The cast of “The Adventures of Kid Zero,” which was performed at the Black Spectrum Theatre in Roy Wilkins Park last week.

   The classes had filtered in quietly, but there was seemingly no hope of placating them once the lights went out, as a volley of screams rose out of the crowd to resemble the reaction you’d hear at any house of horrors.
   Fulton Hodges, a 31-year veteran of Black Spectrum, had to pull double duty to makes sure the gaggle of students stayed calm for the beginning of the program.
   “You’ve got to remember to stay quiet,” Hodges said. “We’ve got a very important message for you about mathematics.”
   Once the audience had settled in and the curtain was raised, students were treated to routines about odd and even numbers, square roots and metric system conversions.
   Typically, these are topics that would have kids rolling out of their chairs as they fell asleep one by one, but by including modern musical styles and a blend of comedy and dance, the cast eventually had the children clapping and singing along with the numbers.
   Gerald vanHeerden, the show’s director, said that getting children to accept the mathematical portion of the story came easier once they got hooked on the characters.
   “I was immediately attracted to the piece because it’s very sophisticated writing that doesn’t talk down to children,” he said. “(It) sort of made a case in the writing ... for how to sneak in the whole idea of math through the back door. They watch it and see math really isn’t that complicated.”
   The cast spent four weeks working on the musical numbers and staging, memorizing lines and perfecting the feel of the show as they went.
   “Generally, when you do a new musical, you have at least six or seven weeks to prepare, so it was quite an interesting adventure,” vanHeerden said.
   He added that the abbreviated rehearsal time made it necessary for him to depend on input from the actors, and their innate abilities, to make the “Kid Zero” universe come to life for the audience.
   vanHeerden said that it was especially pleasing to him to be able to put on this show at the Black Spectrum Theatre, where he’s had a director’s residency for four years.
   “Being a person who wasn’t in the black community working until I arrived here, it’s been a very interesting experience to understand how (the community) approaches the theater, how they view the arts,” he said. “They have to reach a whole different set of reference points.”
   Ultimately, the challenge was met by some hard work on the part of the cast and crew, he said, and their ability to make the play their own.