Dave Chappelle has surprisingly refused to have his name attached to a new performance theater at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, which he graduated from back in 1991. The high school, which is located in Washington D.C. had initially planned to make the change in late 2021, but after the release of Dave’s Netflix special, “The Closer,” the move was halted due to the severe backlash that came with some of the transgender jokes made during the 48-year-old’s stand-up.
When Dave showed up at the school in November, students openly complained and heckled the comedian, who they said should consider running his “insensitive” jokes by his team to avoid offending members of the LGBTQ community. The Duke Ellington School of the Arts was still keen on moving ahead with its plans to rename its performing arts theater after Dave, but on Monday, the father-of-three decided to back out altogether.
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According to The Washington Post, Dave gave a speech at the theater dedication ceremony last night, where he shared that he was no longer keen on having his name attached to the new building, and his decision had everything to do with the outcry from students who were highly against the decision ever since Dave was dealt with backlash for his jokes about transgender people in October.
At the ceremony, the funny man admitted that he was “hurt” by the negative response he received from students of a school he once attended just over 30 years ago, but Dave didn’t back down from his stance on the Netflix special which caused such an uproar around the world. “No matter what they say about The Closer, it is still [one of the] most-watched specials on Netflix,” he reportedly said, per HuffPost editor Philip Lewis, before calling it a “masterpiece.”
Dave was also quoted to have referred to himself as “maybe a once-in-a-lifetime talent,” before touching on the controversy and how it had affected his reputation at his former school, insisting, “these kids didn’t understand that they were instruments of artistic oppression. The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it.”
Back in May, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos came to both Dave and fellow comedian Ricky Gervais’ defense, considering both men were unfairly targeted for making light-hearted jokes about the LGBTQ community. In an interview with The New York Times, Ted explained that comedians should have the right to cross “the line every once in a while” to know where the line is, and that Netflix welcomes all kinds of free expression at the company.
“We’re programming for a lot of diverse people who have different opinions and different tastes and different styles, and yet we’re not making everything for everybody. We want something for everybody but everything’s not going to be for everybody.”