Published March 10, 2020
I am the former owner of a theater whose comedy career was ended in 2017. I was falsely accused by a stalker who was encouraged and used by a business competitor.
Page 3 — The year-long orchestrated smear campaign
Background
Mettlesome Comedy owner Ashley Melzer conspired with other former DSI employees and Grace Carnes, a former friend willing to share an untrue allegation of sexual assault. As a new business rival, Ashley Melzer weaponized an accusation she knew to be false made by someone she knew to be a stalker, leveraging a cultural moment, mental illness, fear, disgruntled performers, credulous local media, and just enough truth to destroy me and dismantle DSI.
The initial smear campaign began in Summer 2016 and was nurtured semi-secretly over the course of a year fueled by a story which was demonstrably false. The public campaign was scheduled to land like a bomb the day after the last group of performers left DSI to join Melzer's new company.
Comments on Facebook quickly turned into a collective defamation of character to end Zach Ward and drive justice for Grace Carnes. When DSI Comedy was forced to close, under the unbelievable pressure of what happened, Mettlesome Comedy was in position and ready to profit off the chaos.
I was canceled. A stalker became a hero. And Ashley Melzer saved comedy.
I cannot lie: It is hard to tell this story. The details feel deeply personal, uncomfortable and embarrassing, but I want to share the story of what happened as objectively as I can, backed up by the words and actions of the people involved. As much as possible, I have tried to let their own words — in the form of personal correspondence and public social media posts — speak for them. I want you to draw the conclusion you feel fits verifiable facts.
As much as possible, I have tried to mask the identities of people who communicated with me but who did not publicly comment on the story. Those who conspired to ruin me made no such consideration, and their texts, tweets and public comments are full of anonymous complaints and innuendo.
Ashley Melzer weaponized former employee and performer Vinny Valdivia, a man who described himself to me and others as suicidal, and who later blamed me for his suicidal depression.
Smear Campaign
The weaponization of former friends started in Summer 2016.
Ashley Melzer, Paula Pazderka and Grace Carnes told Vinny Valdivia false and misleading stories so that he would act on that information. Communication from Melzer and Pazderka shows they believed Carnes to be unreliable and unstable.
The Facebook thread that “started it all” (according to INDY Week) was posted by Vinny Valdivia on Sunday July 2, 2017.
The initial curation of these stories took over a year.
The public smear campaign launch lined up almost exactly with the end of DSI’s Spring season. The final group of improvisers and comedians who had left DSI Comedy for Mettlesome had their final DSI performances Saturday, July 1.
When his friends were no longer at DSI, early on Sunday, July 2, 2017, Vinny Valdivia rang the bell with a single sentence online:
“I know there are many people that had bad experiences at DSI, but we don't talk about it. Maybe it's time we do.”
The first wave of online commenters had stories ready to copy/paste to end Zach Ward.
Within hours, on Sunday of a national holiday weekend, Vinny’s generic post about “bad experiences” produced dozens of hateful stories and comments full of misleading theater history. The most malicious posts were liked and shared by hundreds of people.
Whether any of these claims were true was irrelevant.
Monday July 3, 2017
Over this weekend, Grace Carnes joined groups on Facebook centered around comedy, improvisation, and improv theater management, online groups that she had not been part of previously. Carnes aggressively seeded the online platform with a vague, generalized story of manipulation and abuse.
“The ‘yes and’ philosophy (just like religion in the wrong hands) can be used to manipulate and abuse people,” she wrote.
Mettlesome spread the same nonspecific whispers, starting in Summer 2016. They weaponized fear, presumption of guilt, abstraction, and essentialism. They drove hard and fast. They attacked those who questioned the narrative they were pushing.
Within a single day, I was no longer simply accused of nonspecific, unproven abusive behaviors, but of being abusive — for decades. Claims went from unspecific acts to an essential charge: Zach Ward is an abuser. Any doubt of that claim was met with charges of “disbelieving women” or “condoning abuse.”
To repeat: A single, undocumented, unproven allegation on social media combined with a wide range of more broad and commonplace business criticisms, morphed into a verdict about Zach Ward as a person: Zach Ward is a sociopathic abuser.
Tuesday July 4, 2017
On Tuesday, Carnes posted her account on Facebook. I provide a more complete refutation of the claims surrounding that story elsewhere on this site, but to point to a single claim made in her initial post, there was not and never has been a ping pong table at DSI.
Wednesday July 5, 2017
The first reporter emailed just after noon on Wednesday. They wanted a response to the story Carnes posted 24 hours earlier.
The request for a statement was from INDY Week — newspaper where Ashley Melzer worked covering arts & culture since 2010.
