2017 WAVE Awards Spotlight: Doug Ba’aser

Consummate entertainer and laugh-track to the stars Doug Ba’aser has been a fixture in Orlando for three decades. His wit is a warm wit which allows him to get by with sharp-toothed commentary for gay and straight audiences alike. If he’s not at Hamburger Mary’s pulling a trivia night, he’s at any one of your favorite gay watering holes in Orlando sputtering truths and consequences, chutes and ladders, for audiences that always walk away surprised. He has what they used to call “moxie.”

“It’s good that it came along for me, because it’s a good to have something at night when I don’t have work, and it’s turned out well for me,” Ba’aser says. “Building up the thing at Hamburger Mary’s, which I of course won this award for, has been difficult. But once it was done, the last six years have been kind of just rolling along pretty nicely. So I’ve been extremely grateful for everyone in this time.”

And his message is more than that of a Paul Lynde eye roll.

It’s comedy built from a career of appealing to broad audiences.

“The amount of straight people that come to those events and experience gay people and spend time with gay people, that kind of thing makes more of a difference than I think gay people realize,” he says. “It’s just being out and being proud to our friends in the community and saying, ‘Oh, they’re alive. And they’re fun! They’re way more fun.’”

“I’m often at a happy hour where people just bust out into song, and I’m just wondering, ‘What are they doing in straight bars right now?’ I’ve been to straight bars and they’re a little boring,” he adds.“They don’t just break out into ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ in the middle of happy hour, but once people come and see that it’s fun, we’re just over the moon.”

Ba’aser’s side gig as a film reviewer for Real Radio 104.1’s Philips Phile has also aided in his cross-appeal. He’s been at it with good friend Michael Wanzie for nearly 18 years. And you can’t throw a rock at the Fringe Festival without hitting the multitude of talents that make up Doug Ba’aser. He’s here to make you laugh.

“All that we’ve lived through, it’s amazing that we still have a sense of humor,” he says. “It’s important, I think, to have a sense of humor. Not to be too political, but I understand that young people aren’t watching When We Rise in droves. We need to know our history to know where we’re going.”

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