ARTS & CULTURE

ARTS &

CULTURE

The Vent Haven Museum (pictured) in Northern Kentucky has been hosting the international ventriloquism ConVENTion since the 1970s.

PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

Dummies, Idols and Nostalgia at Greater Cincinnati’s Vent Haven ConVENTion

Remembering four decades of magic, camaraderie and brilliant performances hosted by Northern Kentucky’s — and the world’s — only ventriloquism museum

BY DANN WOELLERT

Picture it.

It’s 1979 at the Vent Haven ventriloquism ConVENTion in Erlanger, Kentucky. I’m 8-years-old and I’m surrounded by kids my own age who — like me — are aspiring “vents.” The experience is magical, full of performances by professionals who make the whole thing look easy.

Even at this age, I know that Northern Kentucky is ground zero for American vents. The Vent Haven Museum — the world’s only ventriloquism museum — has been hosting this international event since 1975, with around 500-600 attendees each year.

Vent Haven is located in Fort Mitchell, just 15 minutes south of downtown Cincinnati. Founder William Shakespeare Berger was a Cincinnati businessman and amateur vent who acquired a collection of more than 500 dummies from 1910 until his death in 1972.

The museum, made up of four small buildings on Berger’s former home, has doubled in size through donations of vent materials since its 1973 opening. It now boasts 900 (and counting) ventriloquist puppets, some more than 150 years old, as well as an exhaustive collection of ephemera — photos, scripts, posters, recordings and more than 20,000 letters — and archives documenting the art form. A recent capital campaign will enable the museum to break ground this September on a larger, more climatecontrolled building.

The 45th ConVENTion took place July 14-17 at a Holiday Inn near CVG, with the annual tradition being less convention, more family reunion (last year was canceled due to COVID). From sunrise to sunset, attendees experienced master class seminars from the most brilliant ventriloquists in the country like Jeff Dunham, Jay Johnson, Tom Crowl and Liz Von Seggen. The evening performances could have been straight out of any Las Vegas venue.

Filmmakers and authors Bryan W. Simon and Marjorie Engesser also brought their new book, I’m No Dummy Everyday: 365 Days of Ventriloquial Oddities, Curiosities, and Fun Facts, with proceeds benefiting Vent Haven. In 2010, Simon produced the movie I’m No Dummy, the only feature-length documentary about ventriloquists, and went on in 2018 to follow that up with I’m No Dummy II.

It’s thrilling that so many professional ventriloquists and aspiring performers come together to lift each other up and improve skills. During the 1979 convention, I’d already had several months of practice with the help of vaudeville star Edgar Bergen’s record and developed a character with my own dummy. At one point during the event, I found myself practically shoulder to shoulder with a young Jeff Dunham, who had started going to the ConVENTions with his father a few years before.

Similarly, I was at my first ConVENTion because of my father. Dad is a super-fan of vaudeville and slapstick comedy, so this event was

right up his alley. After all, for my seventh birthday the year before, my parents gave me my very own Simon Sez ventriloquist dummy (I later dropped the Sez) from Sears.

Part of this birthday gift was Bergen’s obligatory record Laugh and Learn: Lessons in Ventriloquism. Bergen and his two dummy partners — the elegant Charlie McCarthy and the goofy Mortimer Snerd — turned ventriloquism into American entertainment on The Ed Sullivan Show. My Simon Sez was a Howdy Doody-ized version of Charlie McCarthy. I had put a red cowboy shirt on him and began my vent journey.

Alongside Cincinnati-style chili, ventriloquism came of age in the United States during the vaudeville boom of the 1920s. Many vents performed during burlesque shows at Cincinnati’s Empress Theatre, where you could get a late-night coney or 3-Way after a show.

Some of the most elaborate and now most-coveted ventriloquist dummies were made here in Greater Cincinnati during the Great Depression. Figures made in Harrison, Ohio, by brothers George and Glenn McElroy are considered to be the Stradivariuses of ventriloquist dummies. Using typewriter and piano key mechanisms, the brothers — two young engineers — crafted what are now the most prized dummies in the field. They’re known for their complex movements like slanting eyebrows, wagging ears, thrusting tongues, winking eyes and even spitting and smoking tubes.

