16 GAZETTE 6 September 2012
EXCLUSIVE The Gazette catches up with legendary comedian, David Strassman
Master of puppets back for bravura new show I BAIRBRE NI BHRAONAIN
AWARD-winning veteran ventriloquist and comedian, David Strassman, is exited at the prospect of “coming home” when he arrives in Ireland this month with a brand-new show, Be Careful What You Wish For, at the Olympia. The new show, which will run for five nights this September, will see Strassman returning to Dublin: “I lived in Clontarf for a year, my son was born in Mount Carmel’s, and I married a Donegal girl, though we’re now happily divorced.” Strassman, from Los Angeles, has certainly travelled a long way since his introduction to ventriloquism in junior high school there. “A teacher, Mr Horowitz, decided to teach ventriloquism as an elective class. I really chose it to get the easy grade. He saw that I excelled, and then he showed me how to place an
ad in a local paper to do kids’ birthday parties. So, at age 14, I was making $50 for a half-hour show, while all my mates were cutting the grass and raking leaves for five bucks a day.” David is accompanied as ever by a cast of puppet characters in his new show, and they form the basis and the theme of the production. “This particular show is truly my most wild, funniest and has amazing production value. It’s basically about my main puppet, Chuck Wood, who wants to take over my brain and tries to get all the other puppets to mutiny against me. One of my puppets, Angel, has the power magically to make wishes come true and when I hear there’s a mutiny about to happen, I say to the puppets, ‘I wish you never existed’. “Through the magic of theatre, I travel through a wormhole into another dimension where all my puppets exist without my
influence, so each puppet has a doppelganger in another dimension and they don’t know me I’ve to find my way back home.” Strassman’s technological wizardry, which he first developed with the help of a NASA engineer, is used to great effect in the show. “I’ve developed a technology where in one scene, I have a hand-held wireless device which operates my puppet live. “I have graduated to a wireless device, enabling me to operate a puppet without using my hands in the traditional way, but 80% [of the show] is still traditional puppetry.” Strassman’s father was a psychiatrist, and the connection between this and his multiple puppet personalities was something that he was very aware of. “My dad was a psychiatrist and, well, I call [what I do] ‘controlled schizophrenia’. But my dad never psychoanalysed me. The characters have always had
their own individual personalities, hopes, dreams and fears. Each character has parameters of what it would say or do in their imaginary puppet life. “But there is an element between my two major characters, Chuck Wood and Ted E Bear and real life. The sibling rivalry between those two puppets is very similar to the relationship I had with my brother. People love to see Chuck pick on Ted E, and Ted E loving Chuck unconditionally - it makes for a great dynamic in theatre.” And which character did Strassman play in real life? “Oh, I was Chuck! I was the meanest of the two,” he said. David Strassman’s Careful What You Wish For will run at The Olympia Theatre from September 11 to15. Tickets are available at The Olympia Theatre and cost €28 / €29. For more information, see www. chuckwood.com or www.ticketmaster.ie
Ventriloquist David Strassman, pictured here with Chuck Wood, is back in Dublin from September 11