If you only know Hal Sparks for his breakout role on “Queer As Folk,” you might want to catch up.
The actor, musician, activist, social commentator and comedian always has a number of projects going — whether it is his rock band Zero1, in which he sings and plays guitar, or his starring roles in “Lab Rats” for the Disney Channel.
Yes, it is a lot of plates to keep spinning, but Sparks said there was a time way back in the day when entertainers like Sammy Davis Jr. and the like were expected to do it all.
“It used to be that was what being an entertainer was: people who could dance, act and sing, everything,” he said. “That was the norm then and now it’s like, ‘pick one thing and stick to it because it’s really hard to sell you if a casting person doesn’t get you. That attitude has been to my detriment at times but it has also been to my benefit. It’s worked out because that’s how I ended up on ‘Queer As Folk.’ That’s how that played out. If I had just said yes to the first three things that were offered to me after I left ‘Talk Soup,’ I would have never gotten that opportunity to do ‘Queer As Folk’ and that was the winning thing.”
It turned out, Sparks said, that few candidates with any name recognition were willing to try out for the role, the lead character in the series that ran from 2000-05.
“They just saw me because nobody else would come in. Nobody would audition. I was one of three people with a name that would come into the office that wouldn’t sneak in with a coat covering his face like they were on trial,” he said. “All those things are me. I don’t do standup. I am a standup. I don’t act. I’m an actor. I don’t do music. I’m a musician. Those are integral to who I am. You should be able to do all of it and you should be able to celebrate what you do. It doesn’t make sense to hide who you are and what you do if you are fighting for everybody else to be open about who they are.”
Currently, Sparks is on the road and will bring his standup act to Philly for “The Selfie Tour,” at Helium Comedy Club through Feb. 14.
We’ll let him explain that title.
“A lot of what I’m talking about these days is futurism and narrowcasting as far as your life experiences, the self-imposed echo chamber that a lot of people happily crowbar themselves into,” he said. “Plus, if you notice in the [promo] picture, I’ve got my fingers crossed behind my back. A lot of people today are projecting an image that isn’t the full picture and they have more outlets to do it. That’s the philosophical answer.”
Prolific, sarcastic and deep — we like that in our comedian-actor-activists.
We asked Sparks what direction his comedy and activism is taking in today’s post-marriage-equality, politically charged climate.
“Obviously I don’t feel like we have to push the message of marriage equality anymore but rather pay equality and the ability to live comfortably and the more socially porous parts of life. Now that we’ve gotten past the cellblock version, which is, mechanically everybody has the same rights, then we have to move into the more malleable parts. And that part itself is where more comedy and drama lie,” he said. “Comedy and fear are very closely linked. Fear of new experiences and society moving on without you is a goldmine, dealing with that anxiety as a comedian. And it has to be. Once things start evening out, what we have to do is start working on living comfortably with each other.”
For example, Sparks referenced the Holocaust museum in Los Angeles, which is called the Museum of Tolerance.
“I think it should be the Museum of Understanding or something along those lines because tolerance is an arms-length word. I think gay people, especially over the last decade, have moved from a zone of alienation to tolerance and now to true integration. And there are people who are even quite on board with the message who have a tolerant viewpoint, but not an immersive viewpoint. And I think that’s where we need to go as a people. I don’t believe in a version of equality or integration where people go, ‘Yeah, they are totally free to do whatever they want over there. As long as it’s across the room, it’s totally cool.’ That’s not enough and it’s going to take us a while to get past that. So that’s where the social movement lies.”
Sparks added that he isn’t worried about some of the homophobic rhetoric that is being bandied about by a number of the GOP presidential candidates and others.
“Those people represent an increasingly small group of human beings, a diminished group of humans,” he said. “They are a freaking-out minority right now. Their fears are either going to be placated or ignored. They need to be reassured that their fears of Armageddon are not true, or they need to be ignored until they die off like every racist generation before them. It’s the nature of human growth: They age out of their phobias. I don’t view Republicans and Democrats in this country as half and half. You’re looking at 70-30, and that is increasingly true. That’s one of the reasons someone like Donald Trump can get 30 percent of 30 percent. He’s got the name recognition of a 50-50 party, but in reality, mechanically, it is way smaller than that. He probably can’t win a national election.”
Sparks is confident that Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president (for the record, we talked to him before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries happened). And he agreed with our predictions that, if that happens, sexism is going to see a huge resurgence, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the early 1900s.
“Hillary Clinton will do for gender relations what Barack Obama did for race relations in that he’s a flashpoint for our ailments,” he said. “I think Barack Obama is a transformative political candidate on the issue of race only because he is the one who let us know we have cancer, not because he was the cure. The cure is up to us. A lot of people thought, Oh, we’re fine. I have a mass in my gut but I’m OK. And he’s the one who said ‘No, you have cancer. You need treatment.’ And then we go through that phase where people go, ‘No, I don’t have cancer. You have cancer. You are cancer!’ I think Hillary will do the exact same thing for gender.”
Sparks, who is straight, said that being on ‘Queer As Folk’ attracted a more diverse audience to his standup comedy performances.
He said he makes a point of making sure the shows he does in comedy clubs don’t feature performers who have jokes that are at the expense of his LGBT fans.
“They know it’s a safe space comedy-wise,” Sparks said about his audiences. “They know they can go to the show and not get slammed in that regard, either as an aside or as a central point in somebody’s act. I don’t let my openers do it. I hire my openers based on making sure that is true. I also think that’s why I have a lot of women in my audience. A lot of women come to my show because it’s not sexist and brutal. It’s free flowing. I don’t tap dance around and play it safe just for them. I’m not politically correct; I’m just not a dick. You have to be conscious of other human beings. I don’t need to be told what the right word is. I understand in talking about someone how to speak about them. Ethically, it’s important to me. I have to stay true to who I am ethically.”
Hal Sparks performs through Feb. 14 at Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St. For more information or tickets, call 215-496-9001 or visit www.halsparks.com.