to perform like?
That was very nerve-wracking. You’re in front of your peers, and there’s not a joke you can tell that they haven’t probably already heard. It forces you to be much more original. That was one of the reasons I went with animal characters in the first place—so I wouldn’t fall into the old, stale material.
It was intimidating, but also the most supportive audience. When you have people like Jay Johnson stop you in the hallway to say how much they enjoyed your act, or Sammy King telling you it was really funny, you kind of float down the hall after that.
Mhm. So, you’ve also instructed at the Junior Vent University. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?
That was a lot of fun. I did it two, maybe three years. Liz and Sean put it together and asked if I’d like to help. The interesting thing with the junior vents is you can’t group them by age. We broke them into groups based on what they wanted to work on. But you could have a 10-year-old picking up a puppet for the first time in the same group as someone like Pete Michaels Jr., who grew up with it. There’s not much you can teach a kid with that much experience.
So instead of dividing them by age, we focused on skill level—everything from the absolute basics, to learning how to write scripts, to figuring out who their characters were. Not just doing the “hi, how are you” back-and-forth. It was really interesting.
At the end of each session, we usually had a guest come in. I remember Dan Horn doing a session on manipulation. And when we had the Jimmy Nelson tribute, Jimmy and Betty brought Danny O’Day and Farfel. We took this big group photo with all the kids, Jimmy, Betty, Danny, and Farfel. That was a lot of fun. Honestly, I felt as much like a kid as they did in that moment.
That’s great. Has there been anybody you’ve met at the convention that just blew you away—someone you were thrilled to meet?
Boy, where do I start? Meeting guys like Jay Johnson, Bill DeMar, Dan Horn—these people are so personable. I could just sit, have coffee with them, and talk shop.
But it’s not just the big names. What’s impressed me most is how many real friendships I’ve made there. I mean, that’s where you and I met. I tell my wife all the time—I’ve got more friends around the world because of Vent Haven than I do locally. Pete Michaels and I have become very close friends through it.
I’ve been to a lot of magic conventions, and the stars there aren’t accessible. They do their show, maybe a lecture, and then disappear to their ivory tower. Vent Haven isn’t like that. Everybody is accessible. Back in the Drawbridge days, you’d find people hanging out by the pool, grabbing White Castles, just relaxing. You could talk to anybody. That’s the best part of it.
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