The Vent Haven Museum has nine of them. Globally renowned ventriloquist and comedian Dunham owns one called Skinny Dugan. The McElroys only made about 40 figures, so they rarely come up at auction or into the public eye, which makes them even more coveted.

From the 1940s through the 1970s, variety shows were the portals for many ventriloquists. Ed Sullivan introduced audiences to a number of vent/puppet duos: Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Señor Wences and Johnny, Jimmy Nelson and Danny O’Day, Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney. Through the television, audiences heard Farfel the dog punctuate the “Nestle makes the very best” jingle with a deep, loud “Chocolate.” And the phrase “S’alright” from Señor Wences’ dummy head Pedro became cemented into popular culture everywhere.

“Ventriloquism is a fabulous illusion. A good ventriloquist is the most believable thing in the world,” says Lisa Sweasy, director and curator of the Vent Haven Museum. “I like to watch a vent that has this distinct alter ego or character that they’re doing. To me, it’s a monologue that has to be perceived as a dialogue or else it’s no good.”

Part of the brilliance of an act is developing an entertaining dialogue between puppet and vent. And it’s important for the puppet’s voice to be different than the vent’s voice. The most common voices are nasal, like Lambchop’s; breathy, like Jessica Rabbit’s; goofy, like Mortimer Snerd’s; or guttural, like Yoda’s, Oscar the Grouch’s or even Miss Piggy’s. Choosing a voice that brings a puppet to life and is sustainable, believable and appealing is the ultimate challenge of venting.

Ventriloquist Steve Taylor says that one of the most important aspects of a good act is the vent parody, in which the character makes fun of the ventriloquist and the entire concept. A dummy often refers to the hand in its body with lines like, “I thought I was constipated, but then I realized where your hand was.”

“Voice, breath and puppets. That’s what we are,” says Jay Johnson, a regular returning presenter at the ConVENTion in Erlanger. “You have to fall in love with rehearsal and possess your act.”

Johnson is the only Tony Award-winning vent thus far, with the 2007 win for his oneman-show Jay Johnson: The Two & Only! He brought ventriloquism back into the spotlight with his role as Chuck Campbell on the progressive 1970s sitcom Soap, indulging his character’s dummy Bob.

Today, television shows like America’s Got Talent are launching pads for gifted vents, proving that it’s far from a dying art. Three ventriloquists have become AGT champions since the show launched in 2006.

Megan Piphus, a graduate of Princeton High School in Sharonville, brought her vent act to Season 8 in 2013. Although she didn’t win, she went on to join the cast of Sesame Street as the voice of Gabrielle in 2020.

Ventriloquism continues to be embraced, as the crowded 2021 ConVENTion shows.

And the community continues to grow. This year, I met a woman from Lexington who had been a vent since she was 8. A former banker, she now teaches grade schoolers about how to manage their money with her goofy guy and gossipy church lady puppets.

Another attendee has been an amateur vent for his children and family for nearly 30 years. And I sat next to a New Jersey orthopedic surgeon who has been venting for children’s education for more than 20 years.

But what makes the ConVENTion really special is how accessible worldclass vents are to aspiring performers and younger attendees. Jeff Dunham has been coming since 1975, when he was an eager adolescent vent. In Erlanger this year, he gave audiences a preview of his new character URL (pronounced “Earl”), a snarky, social media-addicted millennial living in his parents’ basement.

The ConVENTion also organizes Junior Vent University and a junior open mic night, and it’s astounding how good the youngsters are. The youngest performer, Brickell Miller, was 6 years old.

Many ventriloquists including Dunham, Lynn Trefzger and Willie Tyler have described themselves as shy kids. Jay Johnson has said he used ventriloquism to save himself from a dyslexic childhood.

This year, I saw kids who were the same age as I was at my first convention. One was with his mother, and he already had six personalities that he performed with for friends and relatives.

The joy I’d felt as a kid many years ago returned as I made my way through the event.

