Why Are Comedians So Fired Up About the Riyadh Comedy Festival?

Update, September 30, 9:30am: Comedian David Cross has spoken out about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, and is urging fans to donate to the Human Rights Foundation instead of attending the event. In a blog post, the Arrested Development alum—who says he was not invited to perform at the festival—details how “disgusted and deeply disappointed” he is by the event, saying that he would never accept a salary to help “depraved, awful people put a ‘fun face’ on their crimes against humanity.” Cross specifically slammed his peers who have agreed to perform, including Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Bill Burr, and Jimmy Carr. “All of your bitching about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘freedom of speech’ and all that shit? Done. You don’t get to talk about it ever again,” Cross writes. “By now, we’ve all seen the contract you had to sign. You’re performing for literally the most oppressive regime on earth. […] This is truly the definition of blood money.”

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As late-night talk show hosts are being pulled from the airwaves—then reinstated—freedom of speech is also a hot topic abroad. The two-week Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, which its organizers call the “world’s largest comedy festival,” kicked off September 26 with Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson, Aziz Ansari, and more leading comics set to perform.

But even as some of the biggest names in American comedy participate in the event, other major comedians are criticizing their peers for being hosted by Saudi Arabia—and implicitly being part of the country’s latest tourism push—despite the nation’s checkered history and controversial policies. Marc Maron and Shane Gillis have pointed to the Saudi government’s alleged ties to 9/11, while Tim Dillon said he was invited to the festival—then fired for speaking out against the country’s politics. Human Rights Watch has even slammed the Riyadh Comedy Festival for allegedly “whitewashing” the detainment of Saudi government dissidents and falsely celebrating international comedians’ right to speak freely onstage while “deflecting attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations” against its own citizens. Vanity Fair has reached out to the event’s organizers; representatives for Visit Saudi and festival consulting agency WME, as well as Saudi chairman of the national General Entertainment Authority, Turki Alalshikh, have not yet responded to a request for comment.

The inaugural edition of the festival takes place in Boulevard City, Riyadh from September 26 to October 9. It features more than 50 “global stand-up legends,” names like Dave Chappelle, Hannibal Buress, Mo Amer, Wayne Brady, Jeff Ross, Tom Segura, Jo Koy, Sam Morril, Andrew Schulz, Sebastian Maniscalco, Louis C.K., and Mark Normand, with tickets starting at $26. The website for the comedy festival is hosted by the Visit Saudi government tourism page, which is run by the Saudi Tourism Authority. The Riyadh Comedy Festival is one of many events being promoted in the nation’s Vision 2030 effort, which seeks to make Saudi Arabia a “premier global tourism destination” in the next five years.

Why has it become such a lightning rod? To start, the festival takes place on the seventh anniversary of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi being murdered by Saudi government officials on October 2, 2018. In 2021, President Joe Biden found Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s personal security detail Rapid Intervention Force responsible for killing Khashoggi, but the Saudi royal court has continued to deny involvement. That same government is sponsoring the Riyadh Comedy Festival, and paying all of these comedians reportedly generous amounts of money.

While none of the performers themselves have shared their contracts publicly, Tim Dillon said on his eponymous podcast that he had been offered $375,000 to perform a set at the festival. According to Dillon, other comedians were paid as much as $1.6 million to appear. “They bought comedy,” Dillon said on August 30, explaining his own rationale for participating in the event—before he was allegedly fired from the festival. “Do I have issues with the policies towards freedom of speech? Of course I do, but I believe in my own financial wellbeing.”

Some of Dillon’s peers don’t feel the same way. Shane Gillis explained on his own podcast that he said no to performing at the festival…even after the organizers offered to double his salary for it. (Gillis did not specify what amount he was offered.) Leslie Liao also said no to performing. Marc Maron—who was not offered a slot at the event himself—slammed the festival for being “from the folks that brought you 9/11.” Mike Birbiglia confirmed that he passed on the festival as well, and commended Gillis and fellow comedian Atsuko Okatsuka for doing the same thing.

Okatsuka not only turned down the fest, but posted an alleged letter in which organizers offered her a 60 to 75 minute set in a theater seating between 600 and 900 audience members. The alleged offer also asked her to share a “reasonable number” of social media posts as an “endorsement” of the festival itself.

The contract Okatsuka shared included a stipulation that participants not perform “any material that may be considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, embarrassment, or ridicule” against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi royal family, legal system, government, or any religion.

Okatsuka pointed out the hypocrisy of comedians like Chappelle—who have complained extensively about oversensitive audiences, and their right to tell jokes about any topic—participating in an event that explicitly does not allow criticism of the Saudi government and royal family. “The money is coming straight from the Crown Prince, who actively executes journalists, ppl with nonlethal drug offenses, bloggers, etc without due process,” she wrote. “A lot of the ‘you can’t say anything anymore!’ comedians are doing the festival…they had to adhere to censorship rules about the types of jokes they can make.” (Chappelle has not yet responded to a request for comment.)

But at least one of those comedians didn’t adhere to those alleged rules. Dillon announced on September 20 that his set at the festival had been canceled, allegedly because Saudi authorities were “unhappy” about jokes he had made about the Saudi government on his own podcast. “I addressed it in a funny way and they fired me,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t going to show up in your country and insult the people that are paying me the money. But on my own show, in my own country, where I have the freedom to speak and say the things I want, I am going to be funny.”

In the meantime, Human Rights Watch has urged comedians participating in the Riyadh Comedy Festival to speak out against the lack of free speech in Saudi Arabia as a whole. Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a press release that “everyone performing in Riyadh should use this high-profile opportunity to call for the release of detained Saudi activists,” specifically human rights defender Waleed Abu al-Khair and women’s rights activist Manahel al-Otaibi, both of whom were sentenced to more than a decade in prison for protesting.

“Comedians performing in Riyadh should speak out against Saudi Arabia’s serious rights abuses or they risk bolstering the Saudi government’s well-funded efforts to launder its image,” Shea said. “This whitewashing comes amid significant increase in repression, including a crackdown on free speech, which many of these comedians defend but people in Saudi Arabia are completely denied.” In other words, this comedy festival is no laughing matter.