{"id":193219,"date":"2025-09-30T21:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T21:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/193219\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T21:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T21:50:07","slug":"bill-burr-defends-controversial-riyadh-comedy-festival-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/193219\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Burr Defends Controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBill Burr<\/a> took to his podcast to give a detailed rundown of his experience last week in the Middle East, where he performed at the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor-comedian described rather nervously warming up for the event with a set in Bahrain to get a feel for what an audience in the region would find funny (and acceptable) and then performing at the Saudi Arabia festival\u2019s opening night on Friday. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe event has been billed by organizers as the biggest comedy festival in the world. But its performers (which also include Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, and about 50 others) have come under intense criticism \u2014 even from some other comics<\/a> \u2014 given the kingdom\u2019s history of oppression and human rights abuses. <\/p>\n

\n\tBurr painted a portrait of a region where people were, well, \u201cjust like us\u201d \u2014 wanting live comedy, wanting to relax and have fun, and consuming a surprising amount of Western culture. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was great to experience that part of the world and to be a part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia,\u201d Burr said<\/a>. \u201cThe royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians that I\u2019ve been talking to are saying, \u2018Dude, you can feel [the audience] wanted it. They want to see real stand-up comedy.\u2019 It was a mind-blowing experience. Definitely top three experiences I\u2019ve had. I think it\u2019s going to lead to a lot of positive things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBurr said the restrictions on what comedians could say had been softened by the festival after some back and forth (Burr didn\u2019t specify with whom). \u201cWhen they first set it up, the rules on what they had about what you could and couldn\u2019t say in Saudi Arabia, [organizers were told], \u2018If you want some good comedians, this isn\u2019t going to work.\u2019 And, to their credit, they said, \u2018All right, what do we got to do?\u2019 And they just negotiated it all the way down to just a couple things, which were, basically: Don\u2019t make fun of royals [and] religion.\u201d (The speech restrictions were posted online<\/a> by comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, who turned down the festival\u2019s offer to attend, and it\u2019s unclear if these were the rules from before or after the talks.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBurr first described going to the island country of Bahrain \u2014 which is more socially liberal than Saudi Arabia \u2014 where a customs agent immediately clocked his anxiety about doing stand-up in the region and gave him grief about it. \u201cWhen I was landing in Bahrain, like I\u2019m fucking nervous, right? \u2026 [Then the agent says], \u2018You tell jokes about the Middle East? You think you\u2019re going to come over here and get beheaded, right?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a successful show in Bahrain, Burr was at a bar where he was watching interactions among the locals and decided, \u201cI\u2019m like, these guys, they\u2019re just like us \u2026 I don\u2019t speak the language, but I get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen he flew into Saudi Arabia, Burr\u2019s nervousness crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. \u201cYou think everybody\u2019s going to be screaming \u2018death to America\u2019 and they\u2019re going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off, right?\u201d Burr said. \u201cBecause this is what I\u2019ve been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense. And I\u2019m thinking like: \u2018Is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to McDonald\u2019s \u2026? They got a fucking Chili\u2019s over here!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce onstage at the Riyadh show, Burr kept pushing his material and crowd banter further and further \u2014 including doing a bit about gay men at the gym \u2014 until he was eventually performing his regular act. \u201cI had to stop a couple times during the show [and say], \u2018I\u2019ll be honest with you guys, I cannot fucking believe any of you have any idea who I am. This is really amazing.\u2019 And it was just this great exchange of energy. They know their reputation. So they were extra friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBurr\u2019s take on the event comes as some comedians such as Shane Gillis, Marc Maron and David Cross have voiced objections to the festival, with Cross blasting comics \u2014 including citing Burr \u2014 who participated. \u201cI am disgusted and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing,\u201d\u00a0wrote Cross<\/a>. \u201cThat people I admire, with unarguable talent, would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for \u2026 what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers? We can never again take seriously anything these comedians complain about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMSNBC opinion writer Zeeshan Aleem accused the performers<\/a> of participating in \u201ccomedy-washing\u201d in an op-ed, describing the event as \u201can insidious tool to project a misleading image of the country\u2019s incremental efforts to liberalize \u2026 this comedy festival functions fundamentally as propaganda, allowing the country to falsely present an image of an open society when, in fact, the government remains hostile to democratic civil liberties tied to freedom of speech and assembly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is a long history of debate on this issue, weighing a refusal to normalize and endorse an authoritarian regime versus the benefits of exposing such cultures to Western values and fostering a sense of openness. The political scientist Joseph S. Nye popularized the term \u201csoft power\u201d in the 1980s to describe using forces like art and culture to shape what other countries want and value.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pop singer and humanitarian Sting has likewise spoken out about this concept in the past when defending<\/a> his performance in Uzbekistan in 2009. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI am well aware of the Uzbek president\u2019s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment,\u201d Sting said<\/a> at the time. \u201cI made the decision to play there in spite of that. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Burr took to his podcast to give a detailed rundown of his experience last week in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[107525,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-193219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bill-burr","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}