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Paul Zaloom | |
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 Zaloom in 2004 | |
| Born | December 14, 1951 |
| Occupation(s) | Puppeteer, actor |
| Years active | 1979–present |
Paul Finley Zaloom (born December 14, 1951) is an American actor and puppeteer, best known for his role as the character Beakman on the television show Beakman's World .
Born in Garden City, Paul Zaloom was educated at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, and began his entertainment career at Goddard College with artists in residence the Bread and Puppet Theater, a troupe specializing in self-invented, home-made theatre. One of their performance locales was Coney Island, where Zaloom is said to have given advice to the "unofficial Mayor of Coney Island", Dick Zigun, on how to bring in the crowds. In his solo work he utilizes found-object animation, in which he takes objects as varied as coffee pots and humidifiers and turns them into elements of political satire. His personal politics are liberal; he has referred to Elizabeth Dole and Margaret Thatcher as "right-wing nutjobs". He has also been a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy since the early 1980s, having helped to lead a disarmament march during the Cold War.
In 1989, Zaloom appeared in The Unnaturals , a sketch comedy series featuring Tim Blake Nelson, John Mariano and Siobhan Fallon Hogan. In 1992 Zaloom starred in the cable TV children's science program Beakman's World . The show moved to CBS in 1993 and aired for four seasons. Zaloom has also written, designed and performed eleven full-length one-man shows, including Fruit of Zaloom, Sick but True, Mighty Nice and The Mother of All Enemies, the latter being a shadow-puppet show featuring traditional Mid-west Asian comic puppet character Karagöz. His latest effort tackles social issues such as privacy, the war on terrorism, and discrimination based on sexual orientation and ethnicity. Aside from shadow-puppetry, Zaloom's idiosyncratic work utilizes techniques such as overhead projection, government document expose, cantastoria picture performance, toy theater, as well as hand, rod, found object and dummy puppets.
Paul Zaloom has produced two films; the first is a mockumentary titled In Smog and Thunder: The Great War of the Californias, recounting a fictitious war between Los Angeles and San Francisco, released in 2003. The second film, Dante's Inferno , is a retelling of the poet Dante's journey through hell, set in Los Angeles and performed in a style of puppetry called toy theater that uses paper cut-outs for puppets and sets. Zaloom co-wrote the script and was head puppeteer, and performed multiple voices for the film. Both films feature the artwork of Sandow Birk.
Zaloom has performed his work across the U.S. at many types of venues, including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Walker Arts Center, Spoleto Festival U.S.A., UCLA Performing Arts Series, the American Repertory Theater, L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art, King Tut's Wah-Wah Hut, and hundreds of others. He's also played the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Les Semaines de la Marionnette in Paris, the UNIMA World Congress in Dresden, Vienna Festival and many others on nine international tours. Zaloom has received a Village Voice Obie Award, an American Theater Wing Design Award, New York Dance and Performance Award (the "Bessie"), LA Weekly Theater Award, and four Citations of Excellence in the Art of Puppetry from UNIMA-USA. He's also been granted a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Jim Henson Foundation grants, a C.O.L.A. Fellowship, and four National Endowment for the Arts grants.[ citation needed ]
He has taught puppetry and cantastoria at colleges and universities in the U.S. and Europe, including CalArts, Rhode Island School of Design, Emerson College, the Omega Institute, George Mason University, the University of Michigan, and the Institut International de la Marionnette, Charleville-Mézières, France, amongst others. He continues to perform as Beakman in Beakman Live! stage shows, and is involved in any number of artistic projects as an advisor and mentor. He also attended a furry convention called Megaplex as a guest of honor in Orlando, FL in 2010. [1]
In 2016, Zaloom made a guest appearance as Beakman in one of Captain Disillusion's videos, debunking "free energy" devices. [2]
Zaloom is openly gay [3] and has a daughter, Amanda Yvette Finley Israel Zaloom, with his former wife Jayne Israel. [4]
He describes his ethnicity as "half Syrian and half W.A.S.P." [5]
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object called a puppet to create the illusion that the puppet is alive. The puppet is often shaped like a human, animal, or legendary creature. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience.
Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performance is also known as a puppet production. The script for a puppet production is called a puppet play. Puppeteers use movements from hands and arms to control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer sometimes speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, while at other times they perform to a recorded soundtrack.
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television. The attachment of the strings varies according to its character or purpose.
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Beakman's World is an American educational children's television program. The program is based on the Universal Press Syndicate syndicated comic strip You Can with Beakman and Jax created by Jok Church. The series premiered on Wednesday, September 16, 1992, on TLC, and three days later on September 19, began a concurrent run in weekly syndication on 220 television stations across the United States through an agreement with Columbia Pictures Television Distribution.
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