So, what was the deal with Margaret Cho’s mess of a show last month at the Stress Factory in New Brunswick, New Jersey? After the comedian seemed to be kind of losing it onstage and speaking incomprehensibly about rape, most of her audience walked out and received refunds from the club. Now Cho will return to the Stress Factory for a moderated discussion with the same audience, who have been invited back for an encore. The moderator? Jerry Seinfeld — someone who’s probably very familiar with the ups and downs of stand-up. The email the audience received from the club included a note from Seinfeld, who wrote, “When a stand-up show doesn’t go well, the audience and the comedian both go home unhappy, sometimes not really sure what went wrong. Every comedian has experienced this sense of unresolved resentment and anxiety. Wouldn’t it be something if we could go back to New Jersey, back to that club with the same audience and try to make things right? Have a discussion where both sides — comedian and audience — could talk about what happened?” Sounds like every comedian’s combined dream and nightmare. It should be a pretty interesting event.
