Look who's talkin'

Ask not what Jay Johnson can do with his voice - the real question is, what can't he do with it?

For his Broadway show, "The Two and Only," the great ventriloquist throws his voice into anything and everything - a vulture, a tennis ball, even a dry-erase board. Occasionally, he'll even use Bob, his smart-alecky wooden co-star from the 1970s TV series "Soap."

Like many artists, Johnson found his calling early. He was only 5 or so when his mom found him chatting into a phone, conducting an animated conversation with his (imaginary) friends.

Even then, he didn't move his lips.

"My mom pulled the telephone away to apologize and realized there was no one there - the phone was disconnected," he recalls. "I thought that was how everyone played telephone!"

Backstage the other day, surrounded by stuffed monkeys (a bigger version of them is in his show), the 57-year-old talked about growing up in Texas - shy, dyslexic and unathletic - and how the biggest thing he had going for him was his own imagination.

"We grew up on a schoolteacher's salary so there wasn't a lot of money for toys - you had to build things," he says. "My mom used her imagination to pique mine."

And so the Johnson family made puppets out of grocery bags, socks and papier-maché, molding the latter over ketchup bottles so the head would be square. All the while, Jay practiced his voices, checking himself in a mirror to keep his lips still, and trying out his sounds on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder.

By 11 - working with the Jerry Mahoney doll he got from a cousin - he was getting paid gigs.

The other perks were priceless. Not only did he become the star and emcee at student assemblies and head of the drama club, but it helped with dating.

"I used to do a really good police siren," he says. "I'd pull over the car when I was driving with my girlfriend. She finally caught on!" She married him anyway. Thirty-five years later, they have two 20-something sons, neither one of whom is a ventriloquist.

And that's OK, Johnson says. "No one's competing."

Want to learn how to do what he does? Read our lips - tips!:

You don't need a dummy.

"It's the imagination, not the puppet," says Johnson, who once made a puppet out of a rubber safety glove.

"All you need is something with a movable mouth," he says. "I saw someone use a cellphone." You can even use your hand, as anyone who remembers Señor Wences will tell you.

A sock and some rubber bands will do in a pinch, as will cardboard "shadow puppets" - Edgar Bergen used those before he got Charlie McCarthy.

Make a sound - any sound.

"What we call 'a fly buzz' is a good way to start," Johnson says. "It's usually a high-pitched sound, a buzz, and you find it in your throat."

Or maybe you can find another funny sound - it doesn't really matter what, as long as it doesn't sound like your own voice.

Find your character.

It can be anything or anyone, but it's up to you to make it come alive by giving it a personality all its own.

That's what ventriloquism is really about, Johnson says: inventing a character, not whether your lips move while you voice it.

And he was funny, too.

Words for the wise.

Any words that don't begin with B, P, F or M are the easiest to say without moving your lips, Johnson says.

Some ventriloquists suggest you try singing the alphabet song without moving your lips, but Johnson favors another approach: Touch the tongue to the roof of your mouth, just behind your teeth, then read aloud from a newspaper as clearly as you can.

Practice, practice, practice.

"Don't get discouraged," Johnson he says. "It's like playing the piano - the more time you put into it, the better you'll be ...

"And don't mind it if people say, 'What a waste of time - why don't you play with a videogame, instead?' "

Last time we checked, no one got to Broadway by playing Nintendo.

"Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!," at the Helen Hayes Theatre on 44th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, has matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 1 p.m. The show contains one "F word" and much talk about the technical science of ventriloquism.

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