[4] Beginning in 1968, while still a student at Pratt, Gallo enlisted the help of several peers, including Alan Sigman and Robert Ippolito, to assist him in staging public performances.

[9][10][11] In 1973, Gallo was invited to headline his original theatrical production of Squalls for the International Festival Mondial du Théâtre in Nancy France.

One member of the crowd, theater critic and NYU Drama Professor Michael Kirby, described Squalls as the only theatrical event where he had ever witnessed an “overt confrontation by the bourgeoisie” and “according to the model of Ubu Roi…the only avant-garde performance [he had] ever seen.”[12] After he returned from France, Gallo performed in Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, which premiered on December 14, 1973 at the Opera House of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in  Brooklyn, New York.

In 1979, he returned to theater when he was selected to perform his original production, Tip of the Iceberg / Suspect on Black Coal at the 1979 Pan American Games in San Juan Puerto Rico.

Each of these performances culminated in Gallo floating across the stage on a 20 foot long fork, while below, the classically-trained vocalist Asha Puthli sang Ave Maria.

[16] The following year, he staged A Killer's Loose But Nobody's Talking with Sheryl Sutton at The Kitchen, a performing arts theater in New York City.

[22] Andy Warhol remarked that he was “more glamorous than Marlene Dietrich.”[23] Robert Wilson said that he was the "equivalent of a theatrical warehouse.” [24] Gallo's visual aesthetic has been noted as an influence with Michael Jackson and the white sequined glove he made famous on the Motown 25 television special in 1983.

[26] Gallo was a subject for many famous photographers, including Christopher Makos,[27] Peter Hujar,[28][29]Marcus Leatherdale,[30]Sylvia Plachy,[18] Andy Warhol and Jack Mitchell.