These dummies do talk

The display in front of the Puppetry Arts Institute in western Independence is an appropriate teaser.

Behind the iron bars of a box office, a Groucho Marx dummy offers a string of tickets to a show featured on a poster board beneath him. It’s “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man” starring W.C. Fields and the globe’s most beloved dummy Charlie McCarthy with his protégé Edgar Bergen. Outside the box office are two dummies with varying opinions of the film: One’s a fat, gummy red-head with as many lies in his back pocket as his elongated nose indicates; the other is a high-browed know-it-all who appears to much prefer a slab of filet mignon to popcorn.

While inside visitors won’t find a film or Charlie McCarthy, they will find a good time. Honest.

“We’re not going to cheat you,” said Diane Houk, executive director of PAI, “that is, if you’re honest.”

On display at the institute through July 2009 is “Dummies Do Talk,” an exhibition of Bob Abdou’s vast dummy collection. Abdou is a well-known ventriloquist from Austin, Tex., who occasionally puts on his shows at PAI. He is scheduled to perform next August.

“Bob is a great ventriloquist,” Houk said. “He loves our place, and we love him.”

Dummies have undergone a bit of a resurgence of late, with Terry Fator winning “America’s Got Talent” using his skills as a ventriloquist to defeat musicians and dancers and such films as “Dead Silence,” starring a supernatural dummy with deadly intentions.

“This isn’t meant to scare kids,” Houk said. “Dummies emphasize what it is to be human. Today, we’re all connecting to too many electrical things without a human component. What’s wonderful about puppets is that they are a theatrical figure under human control. It’s why we’re here.”

While the exhibit features some dummies in the vein of Charlie McCarthy with a round head, square jaw and straightforward haircut, many are absurd – frail old men with hearing aids, young wide-eyed bucks with hair exasperatingly on end, a dummy rendering of Mr. Toad of classic Disney lore. They are examples of craftsmanship from various ventriloquists and dummy makers including Bill Boley and Bill Anderson.

The dummies are propped on custom-made seats as opposed to dangling from strings.

“Dummies are always sitting on somebody’s arm,” Houk said. “It would be unnatural for them to be seen standing up.”

Houk said she’s not an expert on dummies but has a tremendous amount of literature available on the subject. One is a scrapbook of clippings she put together on ventriloquism.

“Although I’m a puppeteer, I’ve always admired ventriloquists,” Houk said. “As a puppeteer you can simply speak and your puppet is talking; as a ventriloquist, you have to throw your voice into the figure.”

Houk may not regard herself as a ventriloquist, but she still understands its heritage.

One of the displays shows an open truck revealing the parts that make a dummy. The trunk and contents date back 70-something years. It’s part of Abdou’s inheritance.

“When you get old, you don’t want to see what you love left in a Dumpster some place,” Houk said. “I can relate to that.”

She said she’ll soon be handing over the reins of PAI to someone else.

That person is Nancy Clark, current president of the institute’s board of directors.



The Exhibit

“Dummies Do Talk”

Puppetry Arts Institute

11025 E. Winner Road in Independence

Additional displays include marionettes from Belgium and the story “Treasure Island”

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday

Costs: $1.50 to age 16 and $3 for adults

For more information, call 816-833-9777 or visit www.hazelle.org.