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 5 — Credulous journalists and conflicts of interest
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.
WUNC (Radio)
As events were unfolding in 2017, WUNC’s Anita Rao emailed the public DSI address for an updated statement.
“The State of Things” was running a segment on a program presented by Mettlesome.
The radio show and the Mettlesome program had both been billed as a direct reaction to what had allegedly happened at DSI.
I offered to go on the segment and address questions in person.
Both Rao and WUNC — the flagship public radio station of the University of North Carolina — declined. They rejected a no-conditions offer I had made to have the opportunity to speak. I was told that if WUNC producers were interested in my story later they would be in touch.
They never were.
Instead, participants on the WUNC radio show referred obliquely to me, warning one another about possible defamation and making jokes about legal action during the program that aired.
This program on WUNC featured guest Gail Stern. Stern never disclosed her conflicts of interest.
The Chicago-based industry expert never disclosed her professional relationship with DSI’s new business competitor Mettlesome, as an employer of Mettlesome co-founder Jack Reitz since 2012 or her involvement with Ashley Melzer and Paula Pazderka as the Chicago-based intervention specialist referenced in a defamatory letter Melzer sent to Reductress in September 2016.
The photo on the left used by WUNC — courtesy of Catharsis Productions — could just as easily have been the photo used by MilitaryNews.com which prominently featuring Jack Reitz delivering “Sex Signals” on behalf of Gail Stern and Catharsis Productions.
INDY Week
Theater critic Byron Woods — professional colleague of Ashley Melzer — was approached by a mutual friend of his and mine with an offer: Would he be interested in seeing evidence that directly contradicted the story published by INDY Week?
No, he would not.
Woods not only rejected the sincere request of a friend to right what they saw as a wrong, but he outright refused even to look at the evidence.
Woods states that INDY Week investigative reporter Sarah Willets pursued her leads with due diligence. He further argues INDY Week “didn’t publish our findings without establishing solid bases in fact.”
On January 29, 2019, a well-regarded regional arts editor and senior staffer at the first media outlet to cover the allegation against me says he is uninterested even in seeing evidence that would contradict what the INDY printed. Moreover, in vaguely threatening terms, he warns our mutual friend that:
“If you are involving yourself in this, I would advise you, in the strongest terms I know, to give all those who have gone on record about Mr. Ward's treatment of them a hearing equal to the one you are giving him.”
His insistence on "on the record" sources is especially frustrating, given that so few of the people making allegations actually did go on the record, for attribution, to the INDY or anywhere else. Those that have gone on record, I have shown evidence to contradict here.
Ashley Melzer was a culture writer for INDY Week.
Melzer highlights articles for Full Frame, improv and music on her own site. She had a personal friendship with Byron Woods and, presumably, many of the INDY staff. Melzer obliquely references trauma here (“it’s been there at least three years”), and Woods himself casually engages with that very personal post on Twitter in 2018. This would be just 3 months before Woods forcefully rejected an offer to see evidence that would contradict the INDY story.
Mettlesome continues to benefit from a promotional relationship with INDY Week. Byron Woods celebrates his colleague Ashley Melzer and husband Jack Reitz — furthering the narrative that Mettlesome saved indie comedy — “especially after main player DSI Comedy Theater closed in disgrace.”
News & Observer
The area's daily newspapers, N&O of Raleigh and The Herald-Sun of Durham (same company) had given largely perfunctory coverage of the closing of DSI when it happened, most cribbed directly from Facebook and my own public statement.
I thought that perhaps, with hindsight, the N&O would be more interested in correcting what they had initially reported.
I met with Tammy Grubb, the reporter who covers Orange and Chatham counties — the same reporter who covered the story initially — on September 4, 2019. I told her honestly that I was frightened to meet with reporters, but that I wanted to connect with someone I sincerely believed was interested in the truth. She had covered the story in 2017, and I believe she was misled by her sources.
I shared everything I had compiled.
I told Grubb I understood that she may not have had the time or resources to investigate the accuracy of what she was told or the credibility of the sources that were willing to speak with her in 2017. She and I spent more than two hours at a coffee shop in Chapel Hill discussing the events of that summer, looking closely at texts, emails and Facebook messages that told a very different story, many of which you've seen on this site.
During our conversation, Grubb appeared genuinely surprised by what I had compiled.
She told me she was unaware of the professional connection between Gail Stern and Mettlesome. Stern did not disclose her connection to Mettlesome. Grubb believed that she had found Gail Stern from an article in the New York Times, but she could not recall exactly, “I’m a little upset she didn’t share that connection with me. That seems like something you would disclose if you were a professional. She didn’t say anything.”