I returned home from that initial ConVENTion inspired to create a great act that I could perform for friends at recess and during show and tell. My acts won the laughs of classmates, boosting my awkward adolescent confidence. My dummy poked fun at the school, teachers, even classmates in a non-threatening way that wouldn’t land me in detention. And although I didn’t make it to world-class vent venues in Las Vegas in the ensuing years, Sister Carlene’s third-grade class at St. Bartholomew Consolidated School saw some great performances.

Eventually, I packed my dummy Simon away in his box, only bringing him out for special performances and later for nieces and nephews. His plastic mechanism eventually broke, sending Simon the way of the Toy Story toys — into a recycling bin. But I kept his cowboy shirt for another character I might find in the future to revive the old act.

But today, as an adult, I’m thinking about my dad while I attend the 2021 ConVENTion. I’ve been nostalgic lately as I approach a milestone birthday, and this journey fueled that flame.

During Liz Von Seggen’s “Introduction to Vent” session, I felt my muscle memory coming back. Although a tad rusty, I remembered most of the tricks for masking those hard-to-hide bilabial consonants like p and b, which require the use of both lips.

Maybe ventriloquism is the ultimate form of therapy — being beside ourselves in difficult conversations, articulating our inner voices, saying things we wouldn’t normally say out loud and being able to laugh at our quirks. Vents are educators, mediators and certainly laugh makers.

But maybe vents are also our modern-day shamans. I know I came out of the ConVENTion feeling 100% lighter and I’ll be back next year for even more. For more on Vent Haven — including how to visit the museum — as well as details about the 2022 Vent Haven ConVENTion, visit venthaven.org.

The Vent Haven Museum has more than 900 classic dummies. PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER Some highly coveted dummies were made in Greater Cincinnati during the Great Depression. PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

CULTURE New Grants Help Community Gardens Bloom Where They’re Needed in Walnut Hills and Covington

BY ALLISON BABKA

Two Greater Cincinnati community gardens have a few more resources, thanks to recent grant wins.

Melrose Foraging Forest in Walnut Hills and Redden Gardens in Covington each earned $1,000 through grants from Pure Farmland’s Pure Growth Project initiative. The grant winners — all community gardens and farms — were announced Aug. 16.

Though the grants are comparably smaller than other funding sources, they’ll bolster the projects that Cincinnati gardens already have in the works to bring affordable, sustainable food to the region, especially to those who might not otherwise have access.

Gary Dangel, food access coordinator for the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, tells CityBeat that Melrose Foraging Forest will use the Pure Farmland grant to “purchase and install more fruit trees, berry bushes, medicinal and culinary herbs, a perennial pollinator habitat, and garden signage.” Melrose Foraging Forest is one of eight gardens in the urban agriculture network in Walnut Hills, Dangel says.

“The Melrose Foraging Forest will be producing apples, pears, cherries, peaches and pawpaws as well as goji berries, currants and strawberries. The idea is for everyone, regardless of their financial situation, to have access to free nutritious food,” he says.

The project donates most of its produce to Queen City Kitchen, La Soupe and church-based food programs, he adds.

“The amount we sell to local restaurants or at pop-up farmer’s markets does not nearly cover the cost of our soil, water, seedlings, compost and labor. So we rely on grant funding and a volunteer workforce to grow food for residents living in the Walnut Hills food desert,” Dangel says. “As we grow these healthy fruits and veggies, we also grow meaningful relationships with our neighbors.”

Brian Goessling, founder of Redden Gardens, also is looking forward to expanding projects with the Pure Farmland grant. He says that Redden will use the funds for educational signage within and near the garden.

“This will include information about topics such as chickens, beehives, composting, rainwater retention, pollinators/pollinator-friendly plants, and growing tips and tricks. It will serve to tell the story passively of what we are doing and why we are doing it,” Goessling says. “We hope that people in the community can take these principles and use them in their own homes or lives. It is another way we can reach the community efficiently by providing this self-guided tour.”

Found on Scott Boulevard in Covington, Redden Gardens rents plots of land to local urban farmers while also providing the community with free-forthe-picking fruits, vegetables and flowers outside its fences. Goessling says that Redden Gardens also has launched “Covunity Fridge,” where locals can enjoy fresh food, hygiene products, cold and hot water, and a microwave.

