Zachary Morris Maze has never been a technical musician. According to Maze, as a kid, he didn’t know how to play guitar and was a horrible singer. He wrote his first songs ““ typing cheesy, terrible lyrics on Microsoft Word ““ recorded them onto a tape recorder, played them back, and pretended he was in a band by himself.
Not too long ago, Maze jammed it out on the Pauley Pavilion Spring Sing stage, playing to thousands with his five-piece band, The Trees.
But music is only one part to Maze’s multifaceted success story. Maze, known by close friends as “Pancho,” brought to life the eccentric, creepy yet endearing artist, Josh, on the mockumentary web series, “Dorm Life,” created and written by UCLA alumni.
An acting student in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Maze will also soon be the first person in his family to graduate from college.
Legally recognized as an orphan, Maze grew up in the Midwest under poor living conditions. At times he had to wait for bread at a local church and used grapefruit juice in his cereal when there was no milk.
Moving from family to family, Maze never had a place to call home as a foster child.
Eventually, with his aunt’s encouragement, Maze ran away from his foster homes. His aunt and uncle took him in with them in the Bay Area and placed him in a good public school. His uncle bought him his first guitar when he was 16, and his aunt encouraged him to pursue theater.
Maze said that they have single-handedly been the biggest influences in his life.
“They gave me so much when I had so little. I decided my one goal in life was to pay back everything I owed. To pay back the debt of me being born, in a weird kind of way,” Maze said. “It’s an irrational but very omnipresent theme that sort of runs through my life.”
Maze continued to pursue the arts at UCLA.
“Honestly, I think the only way I can make a living in this world is to be a salesman for a story,” Maze said. “Whether that’s through music or theater or film.”
Maze’s bandmate from The Trees, third-year acting student Megan Pfefferkorn, recalls that the band basically got its start one night when Maze was playing a song.
“I just kind of got my courage up to finally sing along with him, and we ended up writing this song,” Pfefferkorn said.
From then on, the band invested many hours into recording their songs on GarageBand and listening to them, with Maze coming up with extravagant but specific titles for each.
“I love just us getting together and writing stories ““ and that’s something that he’s full of,” Pfefferkorn said.
Maze remembers that in the fourth grade he wrote a pseudo-pornographic novel about all his friends.
“I felt like even when I was a kid, (writing) was a way to channel my neurotic energies or my eccentricities,” Maze said.
Elijah Trichon, a fellow graduating fourth-year acting student and Maze’s friend, said he appreciates Maze for being a far-out individual.
“Zach’s my best friend. He’s like my main road anytime there’s an adventure to be had,” Trichon said.
Maze and Trichon will be living together next year and working with each other on a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in San Francisco this summer.
Looking ahead to the future, Maze doesn’t see himself settling for any one artistic medium.
“I want to do it all,” Maze said. “I think the idea of the Renaissance artist is coming back ““ someone who can do everything ““ I’m not saying I’m capable of doing everything. … That’s sort of the ideal.”
If it were up to Maze, he’d like to make his life one giant performance art piece.
“I think in my life I just want to create really good characters, or a series of characters, and they do different things, but they paint a larger picture of your life.”
Although Maze said he does not think fame is the object, it is the motivator ““ a desire to be in front of a crowd of people, to make them cry, and make them laugh.
“Me and Zach, one of the reasons why we are friends is because we’re such big dreamers, and we just have this goal to make it to the top,” Trichon said.
Regardless of the medium he uses, Maze anticipates that his art will always reflect themes of progress and the American dream.
“The reason I want to do the things I do is to somehow rise above my inheritance,” Maze said. “I think if I want to be anything it’s a storyteller. You create a myth about yourself, you create a myth about everything you do.”