Prop comedian Alex Zerbe, a.k.a. the Zaniac, performed at the Sequim High School Auditorium last Friday (Feb. 10) for a crowd of 400 enthusiastic children and adults.
He said he has been performing on the Olympic Peninsula for 17 or 18 years, and he has been performing before audiences for 24 years and 22 days.
An expert foot-bag or hackeysack player, ranked eighth-best in the world the same day in 2002 that he achieved the world record for a specific footbag trick, Zerbe is a professional performer who has turned his passion into a self-guided career.
“I like to let kids know that there’s more to the world than regular jobs,” he told his audience of families.
The event was hosted by the Olympic Peninsula Academy’s Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO).
“This event was not intended as fundraiser, just a fun, educational event for our community,” PTO president Lisa Bridge said.
“It serves to build community and that is important to us as a PTO.”
The tickets were low-cost for the general population and free for OPA and Dungeness Virtual Academy students.
“The Zaniac has been a favorite family performer for a while now,” Bridge said. “People love him, he has a loyal following.”
Sequim Gazette photos by Emily Matthiessen Alex Zerbe, known as the Zaniac, sets up for his show in Sequim Friday night, hosted by the Olympic Peninsula Academy PTO. The multi-colored pcv pipes are his home-brewed slingshot. Zerbe travels light, his sets are minimal, his props essential and audience interaction the main driver of the show. He wanted the house lights kept on so he could dive in and out of the audience and also see their faces so he could keep an eye on their engagement. There was a bit of trouble with the sound system before the audience entered, but once the show began Zerbe became the Zaniac, a high energy performer who kept the audience laughing and engaged. Before the pandemic, he said, he was performing around 200 shows per year. “If you do that many shows a year,” he said, “youre going to get good at it, as long as you dont go on auto pilot. Also, youve got to keep trying new things.” During the pandemic, Zerbe went back to school at University of Washington, Tacoma, and earned a history major with a minor in teaching. His undergrad thesis was on the history of hip-hop in Seattle, the town in which he grew up.
Sequim Gazette photos by Emily Matthiessen Alex Zerbe practices one of his signature tricks before his Sequim audience enters the High School auditorium on Friday. Juggling, whether of lighted pins, bean bags, ping pong balls with the mouth or balancing on a rolling board keeping an egg, a bowling ball and a large knife in motion, is an essential part of his act. On Friday he performed one of his newer tricks for the audience, a hat trick involving his head, hands and the air. “Youve got to keep making new stuff, keep creating,” he advises. “Theyre not all gonna be winners, youre gonna make bad art. Youre never going to make good art without making bad art – you have to make bad art! I guarantee it. Always try something new.”
When the Zaniac called for audience volunteers there were a multitude of Sequim children eager to join him on the stage. The first, identified as Lydia, did a great job of balancing spinning globes representing part of our solar system. She had impeccable poise and looked comfortable, smiling the entire time. The Zaniac gave her a souvenir as she exited the stage.
Riley Guimond helps the Zaniac with a complicated trick. Guimond had excellent stage presence as he danced and joked around and made sound effects with the Zaniac. Zerbes advice for children contemplating their future careers is to, “work hard at something you like to do. Find something that you really enjoy and then work really hard at it. Its helpful if it something of use to other people. “If you can find something that you love and grind at it,” he said, “youre going to get good at it and youre going to find a way to make a living out of it. Practice, even when you dont feel like it.”
A small child emerges from the audience after the Zaniac ran through with an oversized palm at the end of a rod, high-fiving numerous audience members. The child waits with outstretched hand until Zerbe changes his back hand for a front hand and high-fives the child from the stage. Other children then approach and he jokes about setting “a dangerous precedent.” Zerbe said that in addition to working hard at something “you love,” children should look for role models who are successful at what they would like to become skilled at, saying, “You have to push yourself – keep pushing the limit – and find people who are better than you (to learn from).”
The Zaniac is known for his oversize face and hand props. Alex Zerbe, the face behind the mask, has held two world records. The first for most consecutive eclipses (26) – a footbag or hackeysack trick – and the second, a two person leapfrog trick, involving juggling, which he won with his former stage partner Matt Baker in Beijing, 2008, according to Zerbe.
Children rush the stage and put their hands in the air for the Zaniac’s grand finale: a song, more silliness and lots of toilet paper. When the audience left the auditorium there was a general feeling of happiness and lots of discussion. Later, Zerbe spoke about how much he loves performing for families. “I’m grateful I get to do this as my job,” he said. “I like performing for kids because they judge people differently than adults, theres something awesome about kids.” He said that even though he joked with the audience about how difficult children can be, and that raising them is the hardest job on earth, he really believes that kids are great and that he had a wonderful time with this group of them. “Sequim audiences are amazing,” Zerbe said. “At the end of the day your shows only as good as your audience.”
