Comedians and figures from across the political spectrum have condemned an Edinburgh Fringe promoter for cancelling a show by Jerry Sadowitz, a legendary stand-up comic. The Times has more.
Pleasance Theatre faces a call for a boycott following its axing of Jerry Sadowitz’s Fringe run after a single show after complaints that he used a racist term, exposed his penis and made members of the audience “feel unsafe”.
Sadowitz, whose outrageous mixture of comedy and magic is renowned for its invective, tweeted: “Did a show last night, 75 mins, thought it went well. Didn’t see any walkouts. Today I’m told my show’s been cancelled. Great stuff. I’m truly sorry for everyone who travelled to see the show tonight.”
The Pleasance programme warned audiences that the performance at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre “contains strong language and themes some may find distressing” and Sadowitz’s own promotional video said he was “gonna get his dick out”.
Commenting on the decision to scrap the Saturday night performance, Katherine Ryan, the comedian and BBC presenter, tweeted: “Very strange to cancel someone’s entire run for apparent offense when there’s a content warning right on the booking page.”
Viv Groskop, the comedian who judged the 2022 International Booker Prize, tweeted: “If the cancelling of Jerry Sadowitz’s Edinburgh show is about nudity, then loads of other shows should get cancelled too.
“If it’s about content… then let grown adults google acts before they buy tickets. It’s not difficult.”
Richard Herring, a comedian who cited Sadowitz as an early influence, said the cancellation pointed to a wider malaise at this year’s Fringe.
Writing on his blog, he said: “To complain about him being offensive is like asking the actor who plays Macbeth to be arrested for murder.
“His audience should know what they’re getting into, as should any theatre that books him. It’s not like he’s a new act . . . it is another example of the Fringe not feeling very Fringey this year.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Dominic Cavendish, the theatre critic of the Telegraph, has written a good piece pointing out that Jerry Sadowitz has been telling racist jokes and exposing himself since the 1980s. The Pleasance knew this, the people who bought tickets knew this. So why did the Pleasance suddenly cancel his performance?
Stop Press 2: Sadowitz has called on the Pleasance to apologise to him for describing his show as “as unsafe, homophobic, misogynistic and racist”. He added: “If the Pleasance can’t apologise to me they should at least apologise to the 300 people who paid for and travelled to see the show on Saturday.” GB News has more.
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I’m not sure how free speech and exposing yourself are necessarily the same thing?
Depends what they cancelled him for really. Artistic nudity is one thing but there are limits.
Presumably if he’d done it in drag to a group of little children in a library, it would have been OK?
You presume wrong
Presumably, he meant that would have been ok with the people who cancelled the show. I tend to agree with that. A nice ad hoc definition of woke I came accross recentely is Someone who believes everything except his own behaviour must always be offensive.
I agree. Flashing your todger has sod all to do with comedy in my view.
It’s on a stage, Hux. It’s not for real. And anyway, it’s not what you do but the way that you do it. It could well be funny.
And humour is a funny thing…
It’s fairly obvious that his show was cancelled due to the woke agenda. Jerry Sadowitz is a extreme comedian, he toys with his audience, says outrageous things, pushes the boundaries of acceptability because exploring boundaries is what we need to do especially when there are ridiculous rules or taboos in place. He makes us look at ourselves. He’s been doing it for an awfully long time. The audience knows what he’s like, his promotional material carries a warning, the theatre knew all this. To cancel the show looks like kowtowing to some pressure from somewhere else. I can imagine some shiny eyed woke activists are behind it.
Funny how woke comedians like Ryan and Herring, who are usually censorious to the point of idiocy when it comes to anything remotely non-PC are suddenly standing up for free speech. Different story when it comes to their own kind and their own bread and butter. Noticed the same with journalists – tend to stick together and not go for their own kind, just everyone else, like a pack of hyenas.
Is the theatre not allowed to change its mind, for whatever reason (subject to contractual obligations)?
JS should be free to say the economy’s awful as it’s ‘run by women and blacks’ (as reported by the Telegraph), as that’s free speech (and before anyone reminds me, I knot it will be claimed that this is ‘satire’, ‘edgy’, ‘black humour’, whatever …), but does that extend to putting pressure on the theatre to continue showing his shows when they’ve decided they really don’t want to?
What if a library decided, for whatever reason, that they no longer wanted to continue ‘Drag Queen Storytime’ sessions, although they knew exactly what the sessions were about when they made the booking? Should the library then be boycotted to pressure it into continuing the sessions?
Sadowitz’s tweet, after the cancellation, seems fair and fine. He now wants an apology. And yes he probably does deserve one, as, after all, they did book him, and someone there must have had a good idea of what his act would be like! Something along the lines of ‘we’re sorry, for the inconvenience to you and those who have booked, but we’ve changed our mind’.
But a boycott of the theatre, if successful, would cause it financial problems. That’s putting a lot of pressure on the theatre to continue running an act it no longer wants to show. Is that right?
Upshot is: a lot of people who’d never heard of Jerry Sadowitz, and like his brand of humour, will have heard of him now!
If they cancel a show for being unsafe, homophobic, misogynistic and racist they should have clearly spelled out what conditions they place on content at their venue from the beginning. Maybe something like Please be aware that only jokes about Tory voters are allowed at this venue and even these should preferably be white, heterosexual men of at least 55 years of age. Whether or not this condition has been met will be decided after each show by a secretly meeting employee tribunal entirely at its own discretion. Payment of artists is subject to affirmation of tribunal and may be clawed back at any later time should the tribunal chose to change its decision.
Dumb logic
The difference between being offended enough to call for cancelling a show and not being able to is a trigger warning.