25 Years of ZinZanni Fun with Kevin Kent

Kevin Kent at Teatro Zinzanni (Photo by Nate Watters)

In recent years, TeatroZinZanni has “put up its tent” in various temporary locations, and for the last several months, they have been resident in the new Hotel Lotte (Low-tay) in downtown Seattle. The building includes the soaring sanctuary inside what used to be the 1908-built United First Methodist Church. ZinZanni figured out a way to insert the bottom part of the tent inside the sanctuary, and then erect metal structures above to be able to “fly” the aerial performers safely. But you can still see the beautiful dome above that.
 
So, if you’ve been to ZinZanni before, the surroundings will be familiar. The deep burgundy of the curtains, the wooden floor, the mirrors, the booths around the perimeter and the doors through which performers enter and food is served.
 
Kevin Kent was a cast member of the original Teatro ZinZanni show in Seattle in 1998 and the subsequent debut show in San Francisco in 2000, and has been with Teatro ever since. A physical and improvisational humorist, Kevin has honed his comedic audience interactions to a fine point. During the performance, he morphs into a female character that might baffle audience members. (During my visit, my companion did not realize until after the show that Kevin was both the male and female interactor.)
 
I had a great time interviewing Kevin about his life and working with ZinZanni. A New Mexico native, he and his husband Joe are living in the homestead his parents built in the mountains.
 
“We don’t have electricity and we use gas lights. I try and (get) work in the winter (down from the mountain) because we get 8-13 feet of snow. We try to (go) somewhere where it’s less inaccessible.
 
“Joe and I don’t have internet at our house – we’re completely off the grid! If you want to text someone you have go to a meadow and hold your phone at just the right angle to where the cell service is triangulated. If you want more, you drive 20 minutes to a ridge or walk 40 minutes, and there’s a place where you can get 2 bars of service.”
 
Early Days
Kevin found improv work around college-age after obtaining a degree in architectural design. “I joined an improv company (in New Mexico) and it was put together by a guy from Chicago and we’d go to Chicago. We got the benefit of great knowledge there. The whole company would go, 6-8 of us each summer and would live in a one bedroom apt and spend our summer. (It was crowded!) …One guy slept on the fire escape with his dog. One on the couch.
 
“The entire company moved to Seattle in 1985-86. We spent a summer (most of us were still in school) and two went to Miami and Atlanta and two went to St. Paul– we went to scout. I went to San Diego and SF and Seattle by train. We would feel what the vibe was like.
 
“We loved Seattle. We told everyone that Seattle might be the place. We were called King’s Elephant Theatre and we did long form improv and wrote shows through improv. We first produced at Children’s Center for the Arts at Pilgrim’s Church right off Broadway. We got there just as the very first League of Fringe Theaters came together, at the same time as UMO and Annex and Seattle Mime Theatre, Alice B, small companies banded together to become more known. We were together for 10 years.
 
“Joe is a genealogist and travels with me. We became a couple 10 years ago. We met in Seattle. At the Starbucks under the Space Needle. The first time he came to New Mexico with me, we arrived and were unloading groceries and I said, ‘The outhouse is down this path.’ And we walked down the path and I said, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a bear. We need to stand still.’ And he said, ‘I’m never going to the outhouse again!’ Later, I got a picture from him with a bear in the front yard. He heard it and ran outside to take pictures. He’s become quite the mountain man!
 
“Eventually, as people got to know us, I worked with Dan Savage. We all started to work at larger theaters. We disbanded. I ended up doing a showcase at an LGBTQ “Proms You Never Went To” through the Tacky Tourists. A guy from Coca Cola saw me as an old woman who improvised an opera in Italian gibberish and then translate that to the audience. He loved what I did but (told me) ‘I cannot sell drag to Coca Cola. But I have an entire summer’s gig for you!’
 
“I went to a thrift store and bought a gold blazer and bowler hat and I did the exact same thing but I did it as a male character, as an audience member, and told the story of the opera. As it turns out, the summer gig was Minute Maid and they were putting out Fruitopia as new drink, and were casting 4-5 person tours. They painted these school buses psychedelic colors and put up stages and lighting. We would hop on the bus travelling from event to event and have people hand out product and we’d do these variety shows. Parades, concerts, affiliated with a Coke distributed. I’m not the only Teatro performer that was on one of these tours.
 
“Over the course of time, you work on developing skills that you enjoy. My skills involved having quirky characters and being able to engage an audience and hold their attention. For me it was always great to play female characters. That’s a pretty niche character. But it only fits into a few categories. I never did “bar drag” but I started doing theater in female roles.
 
