Paul Michael Wegman: A brief biography
Although known as the MC and performer for the stage shows at The Parliament House, a long-time gay resort on Orange Blossom Trail, and through his famous female impersonations, lip-syncs, bawdy performances and wild pratfalls on stage, many still come to ask the same question:
Who was Paul Wegman? Knowing who he was has become somewhat of a mystery for some in the Central Florida region. For many, Wegman was none other than that rumbustious Miss P, or P as she would later be called. For others, he was that quiet, recluse individual whose introverted nature captivated the public through his intense acting and theatrical directing. Yet, at the same time he made it clear that the person they saw on stage whether at the Footlight Theatre or elsewhere was simply a character like any other character he’d played; so, then who exactly was Paul Wegman? Paul Michael Wegman was born on March 12th 1945 in Rochester, New York. Raised in a close-knit family, he had a relatively happy life growing up. At a young age he expressed his desire to be an altar boy since being raised Catholic, yet it was clear from his childhood that he had other interests that would mold and shape his life: acting and the theatre. His brother Dave Wegman recalled a time when their father built Paul a puppet theatre, he eventually started doing a set designs, spending hours making them (he would open and close the curtains and then start to work on the next). It seems as if it ran in his blood. Of course, since an early age, Wegman would listen to Broadway musicals and would sing and dance in his room. He would also join in several high school musicals and comedies such as “The Boyfriend”; “Brigadoon”, and “The King and I”. |
It wasn’t until the age of 18, where he decided to make his career acting. “When I was 18 years old I decided I wanted to be an actor. I was also 275 pounds of person,” he would jokingly state in an interview with Tom Dyer of the publication Watermark. “My mother and father looked at me and said, ‘They’re just isn’t much hope of you becoming an actor. You’d better start thinking about getting a job and getting a regular life.’ So, when I graduated from school, I got a regular job and a regular life.” However, it was during this time that Wegman’s sexuality became apparent, stirring controversy with his mother’s side of the family; even running away at age 19 and joining a carnival through a friend in Dunkirk, New York, after he was strongly suggested to leave by his grandmother for being gay. Of course, being raised in a conservative family in a small city would be in striking contrast to this new world. “The minute we arrived on the carnival lot he deserted me and there I was just walking around… I slept for a week under the wagons hiding out, scared out of my wits, seeing my friend only every once in a while. Finally, this lady who ran the carnival cafeteria asked me to come work for her. So, I moved from under the wagon up into the wagon (laughs).”
While Wegman worked in the carnival cafeteria, he developed a relationship with a man who would travel with him to Tampa, Florida early in the 1970’s. However, the relationship would not last and as they arrived Wegman would reflect, “he ditched me for someone else, left me standing on Kennedy Boulevard bridge with a nickel in my pocket.” |
"Love to hear people laugh...so pretty soon it became, 'What can I do to make these people laugh?'”
- PAUL WEGMAN
However, by some luck, he developed a friendship with Whit Gibson there, and it was he who would take Wegman to Orlando one night to a gay bar called The Palace Club on Edgewater Drive. It was this night that would transform Paul Wegman into Miss P. As he walked into the club, his attention went towards Miss Honey, a drag queen on stage performing a number titled “Spanish Rose” from Bye Bye Birdie, a Broadway musical from his childhood. “Well, as a child I knew all of those Broadway shows. I was one of those Broadway cast album f****ts. Had `em all. Knew `em all.”
“So there we were at the Palace Club and I was mouthing all the words along with Miss Honey and my friend Whit said to me, ‘You’d like to be doing that wouldn’t you?’ and I said, “I sure would,’ and a month later I was on stage.” Wegman would eventually be part of the opening of the Parliament House in 1975. As performer and the MC he filled the Footlights Theatre with locals and many gay tourists that visited the area with his alter-character Miss P. He then further pursued his life’s passion and career as an actor, studying theater at Seminole Community College under Professor Sara Daspin beginning in the late 1970’s. Daspin played an influential part in Wegman’s acting and the processes of theatre, which helped develop him performing in and directing various plays at Seminole and Valencia Community Colleges and other local venues. He would also graduate Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. in theater at University of Central Florida in 1991 and become a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. “Theater was his salvation,” Julia Gagne, a theater professor at Valencia Community College and a longtime friend would state; “The way he directed is perfect for educational theater…he was able to ask the right questions.” For many who personally knew him, all could recall Wegman’s fondness for Shakespeare. |
Yet life wasn’t always easy for him. In the early 1980’s Wegman only had a bike and lived in a studio apartment, when he wasn’t living at the back of The Parliament House. Even when he would move in with his brother and a friend at a place between Winter Park and Casselberry, he would cycle to the Parliament and to UCF to attend class. On top of that, he paid for his college out of pocket; everything was paid from what little he made while performing and at part time jobs … he was proud of it.
He would direct “Little Shop of Horrors” and would play various roles including the title role of John Merrick in “The Elephant Man” twice; Horst in Martin Sherman’s “Bent”; Prospero in “The Tempest”; Dodge in Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child”; Malvolio in “Twelfth Night”; Lady Braknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and C.S. Lewis of “Shadowlands”. It was clear that Wegman was meant to be on stage, regardless of the roles and he made sure things went his way. When Wegman played an old Irish barfly in “The Weir,” he would wander onstage at the beginning of the play and threw a dart at the target next to the bar. He made it clear, he brought whatever nuances he needed to get into the role. However, behind the various roles he would play including the famous P, Wegman himself was truly known to only a few. “There was always Paul and then there was P at the Parliament House,” Mark Edward Smith, a friend and fellow actor would say. “To me, they were never the same people.” Some of his closest friends would mention how difficult Wegman was, yet they also reminded that he was funny, generous, and kind. Pam Baumann, an actress and friend of Wegman would state, “He was such a prickly character…you had to know him to know this was a joke when you got to know him he was a warm fuzzy. He was such fun to be with. That wonderful enthusiasm for everything just sucked everyone in.” |
If I was just Miss P, I would probably be everywhere doing everything. But I can't go out and then go do Scrooge the next morning. |
Yet like his acting, that warm fuzzy person kept the struggles of his life private. From being rejected because of his sexuality to seeing many friends pass away from AIDS during the epidemic and a victim to abusive relationships, Wegman would suffer from depression in which he would mask through his acting skills. In the mid 90’s he unfortunately contracted AIDS and it rapidly deteriorated his body to the point of becoming nearly blind. In addition, he never had the opportunity to play the role he longed for, the title character in King Lear, and the last roles he played were rather small; a secretary of the Continental Congress in the New Mark Two Dinner Theater’s 1776 and the flimflam man in a staged reading of Len Jenkin’s drama “Kraken”. In the late 90’s, he got a DUI and decided that he needed to make drastic changes in his life:
“I sat down and looked at what my life has been, especially since my lover and I broke up a year ago, and I realized that I really looked forward to Friday and Saturday nights,” he continued explaining to Tom Dyer. “I would get here and I would have those two drinks and halfway through the first show I would be sloshed. Halfway through the second show I would stop remember things. It just erased two days from the week that I no longer had to deal with. All of a sudden, I wasn’t going to be able to do that anymore.” “So last Friday night, when I walked out on stage it was really scary… really scary… because I felt like I had started depending on the liquor to give me that lift over the hill… to leaving Paul behind and becoming P. But again, it was God and the universe slapping me in the face with a DUI and then turning around and letting me know that it hadn’t been taken from me… I just had to do it a little more naturally. And she was there. P was there. I knew just what to do.” |
He also in several ways felt disconnected from Orlando’s gay community. In the same interview he would state:
“I wish I was gay. I am a homosexual, but I don’t think of myself as being gay in the sense that I’m not politically motivated and I’m not community motivated. In a sense I’m very community motivated. But I don’t come to this place (Parliament House). I don’t go to the other bars. You can count the number of times I’ve been in Southern Nights or the Cactus Club on one hand. I don’t go to the gay church. I’m not involved in gay activities. I don’t have time.” In a way, Wegman lived two seemingly different lives, yet one in pursuit of his passion: Making people laugh. “I Love to hear people laugh,” he would remark. “So it pretty soon became, ‘what can I do to make people laugh?’ And then all of a sudden it wasn’t a matter of thinking what I could do-this is where you’ll look at me with crossed eyes- but this is where God stepped in and said, ‘This is what you were meant to do. This is where you belong. You need to make people laugh and I’ll help you. I’ll give you the things to say.’ And until the day I die I will believe that.” |
Paul Wegman passed away on August 24th, 2004 due to complications resulting from AIDS
In an outpouring of love during three separate memorial services afterwards, contributions from friends, fellow thespians, and the gay community created permanent scholarships for students in Theatre Arts at Seminole and Valencia. He refused the contributions towards his care but was filled with happiness and passed with peace knowing that they were being created to benefit future theatre lovers like himself.
Paul Michael Wegman
1945-2004
In an outpouring of love during three separate memorial services afterwards, contributions from friends, fellow thespians, and the gay community created permanent scholarships for students in Theatre Arts at Seminole and Valencia. He refused the contributions towards his care but was filled with happiness and passed with peace knowing that they were being created to benefit future theatre lovers like himself.
Paul Michael Wegman
1945-2004