Comedienne Chrissie Mayr is no stranger to hecklers, but the one who showed up at her recent LA show definitely kicked it up a notch into violent territory.
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Last Friday at the Pineapple Saloon in Sherman Oaks, Mayr was performing in an outdoor tent to a crowd of fans when a heckler began yelling at Mayr seemingly right off the bat. Despite the interruption, Mayr’s philosophy isn’t to immediately have them removed.
“I try to charm them first before throwing hecklers out,” Mayr told RedState during a phone interview.
In a video that Mayr posted to her YouTube channel, you can see her try to engage with the heckler who was located outside the tent. Despite her best efforts, the heckler was relentless.
“He was obviously on drugs,” Mayr told RedState. “And I guess he was a poet. He started shouting his poetry at me from outside the tent.”
At that point, some of the men in the audience got up to try to shoo the heckler away as Mayr attempted to keep the show going. One of the men was attempting to reason with the heckler and de-escalate the situation, but it would appear it only made the heckler angrier.
At some point, the heckler took off his shirt and assaulted the man, knocking him out and injuring his arm.
At that point, one of the venue’s bouncers attempted to grab the heckler, but he ran away.
“We were told later that he was actually arrested but it’s LA,” said Mayr. “He was probably back on the street a couple hours after that.”
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“You see it happen all the time on the internet, but you never think it’ll happen to you,” Mayr told RedState.
Mayr is a comic that falls outside the mainstream and, as such, she’s often put into places that have little security. In a place like LA, where soft-on-crime policies have driven poverty and crime up to ridiculous levels, your safety can be a roll of the dice.
It can get even dicier if you’re a comedian not known for being politically correct.
“If I was a mainstream comic I would have security, but since I’m not, we get this,” said Mayr.
“Maybe I should offer free martial arts classes at my shows,” she joked.
Mayr has been gaining popularity at a rate that’s definitely getting people upset. Mayr’s name recognition stems from an unapologetic commitment to making fun of everyone and everything, even the people and topics you’re not supposed to as all comedians should.
As a result, Mayr has an ever-increasing fame on one hand, and and a developing infamy on the other. She’s already made more than a few people on the left angry for her jokes about figures like Dylan Mulvaney. In fact, one of Myer’s more viral moments came in May when hecklers lost it on her for making fun of Mulvaney.
It’s the long awaited TRANS JOKE walk out moment from my show in Dallas last week!!
Enjoy! 🐘🐘🐘 pic.twitter.com/WgiMSZrmZC
— Chrissie Mayr🇺🇸 (@ChrissieMayr) May 11, 2023
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It was a moment that put Mayr in the spotlight, but for the left, it put her in its crosshairs. They’ve been trying to cancel her ever since.
(READ: Chrissie Mayr: Comedy’s Joan of Arc)
But Mayr keeps going and doesn’t plan to stop any time soon. Even after the incident at the LA venue, Mayr was determined to not let it ruin the night.
“I gotta be really funny to come back from this,” she said on stage. “I’ll do it, though. Watch me.”
Sure enough, Mayr did have the crowd back to laughing, and everyone was no worse for the wear.
It’s still unclear if the man knew who Mayr was or if he was just some drugged-up man who stumbled upon the show. As Mayr’s fame grows and her comedy continues to offend all the right people, it’s not too far out of the realm of believability that people will show up simply to escalate things. Mayr, for her part, says she won’t be phased by it.
“That’s just the risk you take when you’re performing outside the mainstream,” she said.