Paul Zaloom
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Paul Finley Zaloom (born December 14, 1951) is an American
actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...
and
puppeteer 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 ...
, best known for his role as the character Beakman on the
television show A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming platf ...
'' Beakman's World''.


Career

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 Goddard College was a Private college, private college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle. The college offered undergraduate and graduate degree programs. With predecessor ins ...
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 Coney Island is a neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the south and west, and Gravesend to ...
, 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 Mary Elizabeth Alexander Dole (née Hanford; born July 29, 1936)Mary Ella Cathey Hanford, "Asbury and Hanford Families: Newly Discovered Genealogical Information" ''The Historical Trail'' 33 (1996), pp. 44–45, 49. is an American attorney, auth ...
and
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
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 The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
. Zoloom's first television appearance was on '' The Equalizer'' in the 1988 episode "
Video Games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
" as a Hotel Clerk. In 1989, Zaloom appeared in ''The Unnaturals'', a
sketch comedy Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches" or, "skits", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. While the form developed and became popular in ...
series featuring
Tim Blake Nelson Timothy Blake Nelson (born May 11, 1964) is an American actor, writer, and director. Described as a "modern character actor", his roles include Delmar O'Donnell in ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' (2000), Gideon in ''Minority Report (film), Minori ...
, John Mariano and
Siobhan Fallon Hogan Siobhan Fallon Hogan ( ; Fallon; born May 13, 1961) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. Known for her collaborations with director Lars von Trier, she has appeared in three of his features to date: ''Dancer in the Dark'' (200 ...
. In 1992 Zaloom starred in the
cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television broadcast programming, programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This ...
children's science program '' Beakman's World''. The show moved to
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
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 (; also spelled , or ) comes from Italian for "story-singer" and is known by many other names around the world. It is a theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be paint ...
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 A mockumentary (a portmanteau of ''mock'' and ''documentary'') is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a Documentary film, documentary. Mockumentaries are often used to analyze or comment on current event ...
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 ''Inferno'' (; Italian for ' Hell') is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century narrative poem '' The Divine Comedy'', followed by and . The ''Inferno'' describes the journey of a fictionalised version of Dante himsel ...
'', is a retelling of the poet
Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...
'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 The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, commonly known as the Kennedy Center, is the national cultural center of the United States, located on the eastern bank of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Opened on September 8, ...
,
Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5  ...
, the Walker Arts Center, Spoleto Festival U.S.A.,
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
Performing Arts Series, the
American Repertory Theater The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is a professional not-for-profit theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1979 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to ne ...
, 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 The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as the Edinburgh Fringe, the Fringe or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2024 spanned 25 days, sold more than 2.6 million tickets and featur ...
, Les Semaines de la Marionnette in Paris, the
UNIMA UNIMA (''Union Internationale de la Marionnette'' – International Puppetry Association) is an international non-governmental organization that brings together puppeteers and puppet enthusiasts to develop and promote the art of puppetry. It was ...
World Congress in Dresden, Vienna Festival and many others on nine international tours. Zaloom has received a ''Village Voice''
Obie Award The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given since 1956 by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theater artists and groups involved in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Starting just after th ...
, 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 Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
, four
Jim Henson James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating ''Fraggle Rock'' ( ...
Foundation grants, a C.O.L.A. Fellowship, and four
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
grants. He has taught puppetry and
cantastoria (; also spelled , or ) comes from Italian for "story-singer" and is known by many other names around the world. It is a theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be paint ...
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. In 2016, Zaloom made a guest appearance as Beakman in one of Captain Disillusion's videos, debunking "free energy" devices.


Personal life

Zaloom is openly gay and has a daughter, Amanda Yvette Finley Israel Zaloom, with his former wife Jayne Israel. He describes his ethnicity as "half
Syrian Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...
and half W.A.S.P."


References


External links


Paul Zaloom - homepagePaul Zaloom on Twitter
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Beakman Live! homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zaloom, Paul 1951 births Living people People from Garden City, New York American puppeteers Choate Rosemary Hall alumni Goddard College alumni American gay actors LGBTQ puppeteers LGBTQ people from New York (state) Male actors from New York (state) 20th-century American male actors 21st-century American male actors American people of Syrian descent Syrian actors Syrian gay men Syrian LGBTQ people Arab LGBTQ people