|
 |
| presents: |
Ronn Lucas Biography
|
He mixes stand-up comedy, improvisation, audience interaction, and astonishing
voice manipulation to entertain and delight. "Crazy people talk to
inanimate objects and so do I, but at least mine talk back." The art of
the stand-up comedian demands a quick wit and impeccable timing. The secret to
great improvisational comedy involves a quick wit and impeccable timing. The
ability to interact with members of the audience to create laughter and
excitement requires a quick...well, you know where we're going here.
Ronn Lucas lives by his wits
and wins over audiences with his perfectly delivered lines. However, there is
one big difference between Ronn and every other successful stand-up comedian
– half of his act is spent making other people, and other things,
talk!
In a career that has taken him
to four continents, Ronn Lucas has been adored by audiences and critically
lauded around the globe for his astonishing vocal manipulation. He can make a
basketball heckle while he blows up a balloon. He can trade jokes with his own
microphone, and a toaster can do both rounds of "Row, Row, Row Your
Boat". Additionally, he can turn any member of the audience into a
life-sized singing dummy who delivers funny one-liners and even does some dance
steps
.
Unlike many in show business
who push themselves to keep constantly in the spotlight, Ronn regularly drops
out of performing to study new aspects of performance and to create new ways of
entertaining an audience. It is this respect for his audience that makes Ronn
Lucas one of the world's most interesting entertainers, and probably the first
to ever mix vocal manipulation, stand-up comedy, improvisation and audience
interaction into one performance.
WHEN RONN WAS A KID...
Before he formed the unique
amalgamation of comedy, improv, vocalism and audience interaction, Ronn was a
ventriloquist. He has put in more than12,775 hours practicing this art. It all
began when he was seven and saw an old TV program in which ventriloquist Edgar
Bergen appeared to make a baby talk, then came onstage with his acerbic
companion, Charlie McCarthy, and scored a big hit with the audience. Using a
record album called "Instant Ventriloquism" by Jimmy Nelson, Ronn
spent nearly three years working to master the art of talking without moving
his mouth. By the time he was in high school, he found he could call himself
out of class by making his voice sound like an announcement on the school's
P.A. system,
"Mr. Lucas, come to the principal's office, now!"
After college, he took his act – the traditional ventriloquist/dummy
routine – and played bars, honky-tonks, nightclubs, shopping mall
openings, retail store promotions, private parties and anything else that came
along. He logged 500 performances one year. The experience was invaluable.
"I was very determined to be heard," Lucas says. "They were
either going to laugh at me or laugh with me, but I sure wasn't going to be
ignored. I learned early that an act using vocal manipulation could be accepted
as more than a gimmick if done well.
"I also learned to think
fast or duck. One night a drunk heckled me and I had one of the dummies heckle
him back. The audience loved it, and when he kept it up, so did I. The crowd
was roaring. The guy cursed the dummy and came up on stage ready for a fight. A
couple of his buddies restrained him, but I wasn't in any danger because the
guy was actually trying to punch out the dummy. It was a compliment, in a way,
his believing the prop was talking, not me."
He accepted a long-term
engagement to be a featured performer aboard the prestigious Royal Viking
cruise line. This provided a measure of stability in an often chaotic business
and Ronn took the opportunity to radically reform his act. Feeling limited by
the standard wooden or plastic dummies used by every other vocalism performer,
he began designing creature puppets. In so doing, he altered his entire
profession. Just as his career was gathering momentum, he dropped out of
performing to study stand-up comedy with Jim Richardson, the teacher of a
radical comedy course in Northern California. As much as possible, Richardson
works with performers in a clinical manner, even employing a stopwatch in
assessing the delivery of a routine.
THE COMEDY CHAMPION ON BROADWAY...
Once he returned to the stage,
Ronn was a new performer and his more disciplined approach (which ironically
appears "looser" to the audience) helped him win several prestigious
comedy competitions, including the National LAFF-OFF championships for
SHOWTIME's cable network. Success followed success, with Lucas playing Broadway
for two years, as the original ventriloquist in "Sugar Babies",
making multiple appearances on "The Tonight Show", guest-starring on
"Night Court" and "L.A. Law" (for which he received an Emmy
nomination), and starring in a one-hour special on the Disney Channel. Also, he
was invited twice to perform for President Reagan and twice for the royal
family in Great Britain. Two successful television appearances in Great Britain
lead to hosting his own top-rated television show in London for four years. As
a result of these broadcasts and other European appearances, Ronn Lucas became
much more of a recognized star overseas than in the U.S.
Once again, defying all show
business convention, Lucas decided to pull back from performing in order to
devise something new. One new idea involves asking a member of the audience to
come onstage with him. "I tell them I need a volunteer to be my dummy.
Then I try to find a guy who is frantically waving at me to choose his friend.
Then I pick that guy instead." Once the guy has been cajoled into coming
up onstage, Ronn gets him to don a special mask (created and designed by none
other than Joel Hodgson of 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' fame ) and right
before your eyes, the man is transformed into a full-size, talking, singing and
dancing dummy. Second, he has invented a way to use "found" objects
and items the audience has with them to perform a funny and endlessly flexible
routine. It's a heady mixture of stand-up comedy, audience interaction, comedic
improvisation and, of course, his incredible feats of vocal manipulation.
He looks forward to every
performance because it is impossible to predict what's going to happen. And he
doesn't need to travel with so many props. "After all, there's no need to
have a bunch of creatures, clowns or critters on stage with me when there's a
new audience to select from every night." Using literally anything you can
see, Ronn Lucas is now thrilling audiences as "The Man Who Can Make
Anything Talk".
|
For Bookings or Appearances, Please Contact:
J. Cast Productions •
2550 Greenvalley Road • Los Angeles, CA 90046-1438
(323) 822-1999
email: JCast@CastProductions.com
|
HOME |
THEATRE |
COMEDY |
MUSIC |
LECTURES |
SPECIAL |
CONTACT
|
