Ken was born and raised in Los Angeles. Out of high school, he joined the Young Americans, a national song and dance institution for young people, eventually becoming a choreographing director of their song and dance revues. He used his Y.A.'s experience and education to start his own commercial entertainment company, which provided industrial shows for venues such as the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Bonaventure and the Universal Sheraton Hotel. During this time, he also created a dinner theater on Catalina Island, Solomon's Street Faire.

Soon, due to the coincidence of reading Peter Brook's Shifting Point at the same time, he was introduced to experimental theater genius Reza Abdoh, who during his short life would become one of the great progressive theatre artists. During his seven years with Reza Abdoh’s company, Ken was principle choreographer and a performer, traveling through out the U.S. and Europe.

By combining his experience with the Young Americans with his profoundly life-changing influences from Reza's work, Ken created a whimsical-surrealist music/theater style all his own. His early works were original, simple but abstract cabaret and revue shows, much like European surrealist theater from the 30's. An Enjoyable Evening with Three Special Girls, Larry Swell's Big Bang, and 7 Seals and a Riding Monkey were his ventures into finding his unique, creative voice. Then-partner, Rick Lunn, was a full-time collaborator... employing innovative sound design and video work on a shoe-string budget. Curtis Heard was the main composer/arranger... other musical artists coming and going... Kip Boardman, Keith Niles and Scott White among them.

At the same time, a theatrical rock band was being born. At first called Ken and the Merry Kendalls, the name soon changed to reflect Ken's deep association with Reza, who had asked him to play Orpheus in Hip-Hop Waltz of Euridice... but Ken had to decline. So the name Orphean Circus was born and the rock band played several venues around L.A. and performed two enormous concerts at an outdoor amphitheater in Buena Park.

After Reza's death to AIDS in 1995, Ken became a sought-after choreographer and developed a significant career working with other directors... Bill Rauch, David Schweizer, Laural Meade and Michael Counts to name a few. He was a guest choreographer for Cal Arts twice, a show doctor/choreographer for a huge dance show at Disney’s California Adventure Theme Park, and choreographer for many theatres around the country, including En Garde Arts and Gale Gates et al in New York, Great Lakes Theatre Festival in Cleveland and the First Mennonite Church in Hesston, Kansas (the first dance ever performed in their church!)

In 2002, Ken had the idea to use items from the chain-store 99c Only Stores to make a holiday wonderland, song and dance spectacle. He approached the stores representatives who conference called him to see if this was a joke or not. They finally, cheerfully agreed to supply product and their logo to our production and 99c Only Stores World of Bargain Entertainment was created, and a yearly, holiday tradition was born. 2003's Splendor-99c Only Wonderama, 2004's Peace Squad Goes 99 and 2005's Orange Star Dinner Show have all been enormously successful Orphean Circus/Evidence Room productions.

During this period, Ken also created darker, more thought-provoking music/theater works. He Pounces was on the L.A. Times Top Ten list of 2003; 2004's Growing With Ghosts, a large-scale theatrical installation, played to capacity audiences at a landmark library in Eagle Rock. Ken was given a commendation by now-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. And later in 2004, a workshop of Ken's operetta with composer Curtis Heard, Last Resort, opened the REDCAT developmental festival.

As a performer, Ken has acted in many stage productions, movies and television; has sung leads in several modern operas including Last Resort and Knight of the Dark, which is a huge piece about the Knights Temple; and can be heard singing ancient Egyptian arias on a new world-music CD, Psalms of Ra... currently sold as part of the touring King Tut exhibit. He has been a featured performer for the Long Beach Opera and twice “danced” on video for Bill Viola, most recently at the Getty Museum. He can also be seen in the video work of international abstract artist, Paul McCarthy.

As a video artist himself, Ken created a madcap, dance instructional cable show, Larry Swell’s School of Dance; was co-director on a Nevada brothel documentary, Angel’s Ladies; and is in the process of creating a DV feature based on his theatre piece, Echo’s Hammer. Ken has also been music supervisor on several projects and has written songs for several more. Currently, his short video Bootleg is in post-production and several other projects are in the works.

Ken Roht