An Interview With Ventriloquist Mike Palma - Part 4

Mike Palma Interview Part Four of Six. To see Mike in action at VentHaven check out his Youtube video below:

Video Transcript:

Well, I tell you, Facicious — you used that at Vent Haven last year, right? It was a great routine. That’s a great-looking character. Is that online anywhere?

I think it is on YouTube. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have one from the convention. I also have one from about a month later at this little Opry house we have here in town. They hire me every now and then to do some magic and ventriloquism, and I think I have one of those shows on video too.

Great. If you don’t mind, I’ll put a link under this video so people can watch you in action.

Absolutely.

So, are you doing vent full-time, or part-time? Tell me a little bit about what you do with it.

I do it part-time. I have a full-time job because, to be honest, working vent and building figures doesn’t make me enough money to go full-time. I can’t wait to retire someday, or hit the lottery, so I can do it full-time.

But I do keep very busy performing in retirement communities. I’m about 20 to 30 minutes north of an area called The Villages in Florida. It’s a retirement community that’s grown huge — about 100,000 to 120,000 retirees, with over 2,000 clubs.

At one point, I marketed myself in the newspaper just to get my name out there. I had to stop because I was getting so many calls from clubs. Now I just hand out business cards at shows, and word of mouth keeps me extremely busy. Sometimes I even have to call a friend who does magic and pass shows on to him because I don’t have the time. The retirement communities are a great audience to perform for.

Yeah, well, a lot of them probably grew up with Shari Lewis, Jimmy Nelson, Paul Winchell, and Edgar Bergen.

Oh yeah, they love that stuff.

And it’s great you can go in and entertain them that way.

Yes.

So, are you building figures to order if people contact you?

Yes, I have a website — ventriloquistworkshop.com. (No longer active – 2025) Right now, I make two figures regularly. One is a classic cheeky boy, and the other is Old Curmudgeon. I had Old Curmudgeon at the convention last year, and people were saying he looked like Walter — only about 30 years younger, like middle-aged Walter. That was kind of funny.

I also have about three other cheeky boys that look different but are still in that style. I’m going to make molds of them. Once those are done, I plan to branch out into a couple of out-of-the-box characters and start offering custom characters too.

Cool, cool. I’ll put links to all of that down below. Having seen you perform, and with the skill you’ve shown, I’m anxious to see one of your characters. Are you coming out to Vent Haven this year?

I’m hoping to. It depends on my work schedule. I may not be able to make it the whole week, but if I can get out there for a few days, I’d love to. It just depends on how things work out with work.