(Photo by Black Rose Photography)
Rob Ward loves to entertain. It’s what he moved to Orlando for about 20 years ago, to attend the University of Central Florida as a theater major.
“I moved from Fort Lauderdale and just kind of fell in love with the city and have been here ever since,” he says. Ward went on to become a staple at Orlando Fringe and has worked with Come Out With Pride for several years, but his first stage in Orlando, and one he still performs on today, was at SAK Comedy Lab in downtown Orlando.
“I discovered SAK because I got a speeding ticket and they used to run a comedy traffic school,” Ward recalls. “I went to that and they gave you free tickets to see the show at SAK so I went and was like, ‘oh wow, this is what I should be doing.’”
Ward took improv classes at SAK, grew through the system there and in 2007 applied to do a show at Orlando Fringe.
“I didn’t get in,” he says. “I was on the waiting list. Then, a week before the festival began, I got a call that said, ‘Hey, your show is in.’”
Ward had to throw a show together in less than a week. He pieced together an outfit from old Halloween costumes – the top half from a pimp costume, the bottom half from an Elvis costume, a purple wig and shoes from a devil costume.
“I had the idea of a talk show where all the guests had to play truth or dare,” Ward says. “But if I dare people to do stuff that they don’t want to do, I’m just gonna look like a jerk. That’s when I decided I would be a character that makes people play along.”
That’s when Ward created Pepe, an homage to Pee Wee Herman with an accent Ward describes as “60% Latin origin, 20% Slavic, 20% just random sounds.” Pepe was a hit and became the character Ward was most associated with.
“I thought I would do it for that one time, but then after I did the first show it was really popular and Fringe asked me to host the next year for one of their events as the character. So I brought the character back and then decided to do a second show at Fringe and then it kept going and going and growing. It was never something I imagined would continue as long as it did,” Ward says.
Fast forward to 2021 and Ward took to Facebook with a lengthy post that began “LET’S TALK ABOUT PEPE AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION.” In the post, Ward stated that Pepe would be evolving into a new character named P. Sparkle. Pepe’s final show was at SAK on March 11.
As we head into June, Watermark sat down with Ward to talk about Pepe, cancel culture and his new creation P. Sparkle.
Watermark: It has been 14 years since that first Pepe show at Orlando Fringe. Why did you decide to change the character now?
Rob Ward: So I’ve done this character for so many years with no issues. I brought Pepe to SAK, we created a gay-themed improv show there which was “Pepe’s Truth or Dare Improv.” This is going back to 2016 and in the summer of 2020, following the Black Lives Matter protests and everything going on, someone launched a boycott against SAK saying in a Facebook post that SAK didn’t have enough entertainment available for people of all diversities. Someone commented, mentioning my show in that post, saying, “Hey look, SAK has a show that is LGBT with a cast that’s racially diverse, and a mix of all different sexualities and worlds.” The person who had made the original post replied, “Well, that show is the equivalent of Latino black face.” I heard that and was immediately like, “Whoa.”
The hurtful thing about it was the person who had said that and who was launching that boycott was someone who came to every single show. Had always been in the front row, paid to have his birthday party at my show and have me bring him up on stage. So I dismissed what that person had said and then someone else brought it up on a different post and again, I kind of dismissed it because that was someone who hadn’t even seen the show. They just said, “Oh look what’s going on out here.” A third comment happened where somebody was like, “SAK has this show where a white guy is pretending to be a Latino guy.” I spoke on that to them and said, “Hey, just so you understand, my character has never claimed to be Latin, he just claims to be eccentric.” There’s nothing in the show that is about Latin culture or Latin background, my character does have an accent, but it’s a bastardized accent.
But when I took a moment to really think about it and not get defensive, just step away from it all and think about what if I wasn’t involved with the show and didn’t know the story and didn’t know my intentions. That was when I made the decision where I said, “You know what, I can change the character, edit and do things slightly differently and it wouldn’t affect it.”
You announced the character change in a Facebook post and some of the comments, particularly from many Latinx members of the community, were defending the character of Pepe and didn’t see an issue with it. Was there any part of you, after seeing people defend Pepe, that thought, “I’ll just continue with Pepe then”?
By the time I made the post I was set. Before that, I was living in a little bit of a gray area. Where obviously there was a struggle that I was having internally where I could see where change could be made but I also know that my intentions were never in cultural appropriation. There’s nothing about Latin culture in my show. It has nothing to do with the show, the character, any of that. I could still just do what I’ve been doing for almost 15 years and keep going.
I think I bring joy to a lot of people and I want to continue to do that. So, of course, I had that little defensiveness and the knowledge of what my intensions are but again when I was watching everything going on and really thinking about, “Are you part of the solution in this world of racial tension that we’re living in or are you part of the problem?” In my head I was always part of the solution but I thought about it from the perspective of what if I didn’t know me? What if I didn’t know anything about me and I never saw the show, but I was someone who is Latinx just moved to this country and then heard, “Hey, here’s this white, gay man, who’s mocking you,” which again never my intent, but if I just heard that, I would probably see the problem and I said I want to be better than that. I don’t want to be a part of the problem.
Cancel culture has been a hot topic over the last year. Do you see this as a preemptive strike against cancel culture, of you getting ahead of “being canceled,” or do you look at this as just evolving the character?
I made a joke in the first show where I said, “Oh, I canceled myself.” The reality is, as weird as it is to be a person in comedy saying this, I’m not necessarily against what has arrived as cancel culture. I think of it more as accountability culture. The people who are getting canceled are typically the people who someone’s telling them that something they’re doing may be hurtful to others and they’re immediately dismissing that and not having a conversation. They are doubling down saying, “Well, you’re stupid, get out of my face.”
