Stage performance, an often palms-sweating and voice-shaking endeavor, can be made more comfortable if you’ve got a friend or two up there with you – or a trunk full of them.
Jeff Dunham, who will take his act to the Alliant Energy Center’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum March 6, is known for his specialized brand of ventriloquism comedy – a skill he picked up as a teenager and has been developing ever since. The event will be part of his Identity Crisis Tour and promises to present “a bunch of new material that I think the folks will have fun with.”
Dunham has achieved the highest rated programming in Comedy Central history, according to his website, and was the top-grossing live comedy act in the world last year. He is also the author of “All By My Selves: Walter, Peanut, Achmed and Me.” Being a ventriloquist is what sets him apart from other comedians at face value, and he told The Badger Herald that each one of his hand-crafted characters – from the blue-collar, NASCAR-loving “Bubba J” to the cranky and skeletal “Achmed the Dead Terrorist” – possesses its own unique origin stories.
“None of them have a similar genesis. Ideas come from different places,” he said. “The only thing that’s similar is that when something strikes me as being a good character and one that I could really write some good material for, then that’s what I go with.”
Dunham’s comedy act brings to light an intriguing question about the boundaries between imagination and reality – or a comedic object and live performance – which continually come close to overlapping during his shows.
“It’s easy to get lost behind the doll. People pay attention to the dummy and forget who you are and that you’re even there,” he said. “There’s some sort of unwritten license that allows an inanimate object that becomes animate to get away with stuff that a mere mortal never could. All subjects are fair game for the little guys in the trunk.”
The comedian, despite having cultivated a consistent fan base worldwide, has accumulated some notoriety. There has been criticism from viewers for segments of his acts that some feel cross the line as far as perpetuating race, gender and socioeconomic stereotypes. While Dunham fully admits his stand-up frequently wanders into the realm of risqu?, he finds it personally helpful to step back and have faith in his audience’s sense of humor.
“In my show I try and make fun of myself more than anyone, and I believe that we should all be able to laugh at ourselves,” Dunham said. “But I heard a great comic say once that if you’re aren’t offending a couple of people here and there, you’re not pushing the envelope enough. I know there’s a fine line, but I feel that most folks have a good sense of humor and can take a joke. I’m always very suspicious when folks are ‘offended,’ because more often than not, the ‘offended’ are offended for someone else, and aren’t any part of the group being picked on.”
One may wonder what goes through his mind in hearing these responses: Is professional comedy the correct place to address controversial subject matter? Whatever the answer to that question may be, Dunham can rest assured with the fact that he’ll always have his “friends” onstage to back him up – even when he’s tackling the roughest of topics.
Jeff Dunham will be performing at the Alliant Energy Center March 6 as a stop on his Identity Crisis Tour. The show will start at 5 p.m. and tickets are available for $47.50 online and at the Madison Ticket Office.
