Three Great Things: Nina Conti

The ventriloquist turned actor-director, whose new film Sunlight opens tomorrow, shares a trio of personal favorites.

Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the release in theaters this Friday of writer-director-actor Nina Conti’s unique comedy drama Sunlight, in which her protagonist Jane retreats from life from wearing a full-body suit based on Conti’s famous ventriloquism puppet Monkey, the gifted multi-hyphenate shared some of the things that are bringing her joy at the moment. — N.D.

Alan Watts’ Lectures
I recently downloaded all the lectures of Alan Watts, who was a writer and philosopher who derived a lot of wisdom from Zen, Tao, Buddhism and other eastern religions, but remained anti-cult and anti-religion. He gave a lot of great lectures in the ‘60s and ’70s, which you can find on YouTube with wishy-washy spiritual music in the background, but they are also available on his website, which his son runs. They are a great sleep aid, and also a way to not get too bogged down in matters of the day. I have a habit of waking up at four in the morning and then getting focused on the absolute horrors of the world, but those lectures help me get back to sleep. I also find them helpful as a comedian, because they help me zoom out to find a healthy perspective, rather than getting too fraught.

I was aware of Alan Watts from various people I was involved with when I was young and starting out as a performer, like the Ken Campbell crowd, who were all into him. I studied philosophy at university, so I was into this kind of thing from the start, and I really like Alan Watts’ take on religions and on science. None of it’s woo-woo, actually, which you wouldn’t know if you just watched the clips on YouTube, which have “yoga music” in the background and so feel very different.

Watts went around with a little tape recorder and recorded all the lectures he gave at universities, though not very well sometimes. You can hear his mic rubbing in some lectures, but when I listen to them I feel transported to the ’70s. I like his voice, which is a big part of what I like about these lectures. He’s got an effortless way of just meandering from topic to topic. Sometimes he gets very distracted and I wish he would finish the point he started out making, but I love the sense of connectedness and the arbitrary sense of the universe that you come away with. I find that very helpful, because you can get very bogged down in your own business, and it’s so irrelevant, really, when we’re here for such a short time. I get little glimpses of revelations from listening to him, which sometimes is all I need to get by. It keeps me on my toes.

Pavarotti Singing Pagliacci
I just recently watched The Great Caruso with my father. It was his favorite film as a child, and he showed it to me because I hadn’t seen it before. It is packed with wonderful arias, but the one that really struck me was Canio the clown in Pagliacci singing “Vesti la giubba,” which is about him putting on his costume and makeup because the audience is coming and he has to sing. He says, “You have to laugh, even though your love is broken.” Or words to that effect. I don’t speak brilliant Italian, and the translations differ, but that’s essentially what the song is about. I discovered it a few nights ago and now I can’t stop listening to it. I love listening to Pavarotti’s versions of it, and there’s a recording of him singing that where he pats his face with powder at the end. Oh my God, it wrecks me every time. I think it’s because there’s something very personal and very lonely about that moment before you go on stage. And I feel it nightly. I also can’t think of a single day that goes by where we don’t have heartbreak of some sort, because we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. There’s a sadness nearby all the time. And you feel a little bit vulnerable before you go on stage, anyway, because you know you have to do something scary. So if there’s anything upsetting you at all at that moment, oh my God, it’s hard.

“Vesti la giubba” is hugely famous, but it was completely new to me. I didn’t know it existed before, but it really set off a little bomb in my heart when I heard it. Maybe I’m getting soppy, but it really hit me really hard, that song. It also talks about how the people have come and they want to laugh. I mean, everyone needs that so badly. If we don’t have that, we can’t survive, so it’s a huge responsibility. It’s also a real privilege that they’ve trusted a performer with the job of making them laugh, so it’s something that I hold dear and I want to live up to.

My Woolworths Monkey’s Face
If I was to think of something more related in a deep way to me and Sunlight, I would have to say it’s the design of that little monkey I got from Woolworths in the ’90s. It was discontinued, but I’ve bought as many as I can secondhand from here and there. Now that people know my act, they will reach out and tell me when they’ve got one. I have 19 now, and they each last about six years, so I’ve probably got enough to see me through to my final gigs on the cruise ships in my nineties!

That little face does so much to inspire me creatively, because I find it so deadpan and so endlessly funny that I can always think of it saying something to undercut the bull roar of normal life. I can conjure his voice and his vibe in my head when he’s not there, but when I see him, or when I put my hand in the puppet, or when I climb into the full monkey suit and feel like I am him, something more intelligent than my normal brain kicks in. Something unfettered and uncensored and steady in its pulse. If I’d been fooling around with those wooden mannequins, I wouldn’t have done ventriloquism for more than a weekend, but that design and that monkey’s face were what gave it longevity for me.

Nina Conti and Shenoah Allen in Sunlight.

The culmination of my relationship with Monkey was meeting Vanessa Bastyan, who works in the Star Wars creature department, and who scaled Monkey to life size. Having made all those Chewbaccas and other creatures, she’s really good at that! She made an exact replica and Monkey looks exactly like he should. To finally go “full Monkey” and step into the fur, see out through that face, it was big for me. It felt so potent that I thought, “This has to lead to a film, because this is the full evolution of the little weapon that was on my arm.” It felt very meaningful for me to get into it. And I can completely understand why a person would choose to hide in a monkey costume, to say, “It doesn’t have my past. It doesn’t have my agonizing. It doesn’t have all the things that I used to try and curry favor with people that just meant that I made a dick out of myself on a daily basis.” How lovely to just put someone else behind the wheel. And then here we are, it’s now a film!

Featured image shows Nina Conti on the set of Sunlight.

Nina Conti’s latest feature, Sunlight, which she directed and stars in opposite co-writer Shenoah Allen, opens at the Quad in New York City on June 6. Comedian and ventriloquist Conti has won a British Comedy Award for storming Live at the Apollo, a BBC New Comedy Award, and a Grierson Award, and made a BAFTA-nominated film – all without moving her lips. She recently completed filming Spinal Tap 2, with Rob Reiner directing, and is currently taking her new live show, Whose Face is it Anyway?, on a world tour. Her television credits include QI, Russell Howard’s Good News, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled and Christopher Guest’s HBO series Family Tree and she has made three documentary features, including Clowning Around and Her Master’s Voice, in which she took the bereaved puppets of her mentor, Ken Campbell, to a puppet graveyard in Kentucky.