Later in 2017, INDY Week would award Melzer and Mettlesome Comedy its Triangle Arts Award for “saving the Triangle Comedy Scene” in 2017.
INDY Week has continued to cover Mettlesome Comedy and publish Ashley Melzer as recently as November 2019.
Thursday July 6, 2017
Grace Carnes’ public Facebook post (below) was embedded into an online article published by INDY Week and linked for everyone to share. This enabled new readers who were not connected to Carnes, Mettlesome or the improv comedy scene to like, comment and share her post online.
This single act by the editors at INDY Week multiplied Carnes’ reach and legitimized her allegation to thousands of people across the globe without any proof. The media coverage led to unquestioning acceptance of her version of events — her Facebook post — as truth.
The coverage then led to additional stories about the toxic rape culture in comedy, which fueled the (still less than a week old) public moral panic about Zach Ward, which was, in turn, shared aggressively on social media by people who were already invested in the appearance of calling out someone accused of sexual assault and bringing down DSI.
The smear had become an engine that ran of itself.
Former lifelong friends and fans of the theater were manipulated by the false and misleading story of misconduct and coercion that Ashley Melzer, Paula Pazderka, Grace Carnes and Vinny Valdivia pushed behind the scenes starting Summer 2016 (Carnes since Summer 2015).
Performers and DSI cast members who had ordinary business frustrations, and strangers across the globe were convinced they were “punching up” — a comedy term of art referring to an appropriate target. Comedians are taught that “punching up” at higher status targets is wholly acceptable, while “punching down” at lower status targets is cruel. They were coaxed into piling on to help take down a man they had been told was a con artist, sociopath and rapist, a sexual predator running a theater in Chapel Hill, NC for his own financial gain.
WHY WOULD A DEDICATED FRIEND TURN SO QUICKLY
Vinny’s public comments in 2017 were inconsistent with my experience of our personal and professional relationship
August 2, 2016
Vinny Valdivia abruptly resigned from DSI.
Valdivia had experienced a significant personal loss with the death of his mother in Spring 2016.
He was also in the midst of a painful break up with another DSI performer, a subordinate whom he managed directly as an intern at the theater, and whom he himself had been dating since November 2015. They met working together at DSI.
In his resignation, which he emailed to four staff members, Valdivia said he needed to step back immediately to protect himself, describing himself as suicidal and seeking therapy.
Valdivia moved everything he owned out of a house which he had shared with other DSI performers.
September 2016
A month later, Valdivia started to send vague text messages to my then girlfriend. During this time, he was actively performing with Mettlesome Comedy in Durham, NC.
November 14, 2016
Three months after his resignation, Valdivia emailed my then girlfriend that, from the people that left DSI to found Mettlesome (where he had become a regular cast member) and unnamed people in Boston, he had learned that Zach Ward was “not a good person.”
He referenced Ashley Melzer, Paula Pazderka and Grace Carnes together as a single, common narrative and that what he had been told since leaving the theater was “really why [he] left DSI.”
Shortly after Valdivia left DSI in Summer 2016 he became close friends with Grace Carnes and he retroactively blamed DSI and Zach Ward for a suicidal depression.
Carnes references his year-long friendship as an “ally” in her Facebook post on July 6, 2017.
It's my belief that Ashley Melzer and others manipulated a man who was vulnerable and in pain. Within months of his admitted suicidal episode and abrupt resignation from DSI, Valdivia had been given a home by Mettlesome and someone to blame for his depression — Zach Ward.
Whatever story Carnes shared with Valdivia became roundabout proof of the generalized whispers from Ashley Melzer and Paula Pazderka that DSI was unsafe. It was now an accepted fact that sociopath Zach Ward harassed women, and that story was used to pressure performers to leave DSI in order to bolster the newly established Mettlesome Comedy Collective.
These stories and a presumption of guilt were used to justify the self-serving actions of former employees working behind the scenes to take down DSI and start a competing theater. Any action — no matter how destructive — became virtuous, if used to destroy Zach Ward.
Carnes tells Valdivia that he “saved lives.” The language of fear was deployed to make everything exquisitely urgent. According to Carnes and Melzer there were countless, nameless others “too afraid” to share stories because Zach Ward was “dangerous," and righteous disgust encouraged an internet pile-on in a public frenzy of self-justifying rage.
VALDIVIA WORKED TO SPREAD A MANUFACTURED STORY
November 8, 2016
Valdivia started actively reaching out to comedians across the country, including people he did not know personally in Chicago, Austin, Toronto, South Carolina, and Boston. He told strangers that “women came to him saying they left DSI because they were uncomfortable there.” Most people ignored him and didn’t bother notifying me. They knew me. This didn’t make sense.
