The space alien Joshua Walters portrays in his one-man show “Jawvox” has a certain distinguishing physical feature: payes.
The earlocks serve as antennae that Walters’ character uses to stay in touch with the home planet. The alien is sent to Earth to study and report back on the odd species known as human. And that includes Jews.
“Jews are a very special breed of people,” says Walters’ alien. “They have all the hustle, all the unity of a minority, with all the privileges of being white. Being a Jew is like being white-plus.”
Much of Walters’ Jewish sensibility was shaped growing up Reform in Berkeley. Today the 25-year-old lives at Oakland’s Moishe House, a residence for Jews in their 20s.
Walters gives his final “Jawvox” performance Tuesday, May 11 at the Climate Theater in San Francisco, after a five-month workshop process. Then it’s on to a full-fledged production.
Blending Walters’ skills as a comedian, poet and beatboxer, “Jawvox” is an artistic breakthrough for him. The play’s theme is human alienation, so he figured, why not make the lead character an alien? Speaking in hyper-rhythmic beatbox language, the alien (who is not Jewish despite his payes) comments on what Walters calls “the ridiculousness in everyday life.”
“Everything is new to [the alien],” he says. “When he states the obvious it’s funny, because we see it every day and ignore the social norms about sex, race, religion, government and money.”
The show was developed under the eye of Dan Wolf, director of the Hub, a Jewish arts and culture center at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, and the Climate Theater’s artistic director, Jessica Heidt.
Wolf says Walters exemplifies the kind of young Jewish artist the Hub seeks out.
Says Wolf, “He’s funny, he goes deep, and he takes you with you. He is engaged Jewishly, questioning how you can be Jewish in a modern world.”
Walters relished the workshop process, which allowed him to nurse “Jawvox” along. It began, he says, by throwing disparate comic ideas against the wall to see what stuck.
That meant breaking an unwritten rule of comedy: Never introduce more than 10 percent of new material into an act.
“The first workshop was 90 percent new,” he recalls. “Most of it was completely unscripted storytelling or joke writing. The second was previous material. By the third, I had to blend them together, and by the fourth show I was off-book, trimmed down, and it felt like the real deal.”
Wolf recruited Walters to be part of the Hub’s artist development program. He’d had his eye on him ever since they met when Walters was “a wild-haired crazy kid” at the San Francisco School of the Arts. Wolf admired young Walters’ bravura blend of hip-hop and comedy.
Some of that came from a place of pain. By his mid-teens Walters had begun exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder.
He turned his subsequent struggles into a 2008 one-man show, “Madhouse Rhythm,” which probed the life and times of a manic-depressive.
“Every great artist has some sort of emotional pain they have to deal with,” he says, “some experience that clues them in to a sense they are part of something greater than themselves. My writing comes out of the tradition of exploring madness, especially from the viewpoint of an artist. What is madness about?”
As a result, Walters takes the time to share his experiences, speaking at colleges and mental health conferences. He’s also a staple on the poetry slam circuit, infusing his live poetry performance with beatbox rhythms, much as his background in hip-hop drew on his poetic skills.
At Moishe House, Walters runs the weekly House Concert Shabbat, in which musicians and storytellers perform after Friday dinner.
“I get to make my own community, invite who I want, design my own programs,” he says. “The House Concert Shabbat is perfect: food, friends and then storytelling.”
Once the day of rest is over, it’s back to work on “Jawvox.” With the play about to graduate from workshop status, Walters and Wolf hope to see it staged at a Bay Area theater as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Walters will continue to tweak the show. “That’s how my brain works,” he says, “as a critical comedian, challenging the status quo.”
Joshua Walters’ final “Jawvox” workshop takes place 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 11 at the Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., S.F. $5. Information: (415) 704-3260 or climatetheater.com.