Rob Santos lives two lives. They’re both pretty funny.
You can glimpse both of them May 3, when two episodes of the local comedian’s new web series “Beige on Both Sides” premiere in a special screening at the Mark Twain House and Museum. The event also features a stand-up set by Santos and a talk-back with him, his co-producers and co-writers and his fellow cast members.
The show stars Santos as a stand-up comedian in his 30s named Rob, who’s trying to raise his young daughter and negotiate his relationship with her mother, all while figuring out his own life. The show mirrors his real life: Santos is also a standup comedian in his 30s raising a child. His daughter in the show is played by a Simsbury kindergartner named Paige Whittingham: “My real daughter asked me the other day,” Santos says during a visit to the Courant offices mid-April, “‘Can I go to Paige’s house and pretend to be her?'”
“Beige on Both Sides,” described by its creators as a dramedy, has some heavy themes about relationships and family issues. The show is not exactly biographical, but is based on certain aspects of Santos’ life. He describes the series as “an apology” to his girlfriend for “what she’s had to put up with.”
In “Beige on Both Sides,” Rob “goes around, meets different people,” Santos says. “He’s a talented comedian who hasn’t made it big yet.” When creating the show, Santos asked himself “How can I be a comedian on the come-up without it being about poverty? The black comedy shows are always about how we come from poverty. Other shows, there can be this internal struggle with being successful. The show grew from Rob meeting different people to a story about a family trying to come back together again.”
That said, the real-life Santos did “grow up in the New Britain projects,” he says, and he talks about race frequently in his stand-up act. He just wants his comedy to be about more than that.
“There’s this same voice I’m hearing over and over here from black males. Mine can be different, being black and Puerto Rican and not knowing what to do. I always had to be a chameleon, learning how to engage.
“With my comedy, with a white crowd, I always have to spell it out for them: ‘Look at us, looking like a community college ad.’ It can be hard for black comedians. When respect does come our way, we can be afraid to take the next step.”
Santos, who now lives in Hartford, has twice made long-term pilgrimages to the comedy mecca of New York City, where he’s had some notable success with his stand-up. In 2008 he attended the American Comedy Institute. He’s performed at such well-known rooms as Caroline’s, The Comic Strip and Gotham Comedy Club and won the grand prize on the third season on the TV comedy competition “Comics Watching Comics.”
Fatherhood, as well as his continuing struggles with borderline personality disorder, are what brought Santos back to Hartford for some stability. He doesn’t regret returning and is using the opportunity to help foster a new, more diverse comedy scene in the area. He leads an occasional stand-up comedy workshop at Sea Tea Comedy Theater. He performs regularly; this month he opened for Boston legend Lenny Clarke at Bobby V’s restaurant in Windsor Locks. He’s also been seen at City Steam, the Funny Bone, Mohegan Sun’s Comix Club, the Bridgeport Stress Factory and elsewhere.
Now he has “Beige on Both Sides,” which has two of its first season’s 10 episodes in the can and is already sketching out ideas for its second season. The show, filmed in and around Hartford, is produced by the locally rooted Clouds and a Waffle Productions. Clouds and a Waffle’s founder, Cie Peterson, is credited as the show’s producer, director, co-writer and show-runner. Peterson’s daughter Lea is another co-writer and also an actor in the second episode. Taneisha Duggan (the associate producer at TheaterWorks who has an extensive acting background) plays the child’s mother, Venus; and Berlin native Vinnie Pagano plays Rob’s friend.
In his Sea Tea Comedy Theater workshops, Santos tries to find common ground with his students. “I ask the class ‘What did you do this week?’ or “Tell me something you hate.’ One time I just said ‘I hate things!‘ There’s a sense of comfort, community. We process, just like in group therapy.” His next workshop, not yet scheduled, may be sometime in May.
Santos cites Martin Lawrence, Martin Short, Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce among his comedy inspirations. “Comedy saved my life,” he says. He carries a Moleskine journal at all times to jot down his latest musings.
“I’m so fearless now. I go onstage with an idea, and work it out. When I came back from New York the most recent time, in 2012, people around here said ‘You can’t talk about race.’ I was ostracized because I was combative. I can be antagonizing. Now I have this show, where I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to see me want to be a good dad, and a good comedian?’
“I have so many raw and good ideas,” Santos says. “I attack culture. I don’t always even want to be funny — I want to be interesting.”
The first two episodes of “Beige on Both Sides” — “Rob Picks Up Brooklyn” and “Rob Sees a Therapist” — screen at 6 p.m. May 3 at the Mark Twain House and Museum, 351 Farmington Ave., Hartford. The event also features a stand-up set by Santos and a talkback with “Beige on Both Sides”‘ creators and cast members. Admission is free but reservations are required at beigeonbothsides.com. The release dates of the remaining episodes of the show are yet to be determined and will be published on the show’s website when available.
LAUGH TRACK is a continuing series tracking comedy in Connecticut and the comedians trying to make us laugh. You can hear Rob Santos talk about why he abandoned the New York comedy scene for Hartford in the Courant’s Culture Desk podcast below and at soundcloud.com/ctnow.
var parentDoc=parent.document.body,resizeFrame=function(){var e=[],t=”none”;parentDoc.clientWidth<420?(e=document.getElementsByClassName("lat-embed-small"),t="block"):(e=document.getElementsByClassName("lat-embed-small"),t="none");for(var a=0;a=420&&parentDoc.clientWidth<840?(e=document.getElementsByClassName("lat-embed-medium"),t="block"):(e=document.getElementsByClassName("lat-embed-medium"),t="none");for(var a=0;a=840?(e=document.getElementsByClassName(“lat-embed-large”),t=”block”):(e=document.getElementsByClassName(“lat-embed-large”),t=”none”);for(var a=0;a<e.length;a++)e[a].style.display=t};parent.window.addEventListener("resize",resizeFrame,!1);
