People who know the art because they have lived it.

Jimmy Vee

President · Director

Jimmy Vee is a ventriloquist, magician, children’s author, entrepreneur, archivist, and founder of the Ventriloquism Institute.

He served as Executive Director of the Vent Haven ConVENTion in 2024 and 2025, joined the Vent Haven Museum Board of Advisors in 2021, and helped revive the organization now known as the Florida Ventriloquist Association.

Jimmy wrote How to Make Your Sock Talk and built the Archive that became the Institute’s flagship preservation project. He holds an MA in organizational management and is responsible for turning the Institute’s founding vision into working programs. More about Jimmy →

Mark Wade

Director

Mark Wade is an internationally known ventriloquist, children’s entertainer, educator, and teacher of performers.

He led the Vent Haven ConVENTion for twenty‑five consecutive years and chaired it thirty‑one times, more than anyone else in its history. He and his wife, Jody, also carried Maher Ventriloquist Studios forward after the death of Clinton Detweiler, helping keep the Maher Course available to another generation.

Mark brings a lifetime of knowledge about the art, teaching, children’s entertainment, and the community that carries ventriloquism forward.

More about Mark

He is now director emeritus and has been part of every ConVENTion since the event began.

Mark and his wife, Jody, took responsibility for Maher Ventriloquist Studios after the death of Clinton Detweiler and later passed it to Tom Crowl, helping keep the Maher Course available to another generation of students. He has served on the Vent Haven Museum Board of Advisors since that board was formed.

Allen J. Venezio, MME

Director

Allen J. Venezio is a professional jazz trumpet player, author, and music educator with more than thirty years of experience in classrooms and on bandstands.

He is Director of Bands and Associate Professor of Music at the College of Central Florida, author of Trumpet 101, and founder and music director of the Same Is Lame Jazz Ambassadors.

A director since the nonprofit was formed in 2014, Allen brings practical experience in arts education, public performance, and building programs that give young people somewhere to grow. Photo: Maggie Studios

More about Allen

At the College of Central Florida he directs the Wind Ensemble, Patriot Jazz Ensemble, and Brass Ensemble, and teaches music theory.

Allen founded the Same Is Lame Jazz Ambassadors in 2015 and remains the ensemble’s music director and lead trumpet. The organization supported the group’s free public performances for years.

Terry Fator

Advisor · Headline performance and mass‑audience reach

Terry Fator is a singer, impressionist, comedian, author, philanthropist, and ventriloquist whose career helped bring ventriloquism back into the mainstream and onto the Las Vegas Strip.

He found a book on ventriloquism at ten and bought a Willie Talk from Sears for ten dollars. Walter T. Airdale joined the act on his eighteenth birthday and still works it. Roughly twenty‑five years of fairs, churches, corporate dates, and opening slots followed. Then, at forty‑two, he won America’s Got Talent and launched a Las Vegas run of more than 3,500 performances.

He brings the view from the biggest room this art has played, plus proof that a ventriloquist can still become the main event. Full profile →

Love the site and am excited to be part of it.Terry Fator

Ronn Lucas

Advisor · Stagecraft and comedy

Ronn Lucas is a ventriloquist and comedian who appeared on Broadway, became a repeat guest on The Tonight Show, and was the first ventriloquist to headline a long‑running Las Vegas show. He has worked with carved figures, puppets, and famously, nothing but his own hand.

Ronn brings command of the fundamentals at the highest level and a lifetime of knowing what a room will and will not accept.

More about Ronn

He was appearing in a Broadway show before he ever attended a ventriloquist convention. He has been a repeat guest on The Tonight Show and appeared on Night Court and L.A. Law, working with Scorch the dragon, Billy, and, famously, nothing at all but his own hand.

He was the first ventriloquist to headline a long‑running show in Las Vegas, which is the door Terry Fator later walked through. Atlantic City Magazine named him Entertainer of the Year, and in 2005 the Smothers Brothers presented him with the Askins Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the ventriloquial art.