May 23, 2017
Valdivia was persistent. Below, he contacts someone and follows up over 6 months later. Mettlesome was determined to actively connect with improvisers and DSI alumni nationwide. They were campaigning in the shadows, spreading the word and recruiting people to help close DSI.
IMPROV TENETS MADE THIS POSSIBLE
One irony of this entire story is the extent to which, while Melzer and Mettlesome claimed DSI used improv to create an unsafe environment, the reality is that they themselves abused those tenets as a weapon to destroy DSI.
In improvisation and improv comedy, a core tenet of performance is acceptance of an imagined reality, what we call "yes, and."
This philosophy encourages performers to affirm the reality of the performance world they are creating on stage. If one performer says there's a dragon on stage, others are encouraged to think, "yes, and he's breathing fire" or "yes, and she’s driving a car."
Improv comedians are taught to affirm and support the reality of whatever fellow performers claim to be true. It's not hard to see how a community with this as its organizing principle can be led to collectively affirm the truth of untrue things; the improv idea of “yes, and” was weaponized into people unconditionally believing accusations made against the theater.
The #yesandwebelieveyou hashtag was spread on social media internationally by people who wanted to show support for Grace Carnes and show solidarity in standing up to the man who assaulted her. A person designed and shared a #yesandwebelieveyou graphic, which was immediately adopted en masse as a profile photo. This became the easiest way to signal support for Carnes and for the comedy community torn apart by this manufactured trauma.
Let me be clear: I support #MeToo. I believe women. I believe claims about sexual assault made by women are usually true. That core belief paralyzed me and has made processing what happened and sharing this story feel impossible to do without hurting a cause I support.
But this “truth” simply wasn't true.
#yesandwebelieveyou went viral in 72 hours
Australia, London, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia. The accusation was translated into Italian.
Public shame and international awareness for a sexual assault that never happened.
#yesandwebelieveyou continued to spread as people called Carnes brave and publicly apologized for somehow enabling her abuser, people who “didn’t see it at the time” or who only now realized they were “scared” of me. I was instantly a pariah.
As people taught to value a shared communal experience as essential to the art of comedy, improvisers found new community in the solidarity of the attack.
The DSI community was torn apart and instantly trauma bonded to Mettlesome — the people who orchestrated the campaign.
THE LOUDEST VOICE OVERPOWERS THE SCENE
Less than one month after Vinny Valdivia posted his inciting thread and Grace Carnes’ story sparked a mob frenzy of uncritical outrage, cancel culture had done its job.
Mettlesome had organized an “Allies in Comedy” summit to address the (by now, thanks in no small part to they themselves) toxic culture in Triangle comedy. Their key panelist was Gail Stern, former comedian and co-founder of Catharsis Productions, a Chicago-based organization that tackles sexual assault, discrimination, and violence. Stern would be interviewed as an industry expert by Durham Herald Sun (July 9, 2017), INDY Week (July 12, 2017) and “The State of Things” on WUNC (August 4, 2017).
DSI was notified about this “The State of Things” interview promoting the Mettlesome program by WUNC.
Producer Anita Rao emailed a general theater address for an updated DSI statement. The segment (and the program presented by Mettlesome) were billed as a direct reaction to what happened at DSI.
After consulting with my therapist, I offered to go on the program. I wanted the opportunity to be transparent and answer questions about the allegations and the toxic culture in Triangle comedy live and in person.
WUNC — the flagship public radio station of the University of North Carolina — and Rao declined. I was not invited to participate. I was told that if WUNC producers were interested in my story later they would be in touch. They never were.
Instead, defamation and legal action were joked about on the program that aired.
Show guests laughed at the idea that they might get in trouble for saying untrue things about me on the radio. Whatever courage I had left faded away.
Billed as an independent industry expert, Gail Stern added credibility to the story and social media comments stating ”comedy was an ‘accelerant’ or ‘enabler’ of the misogyny that permeates so many industries” and that these revelations were coming out all over the country.
This created an implicit parallel. If this was true, then what else was true.
The statements made about Zach Ward and DSI must be true. Why? The expert says so. This happens everywhere.
Was she an independent expert? No.
Gail Stern, the Chicago-based expert who somehow — journalists can’t remember — became the primary source in North Carolina for background on sexual assault and comedy, the credible industry professional whose statements created a legitimate foundation for the story about Zach Ward and DSI, had employed Mettlesome Comedy founder and owner Jack Reitz since 2012.
