Stars of the AVT #18: Zero Boy

This post is one of a series profiling the hundreds of performers I’ve presented through my American Vaudeville Theatre in celebration of its 15th anniversary. Don’t miss the American Vaudeville Theatre’s 15th Anniversary ExTRAVaganza in the New York International Fringe Festival this August!

Zero Boy is the Elvis of the onomatopoeia, a man who has taken a Junior High school lunchroom skill and raised and refined it to high art. No one can touch him at what he does, yet it is impossible to use words to tell you what that is. He has been called a vocal cartoonist, but he is much more like a vocal cartoon. I remember how saddened I was to learn his real name (a very ordinary one). It was like learning that Bugs Bunny was really Ed Thompson, a fellow from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Naturally we know it’s all an illusion; every “Marilyn” is a Norma Jean. But Zero Boy, like Bugs, doesn’t seem human.

While  he has done heaps of radio (notably NPR’s Next Big Thing, where he’s had a regular feature called “Stump Zero Boy”), his gift is not only aural but physical. Seeing him live is best. In a way, his skill is cinematic. He uses his voice, hands and face to make your mind’s eye see a picture. I can vividly conjure routines of his in my brain. He’s very good at action movie tropes…the Blackhawk, the rocket launcher, the fireball. This is why I say his skill has its origins in the Junior High lunch room. It’s a form of play we all did as children but almost all of us stop doing it in adolescence. He has created an entirely unique theatre form out of it. Here he is in a recent performance at Cornelia Street Cafe:

Being a bit of a legend, and the only game in town for the kind of thing he does, he has played many a prestige gig, at Symphony Space, the Museum of TV & Radio (which is now the Paley Center), Cooper Union, etc etc. He’s done lots of tv commercials (e.g., Miller Lite, W.B. Mason). He also performs internationally, notably Amsterdam, where he has worked extensively (and which is not surprising, given the prevalence of cannabis over there. Did I say that? Not for Zero Boy, for the audience). And today, this very day (tonight actually) he is performing in Kreuzberg, Germany at a spot called Piatto Forte Berlin. I’ve been fortunate enough to have him on my stage a couple of times: at Trav S.D.’s Circus of the Insane at Surf Reality in 2000, and Galapagos Floating Vaudeville in 2004.

To learn more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.