Bricktown Comedy Club experienced a taste of the Renaissance fair as Jack Lepiarz, better known as Jack the Whipper or Jacques Ze Whipper, brought his one-of-a-kind mix of danger, comedy and circus to Oklahoma for the first time.
Lepiarz’s act fuses circus stuntwork, stand-up comedy and audience-driven musical whip-antics. On stage, he cracks bullwhips to provide a rhythm while he sings. He frequently takes crowd requests, as long as they aren’t on his “banned list,” turning well-known musical hits into whip-driven performances.
“This is my first time in Oklahoma,” Lepiarz said. “Oklahoma was the last state that I had not been to. So as of (Friday) I have now been to all 50 states.”
Former WBUR radio news anchor, producer and director in Boston, he spent 13 years in journalism before leaving to perform full-time.
“I left that in 2023 to become Jacques Ze Whipper, a traveling circus performer who sings songs with whips — a character that I’ve been performing since I was 20 years old,” Lepiarz said.
Lepiarz’s roots in the circus world run much deeper.
“The first years of my life were spent on the Big Apple Circus lot,” Lepiarz said. “My dad was a performer with them … and everyone I knew was a performer (or) the child of a performer.”
He remembers sneaking under the circus tent as a child to watch shows from beneath the risers.
“(We’d) eat the food that fell down,” Lepiarz said. “And yes, it is exactly as gross as that sounds.”
After taking a break from performing in his early teens, Lepiarz returned at 16 to help his dad with a show.
“He offered to pay me way more than I was making working at an ice cream shop, …” Lepiarz said. “I said, ‘Oh, hang on, I have all these skills. Why don’t we see if I could make a show?’”
From there, Lepiarz began street performing during college and performing at Renaissance fairs, where he developed the persona that would later make him a viral sensation.
“My dad was really big on saying that I should have a character, …” Lepiarz said. “I took seven years of French, I speak French reasonably well, let’s do a French character. … It softens the macho aspect of doing a danger show with whips.”
Thus, Jacques Ze Whipper, with his exaggerated accent and mustache, was born. The persona became a creative outlet and armor for Lepiarz, helping him to defy nerves and grow into his act.
“I was feeling nervous, …” Lepiarz said. “I had this realization of, ‘If they don’t like the show, it means they don’t like Jack the Whipper. It doesn’t mean they don’t like Jack Lepiarz.’ … That allows me to commit to that so much more.”
While his Oklahoma City show was at Bricktown Comedy Club, Lepiarz estimates that about 70% of his work happens at Renaissance fairs.
“It’s my bread and butter, …” Lepiarz said. “I know what to expect, I know what it’s going to look like, and it’s fun. It’s what I’m used to.”
The fairs also allow him to stay in one place for a few weeks at a time, a luxury compared to his current tour through Oklahoma and Texas.
“It’s a different city each night, …” Lepiarz said. “Someone was saying, ‘Oh, you're going to do six shows in five days?’ I'm like, ‘I did 11 shows in three days a couple of weeks ago.’”
While his outdoor shows include spectacles like setting his whip on fire, Lepiarz leans more heavily on stand-up comedy for indoor shows.
“There’s no fire indoors, for everyone’s safety,” Lepiarz said, “So we lean a lot more on the stand-up side of things. My goal is to do about 15 minutes of stand-up as I try to build out that muscle.”
Jack Lepiarz performing at a Renaissance fair.
Whether on a theater stage or under a tent, audience interaction and improvisation are a central aspect of his act.
“I started performing a new show in 2021. … It was maybe 20 minutes long. Now that show is closer to 45 because I’ve found the comedy in the moments … It's sort of starting with a roadmap of, ‘What are the tricks? What's the payoff of these routines?’ And then, ‘Where's the comedy around it?’ Ideally, I get to flesh that out on stage doing shows,” Lepiarz said.
His humor and comedy keeps audience interactions high, with slight planned and improvised changes taking place in between each new show.
“It’s a way to keep them engaged,” Lepiarz explained. “It gives me a lot of material I can put online that’s not giving away other parts of my show. ... For people who come back and see the show a bunch of times, it makes each show just a little bit different.”
An online presence is what launched his career to new heights. In late 2021, a fan posted a clip of his act from King Richard’s Faire that went viral.
“It got 300,000 views, and then a week later, two more clips of my show got over 2 million views,” Lepiarz said. “I made my TikTok and started doing things, and by January 2022 I had over a million followers.”
A year later, he left his radio job to perform full-time. Still, Lepiarz said maintaining that momentum isn’t easy.
“The challenge is sustaining that growth,” Lepiarz said. “You can have this meteoric rise, and then continuing to capitalize on that success is tough ... And so my policy the last few years has been just to take as much work as possible to take advantage of the good times and see how long they last.”
Even with his busy tour schedule, Lepiarz said he hopes his journey can inspire others who feel torn between stability and creative dreams.
“Adding a safety option is critically important, …” he advised. “If you can start developing the skills for your side hustle and find a way to turn what you’re passionate about into something you can make a little money out of, … you could end up in the same situation … where suddenly the things that you wanted to do at 23, … you can do when you’re 33. ... Don't give up on your dreams. Keep working on them.”
More information on Jack the Whipper can be found online.
This story was edited by Madisson Cameron. Larkin Bock, Andrew Higgins, Tori Pham and Sophie Hemker copy edited this story.
