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Can you tell me a little about the character of Chester Missing?

Chester Missing is a main ventriloquism character. He’s famous in South Africa for interviewing politicians and doing political satire on TV, on his own. He’s had two International Emmy nominations for it. If I did stand-up comedy his is the voice I would have. Politically he is more radical than me, while I take a more left centrist point of view while on stage. We debate political issues, and just do silly comedy within that tension. He’s also a device via which I self-reflect on my own place in the world as a white South African post-apartheid.

'Drop any preconceptions of ventriloquism as a tired artform that we have seen a thousand times before': in what ways does your work differ from the run of the mill ventriloquism?

To be clear, I am a huge fan of ventriloquism of course, and do have shows that have a more traditional feel, but for the most part in my comedy the ventriloquism is merely a useful medium to deliver satire. The point is the satire, not the ventriloquial trickery. An advantage and disadvantage of performing in South Africa is that most people are just not that familiar with the tropes of the skill. The concepts of ’not moving your lips’, and magic-like display of the form are not all that relevant. There aren’t a lot of ventriloquists on TV or performing live. For years I was the only one on the comedy circuit.

As a result people are far more interested in what the puppets have to say, the actual double act nature of it. For me it has developed into a medium to allow me to self-reflect as a white South African on the one hand, and the metaphor of a puppet being controlled as a powerful symbol of our political status quo on the other. To put it simply, this is ventriloquism about politics, current affairs and social issues, rather than ventriloquism for the sake of ventriloquism. It’s more like stand-up comedy with a puppet.

'hard hitting hilarious social commentary that brings the South African edge

of the conversation on race, racism and inequality into a global context': this seems to be an exciting element... how well does a puppet allow you to engage with such topics?

The power of puppets is that they exist liminally. They are fake people who seem real, and so can never actually be held to account for what they say. Of course, everyone knows who is actually talking, but the social contract is so ridiculous that getting upset at what a puppet says seems absurd. There’s no way to get angry at a puppet and win. This means that puppets, if handled convincingly, can often say the unsayable to powerful people. Chester Missing, my most famous character, is a household name in his own right in South Africa for interviewing politicians on TV and doing his own satirical news show on our 24 news channel, without me in shot.

 This means adults really do treat him as an actual person, of course with a tongue in their cheek. So even when I am right there with him people talk to him as if he is a real person. The next layer to this is that because we are the same person self-reflection is always the subtext.

'the first puppet in history to literally go to court, fighting racism, and won.' How did the puppet end up in court? Was Chester the accused?

Chester Missing has a big social media presence in his own right, so in 2014 when a white right wing and racist celebrity musician we have here in South Africa posted a tweet effectively blamed black people for their own suffering in apartheid Chester took him on very stridently. This turned into a social media campaign where Chester asked companies sponsoring events this bigot was performing at whether they stood by his racist views.

The musician lied to a magistrate about the dynamics of this and was granted a two week harassment order against myself and Chester. Yes, Chester, because he exists as his own person on social media and TV, was also restrained by this order from mentioning this musician anywhere, live or online. If Chester had said his name I would have been arrested, a bit like the racist Voldemort: he who shall not be named. We went to court to challenge this order - my puppet and I were literally in court. The racist lost with costs.

'His sidekick is Conrad Koch...who also happens to be a social anthropologist' Is there a logical progression from social anthropology to ventriloquism, and how did you end up on that journey?

Ventriloquism and social anthropology are perfectly aligned. Social anthropology’s struggle to rise above its racist colonial history of white people objectifying and Othering colonised people advocated a notion called 'self-reflexivity'. The idea was that if one is going to describe a culture or social phenomenon one needs to at the same time reflect on how one’s own cultural biases shape the lens through which we see the world.

So, for example, when I take on South African politicians, most of whom are black and many of whom were actively involved in the struggle against apartheid, being able to reflect on my own place as a white South African, my own prejudices, allows me to reach for a more politically fair and nuanced point of view. By amazing coincidence ventriloquism, if handled right, is the embodiment of self reflexivity. It’s an entire art form dedicated to talking to yourself, as I discovered when I needed to present on post modernism in my honours degree year, and was already doing ventriloquism in comedy clubs. I talked to myself about talking to myself. I don’t think my lecturers had seen anything like it.  Of course anthropology in my view is also the ideal subject for how to do satire where 'punching up' is the goal - anthropology is in many ways the study of which direction ‘up’ is.