MONTREAL – The world of ventriloquy is in uproar following revelations that renowned ventriloquist Janzo Ballensteen has been using his son, 12-year-old Wally Ballensteen, a real human being, as the dummy in his stage act for the last three years.
Suspicions had been building in the ventriloquist community, but it was not until a performance gaffe last Tuesday evening that Ballensteen’s secret was unintentionally revealed. In the middle of his popular ‘12 chocolate bars in 12 minutes’ routine, Wally began choking, forcing his father to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre with both his hands.
“My whole life is crashing down because of this unfortunate incident,” Ballensteen said in a press release earlier this week. “I’m ashamed and very sorry to disappoint my fans. This reflects very poorly on the ventriloquist community after all the hard work we’ve done to improve our public image.”
Ballensteen initially tried using the “Geppetto and Pinocchio” defense, proclaiming to the audience, “He must’ve wished upon a star! He’s become a real boy!”
But the audience remained skeptical, finally booing Ballensteen off the stage when it became clear that Wally needed medical attention.
Ballensteen has since lost his ventriloquism license for breaching union dummy rules that require the dummy to be non-human.
The shamed ventriloquist later admitted he used his son not only because it has been difficult for ventriloquists to make names for themselves in recent years, but also because he has “never been that great at throwing his voice.”
Yet Ballensteen insists his actions were not strictly motivated by a desire to improve his act; rather, he said that his son-for-dummy swap would ensure more family time together.
“I work long hours and sometimes I’m on tour for weeks. This was a way to spend more time with [Wally] and teach him the family business. I was going to use the profits to put the boy through college.”
Ballensteen also claimed that his son enjoyed skipping school to travel around in trunks and tell dirty jokes in front of adults without getting into trouble.
Over the last three years, Wally performed in more than 200 shows across North America and the Czech Republic, and had developed a large following. But devoted fans began to question why the dummy appeared to have grown two inches in six months, how it was that he was developing severe facial acne, and the mechanics of how he once got a boner on stage during a private birthday performance at a Hooters restaurant.
“I was always trying to figure out who had made Ballensteen’s dummy because it was so amazingly realistic,” said Tallis Zimmerman, a dummy master from Europe. “I saw it going to the bathroom one time, and a week later, red lights went off in my head.”
“I’m glad [Ballensteen] got busted,” he continued. “I’d expect this kind of disreputable, amateurish behaviour from a puppet show, and maybe even a marionette show, but not from a member of the Ventriloquists Society. We have standards.”
Ballensteen, however, is not the only ventriloquist incorporating ‘human dummies’ into acts.
“We see this a lot, unfortunately,” explained Maria Dimitritov, a Russian ventriloquist. “You get performers who’ll buckle under the pressure. Audiences are tough and demanding. They always want more realism, and now and then you get guys who’ll try to sneak a kid into their act.”
Added Dimititov: “It’s just not right. Some of the best dummies are being put out of work by these boys.”
