14 DAY TRIAL // The curtains raise showing off the actor and his puppet.
While they tell each other jokes, the puppet seems alive, possessing its own voice and personality. Of course, the actor, a ventriloquist, is the one that produces the "voice" of the puppet, being continuously attentive not to move his lips while doing this.
The word "ventriloquist" comes from the Latin "venter" and "loquere" which means "to speak from the belly", as in other times ventriloquy was regarded as the ability of speaking out of your stomach.
There is a close ventriloquy, when the voice of the interpret comes from nearby, as when the puppet stays on his knees. In the distant ventriloquy, the voice seems to come from a great distance.
A ventriloquist can also repress his voice as if it came from the inside of a closed space or a tight box. Some ventriloquists can imitate sounds like an animal call or a baby cry without moving their lips at all.
A good ventriloquist can be very convincing. It is said that once a ventriloquist shouted a repressed yell for help while a cart loaded with hay was passing. The people really stopped the cart and unloaded the hay, expecting to find the poor victim covered by hay! Of course, they found nobody.
The ancient Greeks called this art gastromancy.
It is believed that ventriloquy appeared with the aim of fooling the superstitious people into believing that they were speaking with the spirits of the dead ones as they had returned to pass on information retrieved from beyond the grave.
In the Middle Ages it was regarded as witchcraft.
In time, it was proven that ventriloquy is just a human ability and turned more of a performance art as, starting around the 16th century, it revealed its mystical trappings.
In time, it was employed for comedy shows and for displaying the amazing qualities of the ventriloquists.
In the XX th century, the dialogues between the ventriloquists and their wooden puppets became fashionable.