Paul Zaloom is angry about a lot of things.
He said he thinks it’s silly food companies tempt us with food that’s “stupid to eat,” yet the American public eats it anyway. He said the political process is full of “lunatics,” and he’s tired of being “bludgeoned” over the head about God by fervent evangelists.
But instead of storming the White House or protesting outside of corporate offices, Zaloom, who made his claim to fame as the quirky scientist from syndicated children’s show Beakman’s World, wrote a puppet show.
Far from something reminiscent of Jim Henson’s The Muppets, From the Jolly and Insane Mind of Zaloom, which premieres at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Oct. 8, consists of two separate shows and draws from the European style of puppetry with a long history of adult-oriented satire.
“I can complain about it until the cows come home, but the best way to deal with it is to make a joke out of it,” said Zaloom, who has also written and performed 12 other puppet shows. “So, I just try to find a funny way to take all these things that piss me off and turn it into comedy.”
According to Zaloom the first part of the performance, The Abecedarium, is a “jumbo toy theater” which wouldn’t fit in your living room. It explores ideas via the alphabet, with each letter in its own scene (or combined with adjacent letters). Each scene is politically or socially charged and follows a specific topic, such as “G is for Glacier” or “F is for Fiasco.”
The art of toy theater dates back to the 1800s and originated in Europe, beginning as a paper kit any child could set up to produce his or her own theatrical work. The two-dimensional art form evolved into a medium puppeteers often use in their performances.
The Punch and Jimmy Show, the second half of Zaloom’s performance, is the gay version of the European favorite, The Punch and Judy Show, a slapstick comedy using hand puppets. According to Zaloom, his version follows the “beautifully violent” story of Punch, a “middle-aged anarchist” and his lover, Jimmy, an “assimilationist gay Republican.”
“All we’re really interested in is jokes,” he said. “We just want to make people laugh and everything else is secondary. They come to the theater, they laugh their asses off and their faces hurt and they go home. That’s what we really want to do.”
Whether it’s hand puppets or toy theater, CSPAC has had a long history of supporting puppetry, most famously with Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets and a university alumnus.
But besides Henson, CSPAC has expanded into a variety of puppetry forms and has at least one puppetry artist perform per year, according to Ruth Waalkes, CSPAC’s director of artistic initiatives.
“I think it’s such an interesting art form that doesn’t get a lot of exposure and we all have our own generic thought of what puppetry is,” Waalkes said.
CSPAC also tries to give puppetry performers an academic connection with the university. Waalkes said Zaloom is teaching a theater of trash workshop with the theatre department and is holding a group lecture entitled “Politics and Art.”
And though students’ first impressions of puppetry might be a nod to their toddler days of watching Big Bird and Elmo, Waalkes said there are a number of different forms of puppetry including the simple magic of making inanimate objects move.
“I think you kind of have to see it to understand it,” Waalkes said. “But I think people have been exposed to [puppetry], they just don’t realize it.”
Thematically, Waalkes added, Zaloom’s style of work fits well with CSPAC’s most recent project, Art Responds to War, a series of performances exploring the impact of war and violence on humanity.
“We prefer if [the audience] laugh their asses off about serious stuff, not idiotic stuff like Britney Spears,” Zaloom said. “It’s much more interesting to make jokes about police brutality or global warming or the war in Iraq or whatever or the death penalty. If you can make people laugh about that, that’s interesting to me.”
Paul Zaloom’s From the Jolly and Insane Mind of Zaloom runs Wednesday through Friday at the Robert and Arlene Kogod Theatre in CSPAC. Tickets cost $7 for students, $35 for non-students. All shows start at 8 p.m.
dnhan@umd.edu
