Nina Conti: stand up for dummies

(© Claes Gellerbrink)

Credited with reinventing the lost art of ventriloquism, Nina Conti is fast becoming one of the more popular British comedians of the day. Her dark and self-conscious humour landed her spots in Live at the Apollo and QI. On Saturday, Conti and her puppets will be onstage at Théâtre 140, where Stand Up World has been running English-speaking comedy shows for over 10 years.

Rather than funny sidekicks, the puppets Nina Conti uses are an expression of her own doubts and conflicting voices in her head. For her unique documentary Her Master’s Voice, she even took her deceased mentor Ken Campbell’s dummies to the Vent Haven Museum in Kentucky, the resting place for puppets of dead ventriloquists. The dummies helped her to explore the depths of her grief and to reveal some very personal secrets.

People associate ventriloquism with a slightly creepy man trying to impress children with a dummy on his arm. Do you often feel resistance from the audience when you come on stage with your puppets?
Nina Conti: It happens. Sometimes I can feel them holding their breath when I get my puppets out. They worry that it’s going to be awkward. People like puppets, but they don’t like ventriloquists. Maybe it is because ventriloquists are in essence very lonely people, talking to themselves onstage. Absolutely pathetic. [Chuckles] Still I usually succeed in turning the prejudice around. Monkey is very good at saying things that make the audience feel that: yes, I know this is a strange situation. I try to be straightforward about it and to shatter the illusion by making the puppets comment on their own non-existence. At the same time, people are eager to go along with the make-believe. They have a hard time admitting that when Monkey is being extremely vulgar again, it is actually me who’s saying those things. It confronts their expectations of me as a woman.

You were encouraged to take up ventriloquism by your ex-lover, the legendary theatre maverick Ken Campbell. When did you decide that it was going to be more than something to do on the side?
Conti: Ken thought ventriloquism was a discarded art. He was on a crusade to vindicate it. I was a beginning actress in my mid-twenties, and my voice wasn’t strong enough. Ken told me ventriloquism would help me in dealing with breath streams and difficult noises. So I began practising with a starter kit for ventriloquists. After a while, I filmed myself and the result was startling. The feeling that I wasn’t alone in the room was overpowering. I saw how powerful the illusion was, and how bizarre at the same time.
From there on, I developed my own style. By talking through my puppets, I created some sort of dialogue with myself, which unlocked things that would have stayed locked up otherwise. Ventriloquism is great for displaying the human mind without boundaries. I don’t always want to be responsible for what I say, or even for what I think. The puppets get away with all those things I would be embarrassed to say out loud.

(© Claes Gellerbrink)

You used to tell Monkey how uneasy you were with ad-libbing. But in your recent shows, there’s more improvisation with the audience.
Conti: Right now, improvisation is what excites me most. I love slowing things down during the show and taking my time to notice everything that’s going on: the way the person moves, the way the audience reacts. My routine now is to put face masks on people and take over their speech. It’s not easy, because you have to improvise for yourself and for the person with the mask. Your brain has to go in all kinds of directions at extreme speeds. The other night, I made it even more complicated by putting a mask on someone and letting him say he was a ventriloquist. Together we had to coordinate a puppet. It doesn’t get harder than that, I assure you. [Laughs]

But I’m still working with my puppets as well. There’s a new dog called Killer, who looks beefy like a pit bull, but sounds feminine, and is very easily offended. Then I have a Polish builder who likes to work with the audience, but that’s all I’m going to tell you about him. And then of course there’s Monkey, who’s been around for so long and draws people I know, like my father and grandfather.

He’s even on Twitter, as @MonkeyConti.
Conti: [Laughs] Yes well… Twitter was another place where I had a hard time finding a voice. I’m extremely self-conscious and self-critical of everything I say, and on Twitter it was even worse. So I thought maybe Monkey could do it for me. But he’s gone quiet too now. If even Monkey is self-conscious about it, it’s probably not going to happen.

NINA CONTI • 22/3, 20.30, €26, Théâtre 140, avenue E. Plaskylaan 140, Schaarbeek/Schaerbeek, www.standupworld.com