Goessling and Dangel each say that grants are vital to urban agriculture efforts.

“Grant programs like these help communities thrive because they allow us to implement creative solutions to our own needs. Last year with The Center for Great Neighborhoods, the money supplemented other funds for an extension of our victory gardening program, which brings raised beds and container gardens directly to people’s homes,” Goessling says.

Both Dangel and Goessling want to expand their gardens’ programs in the future, ultimately connecting even more Greater Cincinnati residents to food and knowledge.

“We are looking to bring the community in through communal events, focusing on food and storytelling, and further educational programming. We would love to strengthen the bonds and knowledge sharing of our gardening groups and tie this to the community as a whole,” Goessling says.

Dangel also is looking to connect community members with one another.

“Turning the green space into a sustainable community area where people can safely meet outside for positive interactions is on our wish list,” he says. “We’ve been hosting a weekly nature enrichment activity with youth and counselors from Found Village. We

Redden Gardens

PHOTO: FACEBOOK.COM/REDDENGARDENS

Melrose Foraging Forest

PHOTO: WALNUT HILLS REDEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION

also want to expand the outdoor space to conduct classes on medicinal plants and edible landscapes.” Find information about Melrose

Foraging Forest at walnuthillsrf.org and about Redden Gardens at reddengardens.org.

CULTURE Covington Street Hockey League Does More Than Play

BY KATIE GRIFFITH

Last fall, the Covington Street Hockey League (CSHL) seized an opportunity that allowed its game and philanthropic initiatives to grow. All it took was a crew of 24 people, some serious muscle, various power tools and a fleet of personally-owned trailers and trucks. One trip to Dayton and two days of work later, the crew extracted plastic boards that once enclosed Dayton’s minor-league ice hockey rink.

Hara Arena was home to The Dayton Demolition until a 2019 tornado rendered the arena unusable. Three days before demolition was scheduled, CSHL founder and commissioner Jesse Kleinhenz rallied members of the league to retrieve the boards — a $50,000 value, he says. The team then buckled down on a vision to make Covington’s Barb Cook Park its new home.

While the enclosure has its practical benefits, like not losing the ball every other play, the CSHL sees it as an opportunity to engage the community and support its latest Youth Program.

“The rink is across the street from Latonia Terrace projects,” Kleinhenz says. “It’s a huge opportunity to reach out to a lower-income area and give people a chance to play something. They could play hockey but they (also) could play soccer. There’s all kinds of activities you can do with an asphalted space.”

The CSHL struck a deal with the City of Covington: foot the $24,000 bill to asphalt the arena and the space was theirs. The rink opened in the spring, attracting community members and falling in line with Covington’s recent plans to redevelop area parks.

Street hockey, also called roller hockey, is played similarly to ice hockey but with a few differences. Most notably, there are no lines on a street hockey rink, which means no offsides or icing (an infraction regarding the lines on an ice rink). Also, ice hockey is played with a puck and street hockey with a ball, or “the great equalizer,” as Kleinhenz says. As a result, street hockey commands more strategy and possession skills.

Four years ago, the league didn’t have intentions beyond getting people together to play. In 2018, about seven players showed up for their first pick-up game, Kleinhenz says. It was a snowy Saturday in January at Kenney Shields Park in Covington (their original home), so the bunch sidelined their skates, cleared some snow and played a game on foot. Aside from pandemic-related reasons, the league hasn’t skipped many Saturdays since.

“We’ve been so consistent,” Kleinhenz says. “It’s probably one of the biggest reasons street hockey here is still alive. Thursday and Saturday. If it’s December and there isn’t snow on the ground, we are out there playing, three to four hours.”

Now, as an official nonprofit organization, the grassroots league is ingrained in Covington’s quirky identity, adding to its laidback, inclusive and altruistic culture.