“Dan Savage was producing at the ReBar and did a lot of great plays that were cross-cast. And they were great successes and super fun to do. He ended up producing my first solo show based on Sister Wendy Beckett. She was an actual nun who had retired from one sisterhood and moved into seclusion and started studying art. She got picked up by the BBC to discuss art on a tv show. (Wendy Beckett - Wikipedia)
 
“I would have people bring in their own art and David Schmader would curate pictures before I would see them. And I would come improvise about the art. Dan thought people could bring their own art, and I thought it was dumb, but we tried it in the publicity “bring your own art” and the first night, 40 people brought pieces of art.
 
“That became a huge section of the show. I would critique the art or talk to them. I had to hire a door person just to manage the art and the people who brought it. Sometimes I’d talk about the frame, or how the back of the art was more interesting than the front. I’d treat it absolutely seriously and talk about its great value.”

Kevin Kent as The Preacher (Nate Watters)

Kevin’s ZinZanni History
“I was there opening night (in 1998). When it came to ZinZanni, it was a retirement project by Norm Langill. He was the head of One Reel and had done Bumbershoot for 30 years, Summer Nights on the Pier, and he did theatrical importing from Japan. They’d taken a show to the Barcelona Olympics, a musical about rice performed in both English and Japanese. In Barcelona, he saw three Spanish clowns and approached them and asked them to come to the U.S. They told him to visit Germany and the spiegeltent with dinner.
 
“Norm opened the Seattle location with local talent and added singers. I’d performed at Bumbershoot and they asked me to come do this. Norm didn’t initially know how I fit into the show. He suggested, ‘We might call you the chef and you could introduce the meals and you could develop a short comedy bit. You could sing and do an opera piece.’ He asked what I would do. I said I’d go from a male character to a female character, and he went with it. I developed the snippets and they wrote a song for me. We had a story and since I was hometown kid, we got a lot of press.
 
“One night I was out with my bustier and doing my piece and I started to sing and a guy heckled me. It was gentle and kind sort of a cat call, and I talked to him and sat on his lap and unbuttoned his shirt and talked to his wife, and got him up to dance. People loved it and Norm was watching, as he did every night. When I saw him, I thought I was fired!
 
“Norm said what I did was amazing and ‘the moment you engaged that guy, they were all on the edge of their seats. Could you do that every night?’ And I said I guess so and that became what I did every night. Norm expanded that to all my characters. My scenes went from 2 minutes with a song to 10 minutes. It was the comedy staple of the show. Now I’ve developed 35 different characters and scenarios. It’s given me the freedom to write my own storylines.”
 
Kevin’s Present
“Now I do ‘show development’ for ZinZanni, meaning I take cast members and help them develop characters. We usually have an outline of what interactions might be, what arguments might be, everything that may be part of their story. Then the directors look at it and think of the possibilities. The design of the show has to support the story. That’s done way before rehearsals start. We have very short rehearsals. 10 days including tech. People fly in and improvise and string it all together.
 
“Teatro shows are 14 transitions. Opening number, transition to act 1, transition into featured comedian, transition to song, transition to dinner, transition… these are what we consider the scenes. The main rehearsal focus is to try to make it seamless, but that happens mostly during the first week of performances. We just go straight into it (performing the show). It’s a collaborative effort with ZinZanni. A lot of ideas come from these interactions.
 
“We’ve developed (characterizations for) people over the course of several contracts. Someone might be great at individual miming with audience interaction before the show, but we might coach her to act with a mike (on) and practice hearing her own voice, and then learn to act through that.”
 
Then and Now
I asked Kevin to reflect on what he sees are significant differences between 25 years ago and now. “Then, people weren’t used to drag. Now, it’s a big part of the popularity of the performance. Then, it (seemed easier) to shock audiences. Now, it’s harder to shock, but I’m not interested in shocking, and want to find a situation where we all find it funny. My heroes are people like Carol Burnett and Imogen Coca and Lucille Ball.
 
“Then, people seemed enchanted by the spiegeltent as a whole world unto itself. Now, it’s still a whole world. Then, people weren’t used to be in a small space where they can see other audience members enjoying it and performers interacting with people at your table and other tables. Now, people who have never seen us are still not used to it when they’ve never been.”
 
Kevin still looks just as happy to be performing with ZinZanni now, as he ever has. If you go, take a picture with him afterward, and tell him I sent you!