Two Languages, One Comedian and a Night Filled With Laughs
- Annette Hinkle
- May 26
- 5 min read
Acclaimed comedian Pedro Gonzalez performs separate English and Spanish sets in a collaboration with OLA
This Saturday, comedian Pedro Gonzalez will perform two consecutive stand-up sets at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (WHBPAC). While doing back-to-back shows is certainly not uncommon for a comedian on any given night, what makes this gig unusual is the fact that Gonzalez’s first set at 5 p.m. will be delivered in English, while his second set at 8 p.m. will be performed entirely in Spanish.
The two shows on May 30 represent a unique partnership between WHBPAC and OLA (Organización Latino Americana) of Eastern Long Island, two nonprofit East End organizations that are working together to engage the area’s Spanish-speaking population with offerings that welcome them into performing arts spaces.
“We started the partnership before COVID because everything went crazy in performance spaces and theater venues, so we worked through all that,” explained Minerva Perez, OLA’s executive director, in a recent phone interview. “But even before COVID — it must have been in 2018 or 2019 with the OLA Film Festival — we partnered with WHBPAC as a venue. That’s when it started.
“What’s important to me about a collaboration is there should be money exchanged,” Perez continued. “A nonprofit, especially in the arts, shouldn’t do something for free for me or OLA. We want to help keep the lights on.”
Working closely with WHBPAC’s executive director Julienne Penza-Boone and her team, in addition to the film festival offerings, OLA also partnered with the theater in 2023 to present Venezuelan singer Nella in concert.
“The relationship is centered on how we can join our skill sets and experience to offer something to a community that’s not usually walking through the doors,” Perez explained, “and making sure that the community knows they’re welcome there — and then have them in this beautiful venue.
“There’s genuine care and desire on Julienne’s part that everyone feels great being there and they have things to offer that community, not just once a year,” she added. “How is other programming that’s not typical of a Latin ticket buyer clearly advertised? Is it by a flyer or social media marketing — also in Spanish — with different understandings in place?
“Our audiences aren’t just looking for Spanish offerings and they’re not being courted as a typical ticket-paying audience,” Perez said.
With the goal of building audiences in mind, OLA is not just partnering with WHBPAC to expand offerings for the Spanish-speaking community. In May 2025 at East Hampton’s Guild Hall, OLA presented “Fuenteovejuna: East End,” an all-Spanish community-performed version of a 17th-century play by playwright Félix Lope de Vega. On Friday and Saturday, June 12 and 13, Guild Hall and OLA will team up again to present “Crossroads: A Night of Short Plays,” a new Spanish-language theater project led by Perez and Margarita Espada.
“One of the women in the show does a monologue about trying to put Spanish speakers in a box,” Perez said. “One of her favorite bands is Bon Jovi — you have to recognize whether it’s German Expressionism or a band playing Bon Jovi, you will have an audience of Latinos for that. But if you cut them out of the bargain when so many Latinos are of different backgrounds, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.
“I’m an art and theater person, I want to see art spaces survive,” she added. “We need to understand the growing generation is very much Latino, whether they have a foot in one culture or another.”
When it comes to comedians, you could certainly say that Colombian-born Pedro Gonzalez has a foot firmly in both cultures. He arrived in the United States in 2002 at age 19, after his entire family had already settled here.
“I was left back in Colombia, when I got here, we all had to start from zero again,” Gonzalez explained in a recent phone interview. “I felt bad because I had a scholarship to study engineering back in Colombia. But here, we all had jobs like cleaning toilets.”
His real-life custodial position at a preschool became the source of one of Gonzalez’s first jokes when he compared his situation to that of Matt Damon in the film “Good Will Hunting.” But instead of being the night janitor recognized for his brilliance after solving advanced mathematical equations on blackboards of MIT, Gonzalez said he thought he might get ahead by solving blackboard problems like 2 + 2 = 4 and identifying shapes such as rectangles. Instead, he was fired.
That was a long time — and a lot of comedic material — ago, and Gonzalez, who is now married with children and living in New York City, has a lot more jobs and life experiences under his belt. While he initially set out to pursue his Ph.D. in English literature from UCLA not long after arriving in the U.S., by the time he earned his master’s degree, he realized there was probably an easier way to make a living.
“I went to work for the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], and I was doing wire taps there,” Gonzalez explained. “There was a lot of dead time during the day, so I started watching stand-up at work. I’d go to lunch and come back with a story of what happened.
“My friends said, ‘You like telling stories and this is a job here, so pursue it,’” Gonzalez said. “That wasn’t a job in Colombia.”
And that’s how Gonzelez turned his knack for comedic storytelling into a full-time profession. In 2018 and 2019, he was a finalist on “New York’s Funniest” and “StandUp NBC,” respectively. More recently, he was a staff writer on the Freevee coming-of-age sitcom “Primo,” based on the life of New York Times best-selling author Shea Serrano. And in 2020, he was the first Latin American immigrant comedian to appear on the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
Fortunately for Gonzalez, through it all there’s been enough happening in daily life to keep his stand-up material current, fresh and totally relevant to audiences, no matter what language they speak.
“Everything that’s happened in between, it’s fodder,” he said. “When your life has no bumps, it’s harder to write comedy. But when you’re a fish out of water fighting the station you’re at and working to be better, there’s a lot to talk about.
“As immigrants, we come here to make our lives better and make this place better,” he said. “I wrote a little joke to explain what it’s like to be in a relationship with the United States. I write about what amuses me and what I’m trying to make sense of.”
It would seem that these days, lots of folks are taking notice of Gonzalez’s unique brand of humor. He finds that the nature of getting the word out about his comedy has been greatly enhanced by his online visibility.
“I see social media as a blessing. I write a joke every day and stay relevant every day, and I have a quality product they can come see,” he said. “Now, I’m going everywhere to perform. Somebody bought a show in Switzerland and London — I’m starting to go internationally. I think it’s important to perform in other places and be informed on where you’re performing.”
And he knows people are catching on to his comedy based on how he is treated when he’s out and about.
“My largest following is in New York,” he said. “But I know people know about me because I get free Pringles cans from flight attendants on airplanes.”
Indeed, Pedro Gonzalez has arrived.
If You Go
“An Evening of Comedy With Pedro Gonzalez” will be presented on Saturday, May 30, at 5 p.m. in English and at 8 p.m. in Spanish at Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Tickets for either show are $32 at whbpac.org, 631-288-1500 or at the box office located at 76 Main Street, Westhampton Beach during business hours.
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