The Adding Machine

Mrs. Zero is Zero’s wife. She is described as “forty-five, sharp-featured, [with] gray streaks in her hair.” Ambitious to a fault, Mrs. Zero expresses her desire for upward mobility almost constantly to her husband. She is well-versed in local gossip and is a social climber, pointing out differences between herself and particular members of her community. Mrs. Zero’s ego is unyielding, to the point that she abandons Zero in his final hours over a disagreement in order to save face. Her ingrained biases are of a moral nature–she is just as quick to judge and blame Judy as Zero is–but also based in social norms and the act of comparing herself to others.

Devore works in the same office as Zero while they are both alive. She believes herself to be “refined,” but is described differently by Zero, who grows critical of her hair and waistline as she ages. He also believes her to belong to a lower class than himself. Devore kills herself shortly after Zero is executed, purportedly because she is in love with him. They meet again in the Elysian Fields of the afterlife, where they find they are free to be honest with one another about their feelings and share a first kiss. After Zero breaks his promises to her, finding fault with the relaxed moral code in the Elysian Fields, Devore can be seen wandering the fields alone.

A ghost or apparition who appears to Zero after his execution. They first meet in the cemetery where Zero was buried, shortly after he has awakened. Shrdlu, like Zero, was also a murderer; he killed his mother. In life, he and his mother were very religious; he is incredibly remorseful and is seeking punishment in the afterlife, in the form of eternal damnation. Shrdlu also appears to Zero in the Elysian Fields and gives him some sense of the place and the kinds of people living there. In a sense, he is Zero’s guide in the afterlife.

Judy is a woman who was living in Zero’s neighborhood and lives by a different moral code than Zero. She is imprisoned for six months for indecent exposure after Zero, a peeping tom, informed the police that she was walking around inside her own home without being fully clothed. Zero refers to her as a “bum,” and she is portrayed onstage as bringing a man on a date to a graveyard, and kissing in public. Both Zero and his wife have negative opinions of her, thinking of her in lewd and vulgar terms; they put emphasis on her sexual nature, and Zero’s so-called inability to resist, presumably because of his masculine sensibilities. To the audience, she comes across as a strong and independent woman whose progressive moral code is more modern than the other women we meet in her community.