Chris Rock will return to the stage for his ongoing comedy tour this week, after being slapped by Will Smith on the Oscars stage Sunday night over a joke he made about the actor’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
The on-screen altercation is one of the most dramatic unplanned events to occur in Academy Awards history, made even more peculiar by Smith accepting the award for best actor less than an hour after his outburst. However, according to Variety, the dramatic moment did seem to inspire some viewers to buy tickets to see Rock perform live; one secondary ticketing marketplace, TickPick, reports that they have sold more tickets to the comedian’s tour overnight than they did in the past month combined. They also claim that ticket prices have surged since Sunday night, going up from a minimum of $46 per ticket on March 18 to a minimum of $341.
Rock is set to perform six shows at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre from March 30 through April 1 before officially kicking off his Ego Death World Tour on April 2. While tickets for his Boston shows sold out quickly, there are still tickets available on resale sites such as Vivid Seats, Ticketmaster and Stubhub. The comedian will then travel to more than 30 cities for the North American leg of his tour, which marks the first time in five years that the comic will perform new material across the country.
“Lauded by peers and critics alike, Chris Rock is one of our generation’s strongest comedic voices,” Live Nation said in a statement. “With a career spanning more than three decades, Rock has enjoyed ongoing success in both film and television as a comedian, actor, writer, producer and director.”
Rock currently has 38 dates scheduled for the tour, hitting major cities such as Las Vegas, Denver, Oakland, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Toronto. After Boston, he’ll head to the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City for two shows, before wrapping up at Los Angeles’s Dolby Theatre on Nov. 17.
Source: Variety.Com