Jaws drop as Chuck's show goes high-tech

[KiwiCoromandel]

Ventriloquist David Strassman is having a ball. He is combining the things he likes most - puppets, comedy and technology - into a show that sells out across the English-speaking world.

A trained actor, Strassman uses puppets to air his wisdom and grievances. There's Chuck Wood, a 12-year-old, foul-mouthed and flirtatious wooden boy, the soft but neurotic Ted E. Bear and his grandfather Fred, Kevin the alien and Angel, a futuristic and sexy female assistant whose voice is altered live via a wireless transmitter to sound more feminine than Strassman's.

His latest show, Get Chuck'd!, opens in Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre this week.

Strassman is credited with resurrecting the ancient but unfashionable art of ventriloquism through the use of technology, model aeroplane engineering, special effects and multimedia. In fact, mechanical Chuck was almost destined to the charity bin before robotics rescued him seven years ago.

"One drunken night, a radio-control airplane flying buddy and I came up with the idea of putting remote controls into Chuck, so we put a (hobby plane) servo to move his eyes but needed a clutch to isolate the electronic parts from the mechanical (strings)," says the American who spends seven weeks every year touring Australia.

"My friend had a friend who worked at NASA and he machined the mechanical clutch that I use to this day."

That is one of the few specially made components he allows in the performance. He makes a point of using mostly off-the-shelf items available through hobby shops or electronics stores such as Dick Smith in Australia and Radio Shack in the US. This way, wherever he is in the world, he can fix the puppets if something goes wrong.

"You get into problems when technology is so specific that you can't fix it or replace it."

The same goes for the remote controls used to manipulate his other characters, three dinosaurs that dance seemingly unassisted in the show's grand finale.

"I started with a model airplane box at the back of the stage, then I started to open the box and attach the components to my body," he says.

Today he has a number of electronic devices, including a modified radio control used to record sounds and movements in 48 separate channels and send them to a customised software program that plays back the dinosaurs' movements. But he says that is the only recorded part of the performance.

"It's amazing puppetry. The movements were recorded in my garage and are played back for the audience but 99 per cent of my show is not robotics. It's ventriloquism. It'd be very boring if I was to move all the characters (remotely) like elves in a Christmas shop window."

The ventriloquist says he has a soft spot for computers and the internet. His first PC was a Commodore 64, he's paid bills online since 1986 with CheckFree and has had websites since 1996.

He is an adept of the popular video site YouTube, now owned by Google, where his short videos are posted regularly as a way of self-promotion.

And he is keeping an open mind on new technologies that may improve the characters' delivery.

"What I do is a magic trick. I'm on stage by myself for two hours but in the end these characters have hopes, dreams. If I can augment my show, make (the characters) more alive, more emotional, I'll do so." One day he may even revise Angel and give her more than the button he presses to activate a remote sound-effects box that alters his voice.

He may give her a flexible photonic fabric skin that changes colours like a chameleon.

But for the moment, he is concentrating on keeping enough back-up copies of the show's running sheet and sound and movement queues. Apart from the main show PC, a lunchbox computer, he carries an identical second unit. The data in this back-up is again replicated in a portable hard drive.

"I'm computer dependent for my life. My advice to any human being reading this is to back-up your back-up with a back-up," he says recalling an occasion in Rockhampton, Queensland, when the show PC went up in smoke.

"That night we ran the (special effects) sound files off the laptop but had no robotics. Now I carry a back-up show computer because my show has to go on. There's 1000 people out there each night. I have to deliver."

With his mind and data at ease, he can concentrate on having fun and making jaws drop. The audience's, that is.

source:AP

image:TONY ASHBY:Ventriloquist DAVID STRASSMAN`S futuristic ANGEL...

[KiwiCoromandel]

i`ve seen this guy in Aussie and NZ....he`s quite amazing...