Bob Abdou

Advisor · Working performance and mentorship

Bob Abdou, known as Mr. Puppet, has been a full‑time ventriloquist since 1996 and has performed more than 7,600 shows. He received the W.S. Berger Distinguished Service Award in 2014 and has spent decades teaching, writing, and mentoring performers one at a time.

Bob brings the working life, a teacher’s generosity, and the belief that the next performer may already be sitting in today’s audience.

More about Bob

He got here the long way. He ran a printing company in Atlanta that grew to fifteen employees and ten presses before it came apart. Then he volunteered as a weekend house greeter at the Center for Puppetry Arts for three years, with no experience, to find out what kind of ventriloquist he could be. He has been full‑time since 1996 and, by his own count, has performed more than 7,600 shows, rebuilding the business from scratch in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Austin, Columbus, and now Hilton Head Island.

He received the W.S. Berger Distinguished Service Award in 2014. He is the Puppeteers of America’s consultant for ventriloquism and a correspondent for The Puppetry Journal, wrote the “Ask the Pro” column for Ventriloquist Central, and made the Tidbit in a Minute lesson series. Every July, during the Vent Haven ConVENTion, he takes a group of ventriloquists to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to perform for the patients. He has done that every year since 2003, and at Shriners for three years before that.

Jeff Goltz

Advisor · Young performers, figure making, and comedy

Jeff Goltz began performing at seven, worked at Peewinkle’s Puppet Studio at nine, and attended his first Vent Haven ConVENTion at ten. Today he is a stand‑up comedy ventriloquist, figure maker, Open Mic Director at the ConVENTion, and an instructor at Junior Vent University.

Jeff represents what the Institute’s programs are trying to produce: a young person who found the room, learned the work, and now helps run it.

More about Jeff

He started performing at talent shows at seven and went to work at Peewinkle’s Puppet Studio in Indianapolis at nine. He came to his first Vent Haven ConVENTion at ten and has not missed one since. He builds his own figures by hand, and he did a full year of straight stand‑up comedy before he ever brought a puppet on stage.

He is the ConVENTion’s Open Mic Director and teaches at Junior Vent University alongside Lynn Trefzger and Megan Hall. He began in puppetry with Peewinkle’s Puppet Studio and the Melchior Marionettes, and his design work has been staged professionally, including a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Key West whose director, Richard Ericson, called him “a gifted artist.”

Chance Wolf

Advisor · Figure making and mechanics

Chance Wolf is a figure maker, commercial artist, and owner of Wolf’s Magic. He is known for precise, compact mechanics and for custom figures designed, sculpted, and fabricated in his own shop.

Chance brings the maker’s eye to the least documented part of ventriloquism: the hands, workshops, materials, and mechanisms that physically built the art.

More about Chance

He got his first figure, a Jerry Mahoney, at twelve, the same year magic got hold of him. What followed was forty years of paid drawing: sign painter, commercial artist, comic book inker, then builder of magic apparatus. He founded Wolf’s Magic in 2003 with his wife Shelley.

He is known for mechanics. Controls that are precise and compact, with nothing visible that should not be. His custom figures start at ten thousand dollars and are designed, sculpted, and fabricated in his own shop.

Mike Palma

Advisor · Performance and figure building

Mike Palma is a ventriloquist and figure maker in Ocala, Florida. He built his first figure at eighteen, performed his first show at nineteen, and has been building and performing ever since.

Mike brings both halves of the art at once: the ability to understand how a figure is constructed and how it comes alive in front of an audience.

More about Mike

He built his first figure at eighteen out of plastic wood and did his first show at nineteen. He has been performing and building ever since, for audiences that include corporate rooms for Snap‑on Tools and the LPGA, and he lectures on figure mechanics to anyone who wants to learn them.

Jeff Duckworth calls him “a master builder, and one heck of a ventriloquist.” Bob Conrad called him “a great craftsman and artist” whose painting “is a work of art in itself.”