Those are the people who are being canceled. Accountability culture is: we hear it, we stop and listen and we go, “Is there something I can change? Do I need to change because maybe I don’t but it’s at least worth thinking about.” When I really took the time to think about it, I said, “I could do this.”
What’s funny is it was a story about cancel culture that made me go, “I definitely have to do this.” All of this was happening right around the time Gina Carano had been fired from “The Mandalorian” for her tweets. I just happened to be reading an interview online that she did where she was talking about how she was bullied by Disney and all this stuff and I was like, “She’s the one who did something wrong and she’s playing the victim in this.” It bugged me so much and I realized I don’t want to be that.
I will say though, in terms of cancel culture and being offensive in comedy, my show is still very offensive. It is dirty. It’s a very adult show. We bring people up on stage, people take off clothes, crazy things happen. That’s been the whole journey of the character. Everything we do is silly, naughty, R-rated, very adult stuff and I’m not changing any of that. I still say, if you’re offended by the content in the show just don’t go see the show but if you feel like I am mocking marginalized people, that’s a different problem than you just don’t like my material. That needs addressing.
Talk to me about the about the character P. Sparkle and how he differs from Pepe.
It’s actually an evolution of the same character. It’s the same spirit of the character. When you come to the show you are treated like an old friend. That’s the vibe of what I’ve always wanted for every one of my shows. It’s like, “Hey we’re all hanging out in the basement, having a party and you’re all guests at the party. He’ll always be friendly, always be shady in a way that’s delivered with a smile so that it feels like a friend messing with you more than somebody being mean and making fun of you. There will always be that spirit of “Let’s see what trouble we can get into and let’s see how far we can push the boundaries.”
The voice was the most difficult thing to work out. I still elevate my voice. It’s still a little higher pitch, a little sassier but there’s no more accent at all. I tried different accents with the character, thinking maybe I’ll be British now or I’ll do like a Russian accent, but as I tested the character with different voices I found what worked best was just not doing any accent at all.
It felt like such a “duh” moment, but for so many years I’d hidden the “me” behind this accent and the hair, my giant boots; I’m so different when I’m on stage than when I’m just hanging out with friends. I felt like I had always been able to hide behind this big character, so not doing the accent felt really vulnerable and scary. But people have really responded well without the accent.
You premiered P. Sparkle with a new hairstyle. Pepe’s trademark Mohawk became a big, poufy rainbow-colored wig. Why the change in hairstyle?
When I first did Pepe, it actually was this little Dame Edna wig. The second year was when I bought my first Mohawk wig and that became Pepe’s signature, that giant 36-inch Mohawk. So when I said we’re going to reinvent the character one of the things I said was for the first time in a long time it’s time to reinvent the hair because it’s such a signature piece of the character.
At the time I had been directing a show called “The End of the Rainbow” at Theater West End and our wig designer was a guy named Justin Lore from Tease and Floof. I was chatting with him about changing the character’s hair and he asked me what I was thinking so I said “Well everything about Pepe was flamboyant so I want to lean into it with P. Sparkle and go gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. He needs to be a walking rainbow.”
He sketched the first design and it was long and big like drag queen hair and I said, “I love that, but can you make it more.” He redesigned it as a giant plume of a rainbow and I was like “Can you find a way to add rhinestones?” because the name is P. Sparkle, so I’ve got to be sparkling. He was like, “Challenge accepted.”
He redesigned the whole front all with rhinestones and then when he delivered the wig he told me he added a surprise element. He added lights into it. I went from my iconic Mohawk to this giant rainbow with glittery stones and lights and I immediately fell in love with it. I had to relearn how to walk in it but it’s great.
It’s been a couple of weeks since you premiered P. Sparkle. How has the reception been?
The reception has been wonderful but it’s also a learning curve for me. Pepe’s quirks and phrases, all that was developed over time playing the character. When I think of the first show versus the last show, the ways that the character changed over those years was so much, so reinventing as P. Sparkle means finding what works for me now.
My first show at the Fringe Preview, I was using a lower register of my voice than I wanted to and it didn’t read as flamboyant and playful so when I got to my first show at SAK, I lifted everything up and was like “Ah, that’s the sweet spot. That’s where it lives.” Also learning new catchphrases now. For years I always call my audience members “mamis and papis,” which I’m not doing now because it’s not really a term that I should be using, so finding out now what do I call my audience members other than “bitches” because it’s not the nicest word to use.
While I’m playing a character, I want to feel free and real with my audience so I want to find something that just rolls off my tongue and I haven’t found that yet so those are things to still develop, and while the relationship with the audience is still strong, I’m trying to figure out where they fit into P. Sparkle’s world because I always knew where they fit into Pepe’s world.
What does P. Sparkle have planned for Pride month?
The last Thursday in June, June 24, we are doing a show at SAK Comedy Lab at 9:30 p.m. We are doing “P. Sparkle’s Truth or Dare Improv” with a Pride theme that night. For the rest of the month it’s going to be about being where I can. Pride for me has always been important, ever since I went to my very first Pride and realized “Oh, this is where I belong.”
To me, Pride month is a month that I sit back and love on everything and celebrate who we are, so I can’t wait to do a P. Sparkle show at SAK for Pride but also can’t wait to be around just as myself.
Additional reporting by Tomás Diniz Santos.
