MORE THAN A TOKEN LIFE FOR `TOKEN CRACKER' STAR.

Byline: John Farrell  Correspondent

Come to the Found Theatre this weekend and you'll see a one-man show, ``Token Cracker,'' by performance artist Zoot Velasco.

But the term ``performance artist'' is a little limiting for Velasco, who has managed to crowd into his busy life numerous accomplishments. Call him an actor and he won't flinch. He cheerfully admits to having worked as a mime.

He became a dancer, he says, because he wanted to overcome the birth-injured leg he had and, he admits with a laugh, ``because I needed the money.''

He has traveled the nation and the world with his one-man show, ``Zoot's World and Mutant Vaudevillians,'' playing venues as prestigious as the Kennedy Center and the Los Angeles Music Center. He has raised millions of dollars for the arts, started inner-city programs after the Los Angeles riots and 1994 Northridge Earthquake, worked in film and on television, and he has been a crash-test dummy (in a television commercial.)

``Token Cracker,'' Velasco's first new show in 10 years, is something that Velasco had been considering doing for some time. ``I was a performer for a dozen years,'' he said, ``and I had been thinking about creating a new show. I figured this was the time to do it or I never would. My knee and joints are getting old and I didn't think I could wait much longer.'' (Velasco, in his self-written artist's biography, puts it this way: ``It's much more fun to see a 43-year-old white man break dance and rap than a kid, right? There's more chance of serious bodily injury, and who doesn't want to see that.'')

The new show is a work in three acts with four dance numbers, some audience participation and a few surprises along the way, drawn from Velasco's unusual creative life, he explained.

The show's title comes from Velasco's childhood, in which he grew up as the only white child in primarily black neighborhoods.

Performing was Velasco's first career, but the one he calls ``(my) passion'' is teaching in schools, malls and, most importantly, in prisons and corrective facilities, where he used dance and theater and art to give inmates a new way to change their lives.

Zoot Velasco's life is a fascinating one, offering him more than enough material for a one-man show and even for a film.

Better, though, to hear the man himself tell his own story. ``I am doing stories drawn from my life,'' Velasco said. ``There are three stories, one about growing up white in black neighborhoods, one my `Autobiography of a Robot' and the third about my experience with prison inmates. There are also four dance pieces and an audience-participation piece about a CPA who works at night as a rapper.''

TOKEN CRACKER

Where: Found Theatre, 599 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach.

When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday.

Tickets: $15 Phone: [phone].