THE light is low in the west as David Strassman calls the Post from stateside, and softly his house chimes the exact moment of sunset (with the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme).
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The ventriloquist, famed for bringing the 18th century art form into the present with clever technologies, is a self-admitted “tech geek . . . I have to be”.
Next month he’ll be touring his latest - and he says his greatest - show, iTedE, beginning in Goulburn at the Workers Club on Thursday, May 5.
“If something breaks in my show, I can’t fly out a technician from the States. I am the technician, I do most of the robotics, and any repairs,” he said.
“The robotics in my show are state-of-the-art [and] the production values I’d have at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, I’ll have at the Goulburn Workers Club.”
In iTedE, “I have broken the laws of puppet physics” as, in the second act, Strassman’s five puppets come to life simultaneously in a six-way conversation.
“This show is about how I can’t get Chuck Wood and Ted E Bare, the two main characters, off their devices,” or YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Tinder, “and it mirrors our society”.
“All of us are guilty of being addicted to the screen, but I’m afraid technology is keeping us from using our imaginations and shows like mine are in danger of fading away,” he said.
“So I declare I’m going to give a TED talk on the subject. I operate the puppets with traditional hand-up-the-bum ventriloquism for the first act as we rehearse for this TED talk.
“In the second act, I give the talk, with a sustained, 25-minute discussion between five puppets and myself.” Hilarity ensues as Strassman pulls no strings nor punches, leading the audience “down a road of suspended disbelief, and back to reality . . . a cycle of greater and more in-depth magic tricks, so to speak, with what is real and what isn’t.”
His puppets started out as one-dimensional with simple comedy routines, “just to get laughs, really”. Through the decades, they have grown in scope and complexity, he said.
“We all have conflicts, challenges and successes in our lives, and these puppets have all had these, too.”
Strassman has clocked many frequent flyer miles to Australia - this is his “sixth or seventh” tour of regional NSW - over a 40-year career. He stops short of calling this a farewell, but admits the sun is setting on touring. “I’m not making it a farewell tour, but this show is so amazing to me, so incredible, I don’t know if I can top it, and I don’t know if I want to,” he said.
His son is 13 now and will be 15 when this tour is done, “so I think I want to be a hands-on dad for his last three years of high school to steer him in the right direction.”
iTedE is at the Goulburn Workers Club on Thursday, May 5 from 7pm. Tickets: $49 plus booking fee, online at goulburnworkers.com.au/events or from the club.
