(CelebrityAccess) — Comedian Dave Chappelle’s performance in Minneapolis was canceled at the last minute on Wednesday after the venue received pushback from staff and members of the community over Chappelle’s history of jokes about transgender people.
On Wednesday, Minneapolis venue First Avenue, announced via social media that the performance at the venue had been cancelled and would instead be moved to the Varsity Theater.
We hear you. Tonight’s show has been cancelled at First Avenue and is moving to the Varsity Theater. See our full statement for more. pic.twitter.com/tkf7rz0cc7
— First Avenue (@FirstAvenue) July 20, 2022
Chappelle was accused of transphobia following a series of jokes he made during his 2021 Netflix special “The Closer” in which he described himself as a member of “Team Terf” which refers to acronym for a form of radical feminism that excludes trans women and suggested that “gender is a fact.”
The 2021 special was not Chappelle’s first foray into anti-trans jokes and previously lampooned people suffering from gender dysphoria during his 2019 “Sticks & Stones” Netflix special.
Chappelle has defended his humor as artistic freedom and noted that his comments have been taken out of context.
During a Q&A session at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. in November, he said: “You cannot report on an artist’s work and remove artistic nuance from his words. It would be like if you were reading a newspaper and they say, ‘Man Shot in the Face by a Six-Foot Rabbit Expected to Survive.’ You’d be like, ‘Oh my God,’ and they never tell you it’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon.”