She acknowledged that Vinny Valdivia’s story in 2017 contradicted what she saw in the documents I provided her.
She acknowledged that Grace Carnes’ story in 2017 contradicted what she saw in the documents I provided her.
I was flat-out frightened to meet with a reporter.
The local news media had played a huge part in my initial takedown, and I had no reason to know I wouldn't get burned again.
But I needed to tell my story.
I didn't want this website to be the way I got this story out. I did not want to be seen as the accused just coming out with a “he said” version of events, which was why I kept trying to go through a reporter. Over and over again, I tried to contact this reporter to get my story told.
I was told that because election coverage was so important for the newspaper, my personal story would have to wait. So I waited until after the election.
The last I heard from Tammy Grubb was October 23, 2019. There was no reply on November 12, 2019.
I still don't know why there was no interest in correcting what they had gotten wrong — what Grubb admitted to me was incorrect in her initial reporting.
Being a bureau reporter in today's media landscape is, I'm certain, very demanding and it's not unlikely that I simply slipped off her radar. But the combination of Woods' outright contempt and the N&O's lack of response has felt like another media shut out, as though my story simply didn't need to be told.
Let's look at the sources that spoke on the record, for attribution, in stories published in local news media outlets.
Sources
Gail Stern
Gail Stern — who has been discussed in detail throughout this story — is a Chicago-based consultant who mysteriously became the primary source for background on sexual assault and comedy in North Carolina. Both INDY Week and N&O cited Stern as a credible expert whose statements framed the narrative and were used to created a legitimate foundation for the story about Zach Ward and DSI.
I have never met Gail Stern, as far as I know.
Stern had never set foot in DSI, as far as I know.
Gail Stern had no particular, specific knowledge of any events that would have occurred at DSI. She has no connection whatsoever to the Triangle comedy scene or DSI — except for one:
Stern had been Jack Reitz's employer since 2012.
Gail Stern employed Jack Reitz — Mettlesome Comedy co-founder and husband of Ashley Melzer.
So how was Stern cited? As an expert on the way things surely must have been at DSI:
I know for a fact that this happens in improv. It's sick and disgusting to me.
I worked very hard to make DSI a safe space for women specifically because I knew this was common.
But Stern's statement, included in a story about DSI, is clearly designed to paint a picture by inference.
The implicit parallel: “Zach Ward” was someone who did these things, that women were not ‘supposed’ to speak up, but they were.
Gail Stern was billed as an independent industry expert. INDY Week, Durham’s Herald Sun, The News & Observer and WUNC gave her agenda a platform. Stern never disclosed her professional connections to Mettlesome or her direct involvement in Melzer’s smear campaign against DSI as far back as 2016.
With Stern’s Chicago-based consulting company Catharsis Productions, Reitz had toured the world as an actor and educator, using comedy to tackle sexual assault, discrimination and violence. Jack Reitz was trained in what people “often” say and what could be shown to demonstrate a pattern of behavior.
They knew how to frame this debate. They exploited that knowledge.
They knew the terms that would play on the bad experiences they knew women had had throughout their lives, both in and out of comedy.
Sources
PT Scarborough
Scarborough was improvising and still performing his one-man show, “PT Scarborough Is A Movie” at DSI in Summer 2016. He cancelled his last PTSIAM performance on August 18, 2016 after Vinny Valdivia resigned from DSI. Scarborough cited Valdivia's departure in his cancellation.
“With Vinny leaving the theater it's left me terribly sad and upset. We're talking and I understand his reasons still with him gone it's going to feel all kinds of different,” he wrote.
The News & Observer reported that, “He later learned about things going on behind closed doors.”
What things? That is never stated. Just "things going on." How ominous.
Perhaps Scarborough was speaking of the relationship between Melzer and Reitz, which began when Reitz was Melzer’s subordinate at the theater. Without specifics, it's hard to know. The accusation of "things going on" is left to hang in the air, as is the "victim in the scenario" who is "outed."
The N&O story makes no reference to precisely what its source had learned or how exactly he had come to know whatever damning story he had learned. Scarborough left DSI when his friend resigned, and, like Valdivia, was later welcomed in by Mettlesome, where he started performing with Paula Pazderka.
Scarborough generalizes. “This happens a lot,” he says, yet he does not share any details of what happened at DSI.
And “we don’t have an HR” was an argument (same language) used by Reitz during the recorded conversation 2016.
