A comedy club that opened recently in rented space at the Park Theatre in Cranston earlier this month is no longer operating there — leaving numerous comedians unpaid and angry.
Owner John "Johnie Armani" Souza's venture apparently didn't make enough money to cover expenses and in an interview with NBC10, he said he simply didn't have the cash.
"When I tell you I don't have the money, I mean I don't have the money," he said. "Doing a smear campaign against me isn't going to make the money appear, period."
About a half-dozen comedians said they performed shows and never got paid, including Nick Albanese, who told the tv station that he blew two days over Memorial Day weekend performing there and Souza first told him he didn't have the money at the end of the second show. Then he promised to give him a post-dated check. But then he forgot his checkbook. Then he had the cash, but no car. When Albanese said he'd drive over to meet him, he suddenly didn't have the cash.
Souza promised to pay the comedians and pledged to find a new home for The Joke Store on his Web site. Here's the entire unedited text of his statement:
Hey Everyone, long time no blog. Here's a more pissed off blog to answer to something happening right now in my life. I opened a comedy club called "The Joke Store", many of you know that I put a lot of time and money and more or less went for broke to try to launch this club. I felt as if it was time to offer another club to the state of RI.
I had a lot of support and I do thank all of those who did and continue to support me since no official statement was ever put out that we were "Closed" as one comic decided to blog about.
The story is that I am not paying comics when in fact I told comics that I would pay them but because I took such a big loss on the first couple weekends that it would take a few weeks. One comic in particular got angry in the lobby of the club and decided he might was to take me to "Small Claims Court" for this situation that I had already said I was going to take care of. So INSTEAD, he decided it would be professional after I had said I will pay him to take it to his website, the event page for the show, and The Park Theatre Facebook page which in fact has nothing to do with payouts for The Joke Store.
What sense does this make and in what professional manner is this being handled when he didn't even bother to go to the 2nd and 3rd shows but expects me to pay him when he didn't even make an effort to attend the dates agreed upon.
Also, taking me to small claims court? For someone who was pretty heavily concerned with getting paid THAT NIGHT instead of giving me a couple weeks to pull it together and bounce back he wants to cry about it to a judge who we won't even get in front of for a month then I would probably be given 3-6 months to pay it off when I could easily just contact him and take care of it accordingly.
I'm not saying it will take me that amount of time to pay it off, I'm just saying. Also I seriously doubt a judge is going to grant 3 shows when 2 of them were written off after he didn't get his way the first night. Unacceptable. He took it to a place it never had to go. Then told comedian associates of mine to not work at the venue The Joke Store as I didn't pay comics he says.
I told the previous weeks comics the same thing and I don't plan on going back on my word. Like I said I simply need time to generate the income to payout for that weekend.
MIND YOU, any judge in the state will grant me PLENTY of time to pay these comics off according to my not being able to produce such funds. It is being taken from them that I am not willing to pay when I never in fact said I was not paying anyone.
In Closing, our goal is to offer another place to see comedy and we are getting bashed and our business and character are being destroyed by comics that decided to gang up on us for taking a loss the first 2 weekends.
I did not want to go here but since Joe Hebert did I feel the need to defend myself. I have never been known as someone who does not pay and it is not in my nature. I simply could not generate the funds and I plan on rectifying the situation.
I have done some things wrong in the comedy world but probably my biggest mistake as of yet was getting involved with someone so unprofessional.
The Joke Store is NOT CLOSED and we do expect to regroup and try to pick up the pieces and rectify this situation. If in fact we don't or can not get our heads around this I would simply point fingers at a consistent character bashing from Joe Hebert and a couple others.