Ventriloquist will drive people to drink at event

How to go

Who: Ventriloquist Lynn Trefzger

When: 5:30 p.m. April 12, with happy hour at 4:30.

Where: Hollenbeck Bayley Creative Arts and Conference Center

Tickets: $10; visit pac.clarkstate.edu or call (937) 328-3874 to order

SPRINGFIELD — Lynn Trefzger thinks she has a sense of where ventriloquists, like herself, rate on the grand scale of entertainers.

“We’re right there with mimes,” the Ohio ventriloquist/comedian confessed recently.

Actually, no — they’re worse.

After all, there’s no clinical term — yet — to describe the fear of mimes.

The fear of a ventriloquist dummy, however, is known as automatonophobia.

The recent success of Jeff Dunham is helping people cope, but it’s still tough to be a working ventriloquist.

Trefzger — a Mentor resident whose parents always thought she’d grow out of it — will perform locally April 12 as part of the Clark State Performing Arts Center’s Wine Down Thursday series.

If you’re iffy about ventriloquists, take note.

A complimentary drink is included with admission.

“If I meet someone new and they ask what I do,” Trefzger said, “I usually tell them I just travel.

“I usually don’t tell them I’m a ventriloquist.”

Hey, it’s still better than being a clown — coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, seemingly, is more widespread than automatonophobia.

“It’s a stranger form of entertainment,” Trefzger said.

But, when done right, it still amazes.

Show-biz history is loaded with famous ventriloquists and their wise-cracking, inanimate buddies, from Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy to Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop to Willie Tyler and Lester to Dunham and Achmed the dead terrorist.

When Trefzger — whose characters include a preschooler named Chloe and a drunken camel named Camelot — first hits the stage, all eyes are on her mouth.

“They watch me to make sure my lips aren’t moving,” she said.

Then it happens — the audience just accepts the puppet as a real, live being.

“It’s all an illusion,” she said.

In 2009, Trefzger was featured alongside her old friend, Dunham, and veteran ventriloquist Jay Johnson (of TV’s “Soap”) in “I’m No Dummy,” a documentary exploring the art of ventriloquy.

“It’s a comedy documentary,” Trefzger said. “Nothing too serious. But it’s very interesting.”

“If you’re interested in ventriloquists,” she added, almost apologetically.

Trefzger was 9 when she got her first dummy for Christmas, having seen it in the Sears catalog.

“I found I had a sense of humor,” she explained, “and found I could get away with saying things through the dummy.”

That’s always been the beauty of ventriloquism.

“I know I’m by myself,” she said, “but I have a puppet to blame.”

It’s also perfect for a shy girl like Trefzger.

“The attention is off of me,” she said. “It’s all focused on the character.”

At 12, she attended her first ventriloquism convention in Kentucky.

There, she first met a 17-year-old named Jeff Dunham.

“He’s worked so hard for it,” she said. “He lives, eats, breathes ventriloquism.

“What floors me is the superstardom. It’s like a rock concert.”

Dunham’s success has helped make ventriloquy “cooler,” said Trefzger, who’s now 45.

She’s been working cruise ships and college campuses since the age of 20.

“It’s helped all of us working vents,” she said.

Even still, she doesn’t envision any of her five children becoming a vent.

“Let’s hope not,” she said.

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.