Trish Dunn

Advisor · Teaching and women in ventriloquism

Trish Dunn is a comedy ventriloquist working on both sides of the Atlantic and the founder of Women In Ventriloquism. A self‑taught performer and direct, practical instructor, she teaches the physical mechanics of the art without guarding the method.

Trish brings a teacher’s clarity and the community where women in ventriloquism can find and support one another.

More about Trish

She started with a Simon Says dummy her parents ordered out of the Sears catalog. In 2004 she left her previous career to do this full time. She is self‑taught, which is the ordinary way into this art and the reason she is so direct about teaching it.

She publishes plain instruction on the mechanics: which letters are labial, where the tongue goes for a B or an F or a W, and the practice method of recording yourself and then watching it back with the sound off to catch a lip that moves. She also builds teaching shows for children, and founded GTown Comics, a comedy coaching group, in Gastonia, North Carolina.

Steve Hewlett

Advisor · British variety, comedy writing, and oral history

Steve Hewlett is a British comedy ventriloquist, writer, Britain’s Got Talent finalist, and member of the Grand Order of Water Rats. His podcast Eyes and Teeth recorded more than two hundred conversations with comedians and variety performers between 2020 and 2025.

Steve brings a comedy writer’s ear and an oral history of British variety captured while the people who lived it were still here to tell it.

More about Steve

He was roadying for Joe Pasquale at about fifteen, triggering the sound tapes during the act. He became a finalist on Britain’s Got Talent, where David Walliams told him “I love the scripts, they are so witty. Your ventriloquism is incredible but you’re so funny with it!” He is a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats, hosts the Thursford Christmas Spectacular, and works the ships and the Warner houses through most of the year.

He also spent five years building something the rest of this field did not. Eyes and Teeth, his podcast, ran to 214 episodes across sixteen seasons between 2020 and 2025: roughly 219 hours of working comedians and variety performers talking about the job, including Sir Ken Dodd and Paul Daniels.

Jacki Manna

Advisor · Education and historical continuity

Jacki Manna is a ventriloquist, puppeteer, magician, and career classroom teacher in Orlando. She apprenticed with ventriloquist and figure maker Howie Olson and remains the working custodian of figures passed through that performing line.

Jacki brings thirty years of knowing how children actually learn and firsthand experience carrying a piece of ventriloquism history forward through performance.

More about Jacki

She grew up in Iowa and put herself through the University of Iowa giving swimming lessons, taking a degree in French and economics. She holds a Florida teaching certificate and spent thirty years in high school, middle school, and grade school classrooms.

In 1989 she went to Madison, Wisconsin to apprentice with Howie Olson, the ventriloquist, figure maker, and children’s television host. When Olson died in 1992 he left her his props and his puppets. She still works Cowboy Eddie, a carved figure used first by Howard Olson, who performed as The Great Chesterfield, and then by his son Howie. She later took the originality award at the Vent‑O‑Rama in Colon, Michigan, the competition Howie ran there for thirty‑five years.

She is a founding member of the Central Florida Ventriloquist Association, the club this Institute’s founder later brought back to life as the Florida Ventriloquist Association.

Peter Michaels Jr.

Archivist

Peter Michaels Jr. is a musician, songwriter, and multi‑instrumentalist based in New York City. He grew up inside ventriloquism as the son of performer Pete Michaels and appeared at the Vent Haven ConVENTion as a boy.

Peter supervises music for the ConVENTion in his father’s legacy and serves the Institute as an archivist.

More about Peter

He grew up inside this art. His father, Pete Michaels, is a two‑time recipient of the W.S. Berger Distinguished Service Award, and Peter was performing at the Vent Haven ConVENTion as a boy, described there in 2006 as a rising star.

Guitar has been his main instrument since he was eight, alongside bass, drums, piano, mandolin, ukulele, and sitar. He has released his own music since 2018 and served as music director and slap upright bassist for the first touring company of the Johnny Cash Official Concert Experience.