This following clip is insanely funny! The “Achmed” dead terrorist character has been brilliantly conceptualized. Jeff Dunham exposes the funny side of being a terrorist (if there is such a thing), even though it sounds a little cliched at times. It just doesn’t get much better than this.

Character development:

The key to being a successful ventriloquist, is that your puppets need to have a personality.

You: Comment
Puppet: Punchline
You: Comment
Puppet: Punchline

This routine tends to get old very fast, and your audience will lose interest very quickly. The key to keeping your audience involved, is to create a character out of your puppet. The puppet should have a life of its own, likes and dislikes, quirky behaviour – and all of this has to be consistent.

For example, if your character is a rude, old, wise cracking, know-it-all male chauvinistic pig like Wilson then the character has to be consistently the same. You can occasionally go off on a slight tangent (like when your puppet is supposedly having a good day, say) but you cannot suddenly turn your grumpy-old-rude-man puppet into a kind, decent man who loves and respects women.

If you want to learn about character development, this is one of the videos to watch and learn from.

- Ravi Jayagopal

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