We all know that nothing brings people closer together than a shared laugh. Laughter can dissipate even the most insurmountable of tensions, fostering closeness and community where it sometimes feels unlikely, even impossible. That’s what the show Comedy for Peace, now in its seventh year, is banking on: bringing people together with “no politics” and “just laughs,” according to its slogan.
The project, the brainchild of Israeli-American comedian Erik Angel, is celebrating its 7 year anniversary with a special New York show this Thursday, June 4, featuring Angel along with Canadian Indian comedian Feraz Shere, who grew up in a fairly non-practicing Muslim home and is known for his amazing impressions, Norwegian comedian Daniel Simonsen, Jewish queer comedian (and wife of a rabbi!) Liz Glazer and the very funny Houston, Texas-raised Chase DuRousseau.
Angel, whose real name is Dotan Malach, grew up fairly siloed as a Jew in Israel; he never had any profound conversations with Muslims while growing up. He came up with the comedy project after having so many positive interactions with Muslim friends and acquaintances after leaving his home country. The now New York-based comedian organized his first show in March 2019, and was surprised when 250 people came to see him and fellow Jewish, Christian and Muslim comedians on stage.
Since then, Angel and his fellow comedians have taken the show on the road — 250 shows across two countries and 100 cities — raising money for important causes. While the comedians don’t talk about politics, their sets are rife with jokes about identity: growing up Jewish, Muslim, Black, the children of immigrants… sometimes a comedian inhabits all those identities at the same time, like in the case of Tehran Von Ghasri. They joke about the particularities of the communities they come from and these shows leave many of the viewers feeling like they know more about the lived experiences of people who are not like them. Once in Florida, Angel tells Kveller via e-mail, a 92-year-old Jewish audience member chased comedian Gibran Saleem down to tell him how much he loved his set and how illuminating he found listening to his experience growing up Muslim.
October 7 brought layers of challenges to the project. Some Muslim comedians he’d collaborated before, Angel tells Kveller, stopped responding to his e-mails, while other continued their steadfast commitment to it.
“At one point, a woman even tried to publicly shame all of our Arab comedians for participating in a peace project with an Israeli,” Angel recalls. A show in Minnesota was cancelled, Angel says, after it was discovered that it was spread headed by an Israeli.
But Angel and his collaborators kept trucking on, making people laugh. The real purpose of the show, he says, is to foster productive conversations. And that is needed now more than ever.
“At the end of every show, we sit together and talk. People have spent two hours laughing, so their hearts are open and their defenses are down. The conversations that follow are deep, meaningful, and full of love,” said Angel.
Angel isn’t planning on stopping these shows any time soon. After all these years, “the project is still traveling, still growing, and still getting better.”
Get your tickets for the 7th anniversary show of Comedy for Peace here, use code PEACE for a discount. Discover future Comedy for Peace shows here.
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