One night last fall in Los Angeles, two rising comedians met each other for drinks. The situation could’ve been awkward, since Courtney Pauroso, a sketch comic at the Groundlings theater, and Beth Stelling, a stand-up comedian who has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Conan, didn’t actually know each other. But Pauroso had reached out to Stelling after she heard they had both dated another comedian on the scene. Their ex had been emotionally abusive and had even raped her, Pauroso said. Had he hurt Stelling as well? Yes, Stelling told her. He had.
The two women spent the next month trying to figure out what to do next. They didn’t want to press charges — police are notorious for failing to take rape and domestic violence seriously — but considered reporting him to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where he performed, although Pauroso wasn’t a regular there.
“I was so scared people would think I was crazy,” Pauroso said. “I didn’t want to be the ‘rape comic.’”
Instead, Stelling — with Pauroso’s blessing — decided to post photos of her bruised arms and thighs on Instagram as part of a “year in review” post on Dec. 28. Stelling’s ex, whom she didn’t name, had done this to her, she wrote. He had also verbally abused her and raped her. She wrote that she had stayed quiet for fear she would look “weak or unprofessional,” but after hearing about other people he had hurt, she realized she had to come forward.
“Unfortunately I’m in a line of smart, funny women who experienced this from the same man in our L.A. comedy community,” Stelling wrote. Three days later, Pauroso told her podcast listeners that she was one of them.
“I don’t want him here, I don’t want him around me, I don’t want him to have the chance to work in the community,” Pauroso said of her ex, whom she also didn’t name. “I think it is an appropriate punishment for him to be ostracized.”
Stelling and Pauroso weren’t trying to become national news — in fact, they were alarmed by how quickly that happened. (“It’s terrifying that this is all over the internet,” Pauroso said, “because we can’t control it.”) The point wasn’t to attack their ex, which is why neither woman mentioned his name, although the man — Cale Hartmann — was outed so quickly that he felt compelled to post a public response stating that the “severity” of Stelling’s accusations was “false and extremely harmful.” (Hartmann directed BuzzFeed News to a publicist who did not comment further.) Their only clear goal was to help other women, Pauroso said, adding that she never would have spoken up without Stelling’s validation and support.
“I was like, ‘If you think I’m lying, go to Beth,'” she said. “If I was someone who was just getting started in comedy, I cannot imagine ever having the strength to do this, much less alone.”
Stelling and Pauroso are not alone. Stelling's Instagram post had barely been up before the members of a private Facebook group for women in the L.A. comedy community identified Hartmann by name and began discussing next steps. For nearly two years, Facebook groups like this one have been a place for the city’s female improvisers, sketch performers, and stand-up comedians to vent about how sexism is intertwined with professional opportunity. Last year, they decided to do more than talk — they started naming names, and they got results.
At least three men whom they accused of sexual harassment and assault are no longer allowed at some of Los Angeles’s most prominent theaters. One comic is facing a police investigation. Another man's reputation was so thoroughly destroyed that he had to move back to his Midwestern hometown.
When women share unfiltered information, it’s often called gossip, or, even worse, a witch hunt. But there’s been a cultural shift in recent years, from college campuses to the military, where women have taken advantage of new platforms to speak freely and publicly instead of depending on the so-called proper procedures that have let them down — and institutions have been forced to listen. Some call it groundbreaking feminist organizing. Others call it mob justice. Either way, that sea change has reached the comedy community, and it has raised tough questions about who is responsible for addressing sexual misconduct in a business where sexism has long been a barrier to women’s success.
Some of the city’s biggest theaters say they take these issues seriously. But as the improv and sketch comedy scene has exploded, theater companies have struggled