Latest news with #W.KamauBell
San Francisco Chronicle
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Oakland comedian, ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!' champ steps up to support Bay Area arts amid NEA fallout
Theater and dance fans concerned about the widespread terminations of National Endowment for the Arts grants can now help affected Bay Area organizations by attending a performance by Oakland's own W. Kamau Bell. The polymathic Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning TV host, comedian, podcaster, author, documentarian, Substacker and 'Celebrity Jeopardy!' winner is reprising his 'Who's With Me?' at Berkeley Repertory Theatre from June 17-22. Ticket sales from the stand-up comedy show, which Bell performed at the same theater last month, will benefit more than a dozen organizations whose NEA grants were abruptly revoked under President Donald Trump's administration. More Information 'Who's With Me?': Written and performed by W. Kamau Bell. Performances begin June 17. Through June 22. $35-$250. Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. 510-647-2949. 'People think everybody's equally rich in show business, but that is not the case,' he explained with a laugh. 'I live in the Bay Area with three kids.' That's where his Berkeley Rep came in. 'Kamau was the first person to reach out to me in response to the devastating NEA news, with the simple but profound question 'How can we help?'' Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer said. 'This is what it looks like to stand together, and we are so lucky to do so alongside such a brilliant and generous artist.' 'When I finally got to do shows in the Peet's, I just felt super-like, 'I've made it!'' he said, referring to one of the theater's main stages where he performed an earlier version of 'Who's With Me?' He also workshopped 'W. Kamau Bell Gets His Act Together' at a studio in the theater's school during two separate runs last year. Beneficiaries of his newly announced run include American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Crowded Fire Theater, Dance Brigade/Dance Mission Theater, Magic Theatre, Marin Shakespeare Company, New Conservatory Theatre Center, Children's Fairyland, Oakland Theater Project, San Francisco Youth Theatre, Theatre Bay Area, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and Zaccho Dance Theatre. Ed Decker, artistic director of New Conservatory Theatre Center, one of the affected organizations, posted on Facebook the notification he got from the NEA saying his theater's world premiere of 'Simple Mexican Pleasures' by Eric Reyes Loo 'does not align' with the Trump administration's new priorities for the agency. Those priorities, the letter goes on, include historically Black colleges and universities, 'Hispanic Serving Institutions,' tribal communities, Asian American communities; the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; houses of worship, skilled trade jobs, disaster recovery, the military and veterans. Other priorities include 'make America healthy again' and 'make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful.' Decker told the Chronicle that Berkeley Rep's invitation to be a part of Bell's event was about far more than the proceeds. 'I felt the warm embrace of our creative community standing together to help,' he said. For Bell, who has lived almost entirely in the Bay since 1997, the decision to stage the benefit came down to his own artistic origins. 'I feel very clear that who I am is because of who I met in the Bay,' he said. 'I feel happy to be in a place where my help can be helpful.' Earlier this month, Berkeley Rep received a $40,000 donation in response to the NEA chaos from another artist, Tony Award-winning playwright John Logan, whose 'Red' and 'Swept Away' have both run at the theater.
Boston Globe
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
W. Kamau Bell isn't backing down on keeping politics in his act
'I still think that professionally, everything I'm doing is built on the operating system of being a stand-up comedian,' said Bell, on the phone from his Oakland home ahead of a tour stop Friday at The Wilbur. 'Even if I'm directing or hosting, I'm a stand-up who also knows how to direct or write or produce: 'I know how to handle this difficult situation, because I've done standup comedy forever.'' Not quite forever, but for most of his adult life. Now 52, Bell lived in Mattapan for a time during his childhood with his single mother, the scholar and author Janet Cheatham Bell. As a young man, he performed comedy around the Bay Area for several years before Chris Rock helped him land his first TV show, 'Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell,' on FX in 2012. Advertisement Bell's first comedy special, bearing the evocative title 'Semi-Prominent Negro,' aired on Showtime in 2016. The following year he published his first book, with even more precision in the title: 'The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6'4, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian.' Advertisement He's become known as a comedian who speaks bluntly about the forces that divide us as Americans, and the difficulties in overcoming them. Famously, he once 'I think because of the 21st century media landscape, comedians are a lot more like bands than we used to be,' Bell explained. 'Every crowd is different. If I'm playing Kill Tony's crowd' – that would be Tony Hinchcliffe, the insult comic who This type of Balkanization, Bell said, is 'great for comedy. It's not a monolithic audience anymore. It used to be whoever watched [David] Letterman, that's the audience.' In addition to his various creative projects, Bell has occasionally found himself at the center of the news cycle for unwanted reasons. In 2015, he was ejected from the patio of a Bay Area restaurant after stopping to say hello to his wife, Melissa (who is white), and her friends. The incident sparked Last February, Bell made news again when he became the Advertisement Bell was boarding a plane to D.C. when he learned the news, he recalled. Rather than cancel his appearance, he chose to follow through with it. 'Trump said, 'I had to take it over because it had gotten too woke,'' Bell said. To which the comedian had a visceral reaction: 'You thought it was woke-y before, well, I'm going to have a woke-fest.' He joked that the W in his name stands for 'Wokey.' (It's actually Walter.) 