Patton Oswalt has canceled five dates on his national stand-up comedy tour because organizers at the venues in Florida and Salt Lake City would not require attendees to show vaccination proof or a negative COVID-19 test.
Oswalt said he made the requests to each of the venues on the tour in the interest of protecting fans.
“The good news is we’re keeping everyone who comes to these shows safe and healthy because the numbers are going up,” Patton said in an Instagram post. “Now the bad news, of course, is there are five venues on the tour that are not complying with this.”
Oswalt said four Florida dates in December and one in Salt Lake City set for 2022 have been canceled.
“This difficult decision was made due to the rising numbers of Covid cases and also because I have an ego, but my ego is not big enough to think that people should die to hear my stupid comedy,” Oswalt said. “So hopefully, hopefully, in the future we can rebook those when sanity holds sway again. But this sucks, I was really looking forward to Florida, to Salt Lake City.”
The Deseret News reported the Salt Lake City show had been scheduled for Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah. A venue official told the newspaper the decision was based on the state’s laws.
“The university has a vaccination requirement for students and health care university employees, but cannot extend that to patrons at campus venues for experiences presented by the University of Utah,” executive director Brooke Horejsi of Kingsbury Hall’s UtahPresents said.
“However, outside rentals (like Live Nation) may make their own safety protocols. Unfortunately, Oswalt’s team had already made the decision to cancel the January show prior to this clarification, but we’re looking forward to rescheduling with him in the future — especially after hearing how much he loves Utah’s iconic scenery,” Horejsi added.
Watch Oswalt’s video here or below.
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