NO FUN GABY DUNN

Aug. 26, 2011 at 12:58pm with 538 notes

Reblogged from ryansimmons

Second City Employee Confesses Rape To UCB Comedy Audience in NY, A Reaction

Very rarely do I post something this serious minded but it’s extremely important that it be read by as many people as possible. Also that it came from the presumably forward thinking alternative comedy community is especially of note.

Below are excerpts from the original post by Poupak Sepehri, audience member at the closing Asssscat of the recent UCB Del Close Marathon in NY.

poupak:

I wanted to talk about ASSSSCAT, the show that closed the Del Close Marathon, a huge improv festival. During the show, comedians on stage invited audience members to tell a true story from their lives, and then improvised a set around it.

….

He started his story by saying that he is a cook/host at Second City in Chicago (justification#1 – he is supposedly part of the community). One evening, a very drunk (justification #2) and older (justification #3) woman was hitting on one of the waiters at Second City. This woman, who was from out of town (justification#4), gave her number to the waiter and asked him to call her (justification#5). The waiter, not interested, shared the story with the rest of the staff and practically forced this cook/host to take the number, even giving him money for the cab (justification#6) to show up at her hotel.

The woman opens the door to her hotel room thinking it was the waiter, but SURPRISE it’s the cook/host. She immediately asks him to leave, but he finds some BS excuse to go get her cell phone so that he can call a friend to come pick him up since he doesn’t have money for the taxi back (another murky part of the story). She goes to get her cell phone, and makes a HUGE mistake: she leaves the hotel room door open.

….Read the rest of the post.

Halle Kiefer at Splitsider was also in attendance and shares her thoughts, which come from a more comedy insider perspective. Stephanie Streisand has also provided a first hand account and there is video of the monologue.

Thanks all, now back to your regularly scheduled Hollywood nonsense.

I hope this guy is identified. But in the meantime, this is so indicative of a larger problem. The big thing that stands out to me in this story is that he’s told it before as a funny anecdote. He doesn’t see anything wrong with what he did. And no one thought to tell him.