In part four of our six part interview with Lisa Laird, she shares how she became interested in ventriloquism and puppetry. It isn’t the standard path that many ventriloquists follow.
Video Transcript:
Lisa, how did you become involved in ventriloquism? What sparked your interest, and when did you get started?
That’s an interesting story. It’s actually all my children’s fault.
My boys are a year apart, and when they were in sixth and seventh grade, they became interested in being part of a puppet team at our local church. Both of them were very theatrical kids — and they still are. They’re both in theater work today. My husband and I thought, “Great, let them try whatever they want.” They loved it, and we were happy to drive them to practices and pick them up when they were done.
Then the director quit, and my husband and I were asked to take over. Since it was something our boys loved, we thought it would give us a chance to do something together as a family. So for years, it was mainly the four of us and a few extra people working on that puppet team.
During that time, I went back to work as a teacher. I’d been a teacher before my kids were born, then stayed home and did substitute teaching while they were young. But when they got older, I returned to full-time teaching.
While working on the puppet team, I realized how magical puppets were. You’d think an elementary school teacher would naturally use puppets, but honestly, puppets scared me. I was happy to let them sit in a box for the kids to play with, but I didn’t want to touch them.
Over time, though, I became convinced puppets were a magical force that needed to be in my classroom. The only way I could see to do that was by learning ventriloquism. So, at the age of 44, I started training. I began with the Maher Ventriloquism Course, then took classes through what was then called One Way Street Creative Ministry Solutions. I went through their Ventriloquist-in-Training program, and I also took private training with Mark Wade, Steven Knowles, and Ken Groves.
My only intention was to use ventriloquism in my classroom. I never planned to quit teaching. I loved teaching. But once people heard I was using puppets in the classroom, they started asking if I did programs. I said no at first. Then someone asked me again, and my husband — who had always written the scripts for our puppet team — helped me put together a program. I performed it, thinking it would be the one and only time. But that’s not what happened.
Word started to spread. A fellow teacher I worked with knew a librarian in a nearby town and suggested me. The librarian invited me to do a show, and afterwards she said, “Lisa, you have got to do this more. I’m going to tell everyone I know about you.”
For the next two years, I tried to balance both — teaching during the week and performing in the evenings and on weekends. Finally, my husband said, “Lisa, please choose one job. Someone else can teach your class, but you’re the only one in this area doing what you do with puppets. I think you need to quit teaching.”
It was a difficult decision, but with great distress in my heart, I resigned from teaching and stepped out on a limb to do ventriloquism full-time.
Since then, it has grown far beyond my wildest dreams. In a lot of ways, I feel like I have the best of both worlds. I’m still teaching — just in a different way. And when I go back to schools or libraries, kids still run up to hug me. Sometimes in the grocery store, I’ll hear little voices saying, “That’s the puppet lady!” So some of the same perks I loved as a teacher, I still get now — and that’s a lot of fun.
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