Star ventriloquist Fator returns to Alaska State Fair

PALMER — A natural question to ask of any ventriloquist is: What in the world ever made you want to do that?

For Las Vegas based and nationally renowned ventriloquist Terry Fator, it’s nothing so mysterious.

“I found a book in the school library when I was 10 years old about how to be a ventriloquist. It looked interesting. I didn’t do it for any other reason; it was interesting, so I checked it out,” said Fator, who performs at the Alaska State Fair on Sunday night in Palmer. “Pretty quickly I found out I was able to do it. I got a puppet at Sears and started doing local birthday parties, church and started saving money to buy more puppets.”

When young Terry Fator wasn’t in school, he was often spending his Saturdays helping out with his parents’ janitorial business. He and his two siblings would clean buildings. Armed with a Walkman and the burning desire to do anything with his adulthood but clean buildings, it’s easy to imagine how Terry learned to sing without moving his lips.

“Rather than being miserable and sullen or angry because I don’t want to be a janitor the rest of my life — I want to be an entertainer — I would use my time vacuuming, mopping, cleaning toilets… singing along, and in my mind I was killing two birds with one stone. I thought, why not sing along with the radio without moving my lips? I was never thinking it would be the focal part of my career; I was just doing it to keep from being miserable.”

It’s Fator’s unprecedented and unmatched ability to sing and sing well with his lips sealed that sets him apart from others in the field, and has catapulted him to fame in Vegas and beyond, including winning it all on NBC’s ‘America’s Got Talent’.

That allows him as the puppetmaster to flip the script somewhat on the comedian-puppet relationship, where usually, dating back to the days of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, the puppet was the wise-cracking clever one poking fun at the buffoon with his hand up his back.

“It was never a conscious thing, but isn’t it funny that usually the puppet is the central part of the show — not so with me,” Fator said. “I’m an all-around entertainer — a singer, a comedian; I’m not a stand-up comic who uses a puppet to tell jokes. I don’t mean to sound arrogant or cocky, I just struck an entertainment lightning bolt when I realized, oh my gosh, I can do impressions of singers and can actually sing in my own voice.”

Fator also departs from the traditional ventriloquist role in pulling audience members on stage and turning them into the dummy. His most famous example of this is a routine where he takes a randomly selected man from the crowd and begins fitting him in a robotic outfit designed to make him look like Cher. It even has a remote control device Fator is able to use to control the bot’s facial movements.

“I saw another ventriloquist do that years ago, maybe in the 80s,” Fator said. “I just thought, ‘wow, that is so cool.’”

It’s a bit that’s dependent on gender-swapping.

“I always make sure to turn the male into a female — it’s inherently more funny,” Fator said. “I do it with Cher, Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, and I have one turning Olivia Newton John into John Travolta.”

Recently, Fator has gained fame, particularly on Fox News Shows, for his puppet portrayal of candidate, then President Donald Trump. He said that had everything to do with Trump’s personality; not his politics.

“I steer away from politics; I’m just having fun with the bigness of the character of Donald Trump. I’m not in the business to offend and make people mad,” Fator said. “People ask why no Obama or Clinton, but the only we we know Obama and Clinton we know from their political careers, but we’ve known Trump since we were kids, or if you ever go to Atlantic City or Vegas. He’s got a name to him as a reality show star, so there’s so much more to him than just a political personality.”

Fator is no stranger to Alaska. He’s been here, and to the state fair, shortly after he won ‘America’s Got Talent’.

“I remember loving it; a beautiful outdoor setting with a great crowd,” Fator said. “It was pure heaven.”

Fator takes the stage at the Borealis Theater on Sunday night at 6 p.m.