Keith and Company Headlines
The 2007 Vent Haven International ConVENTion!

Group Photo:

Click to enlarge.
(Don't look for Keith.  He was in rehearsal.)

(Excerpts taken from venthaven.com.)

by Annie Roberts

What a great year for ventriloquism! Between two weeks of ventriloquists on David Letterman, Jay Johnson's Broadway show The Two and Only, plus his Tony Award, a feature article in Life Magazine, Kevin Johnson and Terry Fator on America's Got Talent, and Jeff Dunham's DVD Arguing with Myself going quintuple platinum, ventriloquists are reaching a national spotlight once again.

That was sure obvious at the 2007 Vent Haven ConVENTion with over 430 attendees from around the world, 75 of whom were new to the conVENTion. All this attention brought the camera crews out to see what's going on in the world of belly-talking with two independent feature length film documentary groups, a national TV show from England, and NBC's Weekend TODAY Show. What the media discovered was a warm, friendly atmosphere filled with fun, entertaining folks. It was a great year to be at Vent Haven.

(Skipping to the Saturday night headliner show...)

By 7:30pm, everyone was ready for the All Star New Year's Eve Show. Steve Kissell emceed in a bright yellow sport coat and entertained with tips to improve travel; these were not your usual suggestions unless you normally don googly eyes or fake teeth. Bill DeMar opened the show with Feldon the Unspeakable Frog , aVerna Finly puppet, then switched to a recently repaired Chuck Norwood. Bill did his classic tape on the mouth bit and amazed the audience with his crystal clear pronunciations. The audience was on their feet giving a standing ovation at the end of his act. Nancy Roth came on next and opened with a little mind-reading with the audience. She then pulled out a little girl character and closed with her hillbilly character and a drinking bit. The final act of the night was Keith Haddrill. He started off with a humorous magic bit where he made four flies disappear into various orifices of his head. It seemed Keith had intended to end his show with his old man character, but the audience chanted "Roadkill! Roadkill!" So Keith obliged, pulled out Roadkill and did a few minutes to the audiences' delight. Since this was a faux New Year's Eve show, everyone in the audience got party hats, at 'midnight' rocket balloons were launched, and everyone celebrated the end of the Ventriloquism Through the Holidays ConVENTion. What a great conVENTion!

RoadKill appears after the audience chants for him!