By: Staff Writer
June 15, 2021
From San Fernando to Port of Spain to Trincity to now Lexo Street, this Trinidadian creative has taken the internet by storm by pioneering comedy television unlike anything the region has been treated to since Oliver at Large.
Roger Alexis, creator of LexoTV, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that there is a difference between the puppets he has created that have now become infamous like Santana, Narine and Pastor Stewart and the actual show itself and how it came about.
He told us that these puppets, who live on the fictional “Lexo Street” came out of a television show he started back in 2005 called “Herman’s Tales,” where the ingenuity of the puppets took shape. After the success of Herman’s tales he realized that the puppets, one in particular, Santana, was a huge hit and from then on came Lexo Street and the creation of the Lexo universe of characters.
Oddly enough, Santana was a small bit part of the original Herman’s tales and the main character was the almost as equally infamous Narine. But Santana stole the heart of Caribbean fans worldwide and it has rocketed his small creation into a cult phenomenon. The Santana show that came after Herman’s Tales was initially just a class project that ballooned into a regional cult hit.
Roger said: “Herman’s tales was this puppet that lives in a village and he tells you stories about all of his adventures and it did pretty well, it showed on Caribvision it showed on local television here and I entered it initially into film festivals here.
“The puppet that’s known as Narine, Narine was Herman at one time and Santana acted in one of the episodes where he was the leader of a gang and the story was really about gang violence and so on. So, Santana was the leader by gang in that episode. So that’s where he was born.”
Santana was such a hit, Roger had a movie surrounding the character that came out in theatres in February, 2012. The movie can now be downloaded at Caribbean Cyber Stream.
The characters on Lexo Street, from Santana to Narine, Patsy, Janice and Pastor Stewart are not representative of any one particular person or group of people in Roger’s social network, but comprise an amalgam of idiosyncratic behaviours that all Caribbean people can gravitate towards.
For example, he said about Santana: “That’s the whole the whole appeal of the show. These characters represent somebody in the community you may know. That is what people gravitate to, Santana is not really a bad guy or a gang member or anything like that in this show. He is just the loud mouthed guy who is filled with confidence, the village ram who thinks he’s better than anybody else and can beat everybody else. We all have guys like that.
He added: “Narine, meek and mild, his wife used to abuse him at one time, but not anymore because over a period of time the story arc changed. But in Trinidad we always have the pushover character and that was Narine.
“But with Pastor Stewart, I have pastors in my family. Yeah, and these guys, obviously are nothing like Pastor Stewart. But I have seen holy men or policemen or people who generally because their profession demands of authority, when you really get to know them, you see the human side and most times it’s not very nice. So every community has guys like that in them.”
While the passion and commitment to creating entertainment for his followers drives him, money also plays a factor in how LExo Street develops. As with many industries and business, COVID-19 has hit Roger in 2020 and 2021, causing him to have to change production patterns and format due to social distancing requirements. “I do all of my own camera work and editing now, and I just have my voice actors send me the file and I edit everything myself. It has been taxing, but we have to keep pushing and the money will come,” he said.
Roger, who is also a television cameraman by profession, does all of his camerawork and editing and script writing for the characters, but has Trinidadian voice actors who he explains are people who do it “for the love of the art.”
As for revenue, Roger depends mainly on YouTube ads where most of Lexo TV’s content is stored for our viewing pleasure.
He also said that “commitment” is key to this business and he encourages any young person wishing to get into the creative business to keep at it and don’t give up, it takes a lot of long hours and hard work and you have to be “prepared for the good and the bad.” Recalling some of his down times where he wasn’t sure whether it was feasible for him to continue on with producing Lexo Street.
He said, “The bad is, for some reason, creatives get pretty depressed, and while everybody gets depressed, creatives get depressed differently.
“You want to believe in your craft because you feel like you make no contribution to society at times, when compared to a policeman or a firefighter, or other people. The thing is, there are pros and cons when the bad times set or when the slow times come, or before the success comes- You have to be able to manage the rejection, you have to push harder and try harder. And you have to be patient and persevere until you know the success comes.”