The wickedly funny puppeteer and satirist gives new meaning to the term “shadow government” with his latest spectacle, a politicized update of the traditional Middle Eastern “Karagoz” shadow play. Using a glut of low-rent special effects, ZALOOM plays out a frenetically comic epic in which his Karagoz, a queer-secular humanist-Quaker-Buddhist-agnostic Arab immigrant artist, somehow outfoxes a horde of pursuing adversaries made up of Homeland Security, Al Qaeda, the Statue of Liberty, the Christian Ex-Gay Movement, and Minutemen vigilantes.

THE ARTIST

Called “one of the most original and talented political satirists working in the theater” by The New York Times, PAUL ZALOOM is an OBIE-winning puppeteer and performance artist who has written, designed and performed 12 solo spectacles, including Fruit of Zaloom, Sick But True, and his latest, The Mother of All Enemies.

A Los Angeles-based artist, ZALOOM began his career with his company Bread and Puppet in 1971, and was awarded such grants as the Guggenheim Fellowship and The Cola Award, and received a BESSIE and LA Weekly Theater Award. His highly idiosyncratic work utilizes techniques such as overhead projection, government document exposé, “picture performance”, and hand, rod, shadow, found object, and dummy puppets.