By Bobbie Katz

EXCLUSIVE TO VEGASINSIDETIPS

For week ending March 21, 2010

Terry Fator has been hearing voices since he was a child. But as anyone who is familiar with him will testify to, it is those observing him who ultimately “crack up.”

In this case, it is with laughter, however, as Fator, who this past Saturday night celebrated his one-year anniversary at the Mirage, displays his no-holds-barred unique case of split personalities, sharing the stage with 10 of his self-created characters. – all of whom have split personalities themselves and sound exactly like various recognizable singing stars. Like a puppet with no strings attached, each persona comes out at Fator’s bidding, causing all those watching to break out in extremely catching hysterics. As for the cure, the only one that the down-to-earth ventriloquist/impressionist is offering is simply to take two tickets – just call the box office in the morning.

“I’m just Terry,” says Fator, the million-dollar winner of NBC-TV’s 2007 “America’s Got Talent.” “Five years ago, I decided to believe that I’ was going to be famous. I went to Walmart and bought a Sharpie and told myself that I was going to carry it around until people asked for my autograph. I’m still carrying it. I’m not just blowing smoke when I say that it’s not an ego trip – it’s not about me and it never has been. I wanted fame so that people would come out and see my performances. My whole show is geared towards people forgetting their problems, laughing and having fun and being 8 years old again with no cares.”

Stating that he is a man who gets what he sets his goals on, Fator, who was flat broke when he won “America’s Got Talent,” admits that there is some irony in the forces that have brought him from obscurity to Mirage in a year. He took late impressionist Danny Gans’ place at the hotel (when Gans moved to the Encore) and it was actually his predecessor that gave Fator -- who started doing impressions of famous singers when he was 5, ventriloquism when he was 10, and got his first puppet at 12 -- the impetus to put the two genres together.

“I kept the Sharpie but about three-and-a-half years ago, I was nearing 40 and was going through a discouraging moment, feeling that the rich-and-famous thing was never going to happen,” Fator admits. “I came to Las Vegas and saw a billboard of Danny Gans and felt that that kind of thing only happened to people like him, not to the Terry Fators of the world. Then I went to his show and watched him work and saw how the crowd responded. I called my wife afterwards and told her that I was going to be a big star in Vegas because I could do every voice that Danny did – without moving my lips. I told her that I was going to rewrite my act and turn it into a ventriloquist/impressionist show.”

Ironically again, Fator, never dreaming he’d take Gans’ spot, opened at the Mirage 33 years to the day that he accidentally found and read his first book on ventriloquism in the school library. It goes to show that the entertainer, who creates and designs his own puppets based on the impressions he wants to do, is proof positive of one major life fact. That is, not giving up allows one to eventually reap what he “sews.”