Her Master’s Voice

SXGlobal
D: Nina Conti; with Conti, Monkey, Gertrude Stein

Does Lamb Chop have a voice when Shari Lewis is no longer around? The question is more than academic for Nina Conti when she learns that the man who introduced her to ventriloquism has died and bequeathed to her the puppets he used to speak through. Since she’s wondering if she’s too old to make her living by throwing her voice into a monkey on her hand, Conti’s trip to Fort Mitchell, Ky., to leave her mentor’s dolls at a museum for the dummies of departed ventriloquists becomes a journey inward to find what her chosen art form is all about and whose voice speaks through her. Conti’s directorial debut provides a brisk, irreverent, deeply personal, and revealing look into the mind of a ventriloquist and proves her voice as a filmmaker is already as clear and accomplished as the one that speaks through her wry, wise alter ego, Monkey.

Wednesday, March 14, 7pm, Violet Crown 2

This article appears in March 16 • 2012.

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