Ventriloquists are incredibly talented. I received a ventriloquist dummy as a child and for about a week, I was fascinated with it and determined to learn to be a ventriloquist. Long story short: it’s hard. Harder than it looks, and harder than you can even imagine if you’ve never tried it. I gave up and my dummy ended up being just something cool to scare my little brother with. Ventriloquism is defined as an act of stagecraft that has the practitioner changing his or her voice so that it appears to be coming from elsewhere in the room or from a puppet (also called a ventriloquist’s dummy). You may sometimes hear this art referred to as “throwing your voice.”
In ancient times, people thought ventriloquists were conjurers, people who could commune with the dead. The first ventriloquists were so super-talented that many ignorant people began to see them as unholy and the poor souls started being persecuted by the church, believe it or not. Luckily, in recent years, this unique art has grown in popularity, due largely in part to a young lady named Darci Lynne Farmer. When she took up ventriloquism, that was one of her goals. To bring back a dying art form. And she’s done just that. However, that’s not why she originally started learning to be a ventriloquist.
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First of all, Darci Lynne is a singing ventriloquist. As hard as you’d imagine it would be to speak without moving your lips, try singing without moving your lips. And Darci Lynne does it very well. However, this talented young woman got started in this art because she was painfully shy and wanted to be a singer, but was too nervous to perform in front of audiences. Her parents encouraged her to perform in the 2014 International Cinderella Scholarship Program, and in that competition, Darci Lynne was crowned Mini Miss. She received her first puppet when she was only 10 years old and has been devoted ever since.
By using her skill and talent, Darci Lynne went to compete on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” Season 12, a contest that she ended up winning. For the first season of the show’s follow-up show, “America’s Got Talent: The Champions,” Darci Lynne was a runner-up. She’s only the third child to win the popular talent show, but two other ventriloquists have won, surprisingly. In the video below, you can watch Darci Lynn stun Kelly Clarkson with her performance of “Something’s Got A Hold On Me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyxN_v0yIic&feature=emb_title
