BARKER — Christmas at the Lighthouse will be extra special this year, as Mike Randall presents his puppet show, “Mike Randall and Friends.”
The annual event at Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse in Golden Hill State Park will take place Oct. 13.
Randall, the retired Buffalo TV news personality, is also known for his portrayals of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Now he’s telling stories with puppets and ventriloquism, aiming to make a go of an art form that he’s been into since he was a child.
“When I was 7 years old and in Kenmore Mercy Hospital for three months after a car accident, my grandmother gave me a bunch of puppets, and I was hooked,” Randall said. “I made hand puppets, marionettes and eventually tried to build a ventriloquist dummy, but that didn’t go so well. When I was 30 and got my first good paying job on TV, I bought a professionally made dummy. My family thought I was nuts. It was carved out of wood and I started working on talking without moving my lips.”
Randall said he never met a puppet he didn’t like, and admits to being not a great ventriloquist. But, he added, a lot of the magic of puppetry is making the characters believable and fun.
“I have steered away from those wooden type dummies that are kind of scary and use soft animal type puppets,” Randall said. “Some I have made myself and some I have had professionally made.”
Randall, the award-winning WKBW-TV feature reporter and weather presenter who was inducted into the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2017, has received rave reviews for his puppet show as he travels to festivals and family events across Western New York. The show includes puppets, magic, comedy, ventriloquism and audience participation.
“Mike Randall and Friends” will be presented at noon Oct. 13 at Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse.
Christmas at the Lighthouse, which will be ongoing from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., is the lighthouse Friends’ biggest fundraiser of the year. Free tours to the top of the 149-year-old lighthouse will be available; and there will be food and drink for sale, a farmers’ market, merchandise vendors, a basket raffle, and activities for children such as face painting, temporary tattoos and a visit from Santa. Lock City Sound, the men’s glee club, will provide entertainment as well.