“When we decided we could make Covington Street Hockey bigger than just playing hockey, we started cleaning parks and being the city’s muscle,” Kleinhenz says. “Just being a helping hand out there. We try to be as inclusive as we can, it’s free to play with us, and we generally have equipment to give away to people. It’s a giving and volunteering culture. We are constantly encouraging our crew to volunteer their time, and always wanting to reach our next fundraising goal.”

No one really asked them to do it, either. The group of 100-plus players — a conglomerate of all ages and skill levels — found common ground off the rink, where members participate in local park cleanups, engage youth by teaching hockey and providing equipment, host an annual holiday toy drive and hold quarterly tournaments and fundraising events.

Since the league’s inception, participants have raised more than $35,000 from merchandise sales, donations, booths at local festivals and tournaments, according to the CSHL website. Last year, $500 of those funds came in the form of a grant from the Cincinnati Cyclones, which the league used to buy children’s hockey sticks, says Kleinhenz.

In May, the City of Covington honored the CSHL with its annual “Authenti-CITY” award, which acknowledged five places, events, people or organizations that “make Covington an authentically cool city in the Tri-State,” according to the City of Covington’s website.

The league is made up of six teams whose names represent the playful and witty attitude adopted by the league: Goebel Goats, The Shields, Mainstrasse Misfits, Roebling Trolls, Licking River Rats and Devou Devils. Local breweries MadTree, Braxton and Rhinegeist sponsor the teams with uniforms.

Covington bar Gypsy’s, where Kleinhenz is the general manager, is the league’s clubhouse. Members gather before and after games, hold proper drafts for the teams and fundraising events there when needed. The six teams only convene to compete competitively during quarterly tournament; otherwise, the group focuses on twice-weekly pick-up games. It’s a come-and-go, cracka-Busch-Light type of environment where camaraderie rules and teams are chosen at random after participants toss their sticks into a pile.

“What’s really incredible is the variety of skill levels in the crew in and outside of hockey,” Kleinhenz says. “We have construction workers, social media experts, beer sales reps, teachers, engineers, digital designers — all of these people come together to create incredible merch and media content and a great area to live in.”

From the beginning, the “bubs,” as they call each other, have utilized individual talents of league members to fuel league operations, merchandise and media. From flags to uniforms and advertising to fundraising, the CSHL has its own leadership team that manages and oversees the enterprise.

The group produces unscripted pre- and post-game interviews, where players often satirize National Hockey League interviews. The videos are shared on social media, where the public can enjoy and also get to know the players.

“We go out there on Rollerblades and have a good time,” Kleinhenz says. “Right off the bat we started making really funny videos, just acting like we were professionals, like post-game interviews and stuff. I think that’s what really gained us some notoriety, just cause we were being goofballs.”

The team’s habitual content creation came as second nature and paid off in August, when they were selected by video submission to compete in the Barstool Sports Summer Hockeyfest in Detroit. As one of 48 teams chosen nationally, the CSHL brought seven players and 40-50 supporters to the tournament, Kleinhenz says.

“They were taking team submissions by video only,” he says. “They were looking for the most electric teams and people that were going to go up there and cause a bunch of buzz and have a good time. We definitely created a spectacle, right off the rip we were the only team to show up with a trailer.”

The players competed Aug. 6 and 7 and made it to the semi-finals, until they were knocked out by the team that took first place. The CSHL returned home with pride and ready to focus their efforts on reestablishing quarterly tournaments that were thrown off by COVID-19, as well as their Youth Program, community giveback and future plans to implement a more competitive league for the six teams.

On Saturday, Oct. 30, the CSHL will host its first tournament in over a year called “Night of the Living Send 2.” Costumes are mandatory and admission fees apply. Kleinhenz says the team usually puts together some form of live music, craft beer and food sales for entertainment.

“‘Send’ is a hockey thing for sure. It’s like ‘send it, go hard,’” Kleinhenz says, noting that it’s a phrase the league applies to wherever their focus lies, whether that’s continuing to cultivate a community that holds space for everyone and creates opportunities or simply playing the sport.

Members of the Covington Street Hockey League PHOTO: KATIE GRIFFITH

Learn more about the Covington Street Hockey League at covingtonstreethockeyleague.com.