‘Never felt more alive’: Comedy club owner shuts down stand-up set after sexist and racist jokes

A stand-up comic set has been shut down by a comedy club owner, who didn’t see the funny side of a series of racist and sexist jokes.

A comedy club owner who shut down a stand-up comic set after a series of racist and sexist jokes has been targeted with online abuse.

Courtney Pong, owner of the Rozzie Square Theatre in Boston where she runs improv sessions and allows others to put on shows, posted a viral tweet over the weekend announcing that she had abruptly ended an event at her club.

“Tonight I shut down a string of misogynistic stand up comics,” Ms Pong wrote.

“As in, I walked on stage in the middle of one of them talking, addressed the audience, offered a full refund, told them it would not be tolerated here, and pulled the show and its comics from our theatre immediately. Lights on, go home.”

She added, “I have never felt more alive than right now.”

and its comics from our theater immediately. Lights on, go home.

I have never felt more alive than right now.

— Courtney Pong (@CourtneyPong) November 16, 2019

Unsurprisingly, the tweet attracted thousands of comments.

Fellow comedian Jessica Singleton said it was “an insane thing to do”.

“Is this satire?” one person wrote.

Another said, “I love it when someone decides what’s offensive and what I can listen to said no one ever.”

But many supported her.

“I love it when people don’t understand that a woman doesn’t have to sit and take it while a bunch of unfunny comedians make sexist jokes in the club she owns,” one person said.

“They bit the hand that fed them, then cried foul when they were told they couldn’t do it anymore.”

Ms Pong later gave more details of the incident to the Universal Hub website.

She said things started off badly with a comedian cracking a joke about the “segregated” audience, which had two black men in a small crowd of about 17 people.

Over the next 40 minutes she cringed while listening to a number of “this b**ch” jokes.

The final straw? A joke about an Uber driver making female customers ride in the boot.

“(I realised), ‘Wait a minute, I own this place’,” she told the website.

She hit a button that rang a loud bell, walked to the front and announced the night was over.

“It’s not OK, and it’s not who we are,” she said, prompting one man to ask whether it was part of the act.

Courtney Pong said the jokes were ‘not OK’.

Trolls have now targeted her with sexist abuse.

The four paying customers were refunded — the other 13 were friends of the performers.

Ms Pong told the website she wanted to create a space that was inclusive.

She said male comedians punching down with “old and tired” domestic violence jokes were not welcome.

“No woman (comedian) in the world would have wanted to stand in that room last night,” she said.

Trolls have since targeted Ms Pong’s social media with racist and sexist slurs.

“Oh look a hypocrite woman who doesn’t understand comedy or how to live a life where she just shuts the f**k up,” one person wrote on her Instagram.

“Your opinion doesn’t mean sh*t, you’re slandering people’s names and you’re just a dumb c**t.”

A number of similar abusive comments were posted and deleted.

Ms Pong tweeted on Sunday that she had missed much of the controversy as the story went viral.

“Yesterday at the exact time my company was being put under fire for standing up for what we believe in (which is that women are not second class citizens),” she wrote.

“I was too busy to see the initial shots thrown because I was in a workshop teaching 25 Asian American women that improv and comedy is a place for them even if it doesn’t look like it. Yet.”

Ms Pong has been contacted for comment.

workshop teaching 25 Asian American women that improv and comedy is a place for them even if it doesn’t look like it.

Yet. #AAWI2019 @GirlsASPIRE

— Courtney Pong (@CourtneyPong) November 17, 2019

[e-mail]