Husband to Mettlesome co-owner Ashley Melzer, Reitz remains employed by Stern and Catharsis Productions (according to his LinkedIn).
Relevant to the Mettlesome narrative about DSI: Ashley Melzer, while DSI associate artistic director, started dating Jack Reitz in 2014, a DSI performer and faculty member who was junior to her. They met while working together at DSI.
With Stern, Jack Reitz has toured the world as an actor and educator, using comedy to tackle sexual assault, discrimination and violence. “In a section of the Catharsis training called “Not my fault,” the audience was able to interrogate Jack Reitz, the other half Sex Signals team acting as the accused rapist, and go through what ammunition is often used to justify the actions of a sexual assault,” states MilitaryNews.com
Jack Reitz was trained by Stern in what people “often” say and what could be shown to demonstrate a pattern of behavior. Jack Reitz was trained. DSI’s business competitors had the motivation and the vocabulary to shape the narrative.
Industry expert Gail Stern never once acknowledged any connections to North Carolina or Mettlesome.
Gail Stern never acknowledged that she had been involved with Mettlesome as an “intervention specialist” since August 2016.
September 2, 2016
Ashley Melzer and Paula Pazderka sent a defamatory letter via email to co-founders of the satirical comedy website Reductress warning them they would be “participating in image rehabilitation” after DSI had publicly announced that Reductress had been booked to teach writing workshops and headline a women in comedy showcase at the 2017 NC Comedy Arts Festival. Reductress rescinded the festival offer.
In her letter (above), which disparaged DSI Comedy with a vague, generalized story of harassment, insinuating that women were unsafe and needed to be protected, Ashley Melzer wrote, “We spoke with a specialist who has led similar interventions in the Chicago comedy scene and she encouraged us to let the women decide how to tell their stories.” That specialist was Gail Stern.
Gail Stern was a biased source who accelerated and enabled the false accusation and made the narrative credible.
Her professional connection to Mettlesome as Reitz’ employer + her involvement with Ashley Melzer and Paula Pazderka as an intervention specialist for over a year was a clear conflict of interest to be the single source in every news outlet as an authority on the subject. Reitz, Melzer, Pazderka and Mettlesome Comedy, the company they founded together, stood to benefit from the dismantling of DSI and Zach Ward.
Stern was described in an article in The Atlantic as “rape crisis counselor during the day and a stand-up comedian at night.”
Gail Stern was a Chicago-based comedian who was not impartial. She also had her own agenda.
I’m not sure what Ashley Melzer and Jack Reitz shared with Gail Stern in Summer 2016, but she appeared to become personally invested in the narrative and saving the comedy community in North Carolina. Gail Stern did not appear to be interested in transparency or objectivity.
Lack of transparency appeared to be part of the Mettlesome smear campaign “intervention” strategy. Ashley Melzer had already started to produce improv shows as Mettlesome, but she failed to share the fact she was a DSI competitor in her letter to Reductress.
So there it is: A business rival, Ashley Melzer, weaponized a cultural moment, leveraging mental illness, fear, disgruntled performers, credulous media, and just enough truth to destroy my reputation and dismantle DSI.
Melzer started her smear campaign in Summer 2016.
Her behind the scenes effort was fueled by a stalker’s accusation which was demonstrably false.
The initial smear campaign was spread privately via Facebook and email over the course of an entire year and scheduled to launch publicly the day after the last group of performers left DSI to join Ashley Melzer and her new company — Mettlesome.
That could be the story.
But maybe you want/need more.
Why now?
I have generalized anxiety and CPTSD that persists years later. There are still days when I wake up terrified that my son and what’s left of my life will be taken away without cause and strangers will laugh, while friends and co-workers just sit back and watch me drown.
There have been campaigns to get me fired, threats of violence and cyber harassment, and efforts that have prevented me from finding reliable childcare.
Ashley Melzer and the story Grace Carnes posted started a fire online that has yet to stop.
You can’t undo or ever fully repair this kind of destruction, but that’s not why I need to share my story. I want to live.
I needed to publish my account so I could stop replaying what happened to my life every day, so I can try to live.
Since 2017, I went heads down and focused all my energy on my son, but days started to feel like a greyed out twilight zone zombie life. I would like to continue supporting the arts and the community in my hometown. I would like the opportunity to help people again. I would really like the chance to be happy, even to just be. I am not able to do any of that with the story that was printed — a story that was manufactured, the story that’s still out there.
The truth matters.
If you are struggling with your mental health and suicidal thoughts, please pick up the phone and dial 988 — Trained crisis counselors are available 24/7/365. If you’re outside of the US, please click here for a list of international hotlines.