'To me, it was an opportunity,' Bell said. 'I'm going to show up and look this right in the face. Is the National Guard going to be there? Is Trump going to be there?' In the end, Bell's friend and longtime opening act, Dwayne Kennedy took the stage and said, 'This is the last time you're gonna see two Black guys in the Kennedy Center.' 'The crowd exploded,' Bell remembered. 'The crowd needed it, too.' 'Mr. Bell tore into the president!' the comedian recalled from the Times review. 'Mission accomplished. That was the best quote. I'd rather that than 'he was funny.'' Since February, Advertisement 'The great thing about being a comedian is you literally can speak truth to power,' Bell said. 'Whereas if you're a violinist, it's not the same. If you're doing 'Hamilton,' it's not the same.' At the Kennedy Center, he said, he did his best to stand 'in the giant footsteps' of comedians such as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, and Dick Gregory. 'This is what we do,' he said. Is it harder to ridicule Trump now than it was during his first term in office? 'You can still make fun of him,' Bell replied. 'I joke that my New Year's resolution was to be more petty.' The president is still surrounded by 'bumbling fools,' Bell said, 'but they are bumbling fools that could turn us into North Korea West. 'That's not a joke,' he continued. 'The reason you make fun of it is so that we don't give away all our power to them. The more we can look them in the eye, it gives you the juice to figure out a way to go out there and hopefully save the country.' As a Black man, Bell said, he understands that the fight against injustice is not new. Case in point: the Trump administration's threat to habeas corpus – the guarantee of unlawful detainment without due process. 'Black people have dealt with that since we got here,' Bell said. 'I don't want it to be thrown away, but let's not act like this country has never sunk to that level before.' Advertisement Laughing in the face of dire threats, he continued, 'is the tradition of my people. If we didn't turn this pain into art, we wouldn't still be here.' By now, Bell's audience fully expects him to address all of the elephants in the room. 'If I were to say 'I'm not gonna talk about political events or the state of world,' I might get booed offstage,' he said. If only he could be a benign, non-confrontational comedian, he said. 'I would love to be 'I'm just saying I feel compelled to do what I'm doing. And also, if you don't like what I'm doing, Brian Regan is right over there, at a bigger venue that's probably sold out.' W. KAMAU BELL: WHO'S WITH ME? 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston. Tickets $35-59. James Sullivan can be reached at .
San Francisco Chronicle
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Newest ‘Jeopardy!' champion donates portion of winnings to Oakland schools
W. Kamau Bell just became the Bay Area's latest 'Jeopardy!' champion, and he's donating a portion of his winnings to East Bay schools. The Oakland comic and documentarian won 'Celebrity Jeopardy!' beating out 'A Black Lady Sketch Show' comedian Robin Thede and entrepreneur Dave Friedberg on the season finale, which aired Wednesday, April 23. By winning, he secured $1 million for the charity of his choice: education nonprofit DonorsChoose, which helps teachers request classroom supplies and enables donors to help fund public school projects. 'It means the world to me to be able to do something for this community,' Bell told the Chronicle. 'I know that an educated student is better for all of us, and teachers that don't have to reach into their pockets to support their students is better for all of us. … The students may never actually understand what just happened, but I know the teachers appreciate it." Bell took no time to celebrate. The next morning, he visited Castlemont High School in Oakland, one of the institutions that will benefit from his 'Jeopardy!' pay out. Joseph Blasher, the school's principal, said Bell's donation is particularly helpful in the wake of Oakland Unified School District's financial struggles, which have made it difficult for teachers to plan projects. "It means people that are from our space continue to help and love our space and our people,' Blasher said. 'OUSD is going through some pretty significant budget issues, so this really helps with specific teacher projects that normally we would be able to fund but are not able to … This just means the world to us.' A total of $183,000 of Bell's winnings will support Oakland teachers across 63 schools, while $53,000 will benefit teachers across 22 schools in Mobile, Ala., where his dad lives. Though the comic got off to a slow start during the final 'Celebrity Jeopardy!' matchup, trailing behind both of his opponents by more than $2,000, Bell was able to turn things around during the second half of the game thanks to some pop culture training from his 10-year-old daughter, Juno. He correctly identified 'Drivers License' as the Olivia Rodrgio ballad named for 'this government-issued form of I.D.,' shortly after revealing to the audience that his daughter had quizzed him about the pop singer in the car that morning. 'I nailed it,' he said proudly on the quiz show. But it was the Daily Double that secured the lead for Bell, who correctly responded to the clue about Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us,' setting him ahead at $11,200. Though he dropped to second place during the third round, for Final Jeopardy, Bell was the only contestant to correctly identifying Bob Newhart as the comedian who often credited his wife for inspiring 'what is still called one of the greatest finales in TV history,' a nod to the 1978 episode of 'The Bob Newhart Show.' He ended the game with a total of $27,199, dominating over Thede and Friedberg by more than $25,000. 'This is amazing,' Bell said when receiving his trophy from host Ken Jennings. Past winners of the celebrity game show, which launched in 2022 as an offshoot of 'Jeopardy!', include 'The Mindy Project' actor Ike Barinholtz and 'Abbott Elementary' star Lisa Ann Walter. During his run on Season 3 of the quiz show, Bell faced off against celebrities such as 'New Girl' star Max Greenfield, 'Grey's Anatomy' actor Camilla Luddington and Bay Area comic Margaret Cho. Earlier this month, Bell brought the show to the East Bay for his third stand-up comedy residency at Berkeley Repertory Theater.