DSI was a business that employed, at its peak, a handful of people. Should we have had better ways to handle employee and performers' concerns? I thought so. And that's why — in September 2016 — I created the anonymous reporting system and independent community advocate position. Unless he's advocating hiring a full-time human resources manager, I'm not sure what more he would have asked for.
I feel confident Mettlesome doesn’t have a paid, full-time human resources professional.
Scarborough is a gifted, funny man. His shows at their best commanded a crowd's attention and laughter. But he was also, like many in comedy, subject to darker moods. For instance, in July 2015, Scarborough posted publicly about a suicidal episode he had had. It’s my belief that vulnerable people like PT Scarborough were offered community and a new comedy home at Mettlesome. And more than that, people they trusted gave them a positive purpose: They could protect the comedy community and victims from Zach Ward.
I believe these people even started to believe what they were saying, having had their ears and minds filled for more than a year by Ashley Melzer and others, working behind the scenes to help spread disinformation.
Below, Scarborough and Kate Harlow use similar language as they frame DSI as an abusive environment within minutes of each other on July 2, 2017, moments after Mettlesome cast members had their final DSI performances, the day that Vinny Valdivia rang the bell on Facebook.
Note how much of the language revolves around performers’ own personal histories and struggles: the “narrative that has been an ongoing toxic refrain in my life,” as Harlow puts it. In fact, she flat out admits that she was looking for the kind of home that gave her a sense of support and importance, and that she got it at DSI. Getting it again at Mettlesome required only the mental gymnastics of turning that welcoming space people had found at DSI into “toxicity.”
I am sure these people believe what they are saying now. But that does not mean they are describing what actually happened.
SCARBOROUGH’S COMMENTS IN 2017 CONTRADICT HIS OWN WORDS AND MY EXPERIENCE OF OUR DECADE-LONG FRIENDSHIP AND PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP (AS RECENTLY AS 2015 AND 2016)
Scarborough posted about his personal struggles with depression and suicidal thinking on Facebook in 2015 — I messaged him privately to offer whatever support I could, to empathize with him and to tell him he was loved. In his response, Scarborough replied to say my message brought him to tears, and that he felt like “time and time again I've felt like I let the theater down and time and time again you back me up.” This is the environment he would describe as dangerously toxic a year later. Even after his final performance with the theater, he writes to say he wants to “play any part I can to support the theater.”
Sources
Kate Harlow
Harlow piled on the Facebook smear campaign early on Sunday July 2, 2017 commenting that “DSI perpetuated a toxic ‘you aren’t good enough’ ‘you aren’t cool enough’ ‘you aren’t desirable enough’ narrative that has been an ongoing toxic refrain in my life.” Kate Harlow’s unrelated personal experience appears to have driven her claim that if you were not thin, pretty or young enough at DSI you were “left behind like an island of misfit toys.”
This was a demonstrably untrue and absurd statement about the casting at DSI.
Harlow’s comments in 2017 contradict her documented messages, my experience of our friendship and her casting experience at DSI (she stepped back in October 2014). Harlow — who complained about she and her friends not getting cast — was cast into two ensembles for DSI’s 2014 Fall season, Improv SLAM (our premier short-form show) and a “Harold” improv incubator, ensembles that had been the pathway to DSI’s headline improv shows.
Harlow declined to join the Harold team in an email on September 17, 2014.
Harlow emailed again on October 6th that she would be taking a personal hiatus.
Harlow and I later exchanged Facebook messages about the 2014 DSI holiday party.
She also went out of her way to connect a friend with DSI for a birthday party event in early 2015, while she was on her hiatus.
When a DSI cast member in her 40s challenged the statements made by Harlow in INDY Week, arguing — on Facebook — that she performed weekly on Saturday nights with an improv cast featuring at least two other 40 year old women, she was shut down and told that her experience at DSI was not Harlow’s “truth.”
Harlow and others made vague and generalized statements about DSI that could be proven false, but became accepted as fact, as they shouted down any evidence to the contrary. People who did not fully support the story of abuse were silenced themselves, targeted online as “rape apologists” “disbelieving women” and “silencing victims.”
I believe Harlow, like many others, was motivated and activated by Grace Carnes’ story of sexual assault.
People Kate Harlow trusted gave her a purpose: protect the comedy community and victims from Zach Ward.
Sources
Katie (Shutrump) Mayo
Katie Mayo posted on the Facebook thread started by Vinny Valdivia that she and I had a consensual relationship in 2007. I can confirm. In 2007 — a decade before her July 2, 2017 post — Mayo and I privately dated for 4 months. That relationship lasted from July 2007 until the beginning of November 2007.
In her Facebook post, