Official Statement Regarding the Milo Yiannopoulos Event at the Folly Theater

The Folly Theater has cancelled the November 5 show. We were concerned about the safety and security of our employees and patrons.

Over the years, we have rented our theater to a wide variety of organizations, hosting everything from church services to drag queen shows. In fact, in the last 12 months, we’ve rented our facility to more than 37 organizations who’ve performed 72 shows.

In this case, and the vast majority of these instances, we don’t handle ticket sales, event production or promotion, we simply rent The Folly Theater as a venue.

While the Folly regularly rents our facility to a diverse range of speakers and performing artists as part of our mission, the views represented by artists aren’t necessarily reflective of the views of our staff, volunteers, board or donors.

Unfortunately, when we booked this appearance we were unfamiliar with the personality involved. We did not conduct the appropriate due diligence and for that we are sorry.

This incident has prompted us to review our booking practices to prevent such incidents occurring in the future.

We remain committed to bringing in diversity, but the safety and security of our staff, patrons and volunteers is always our highest priority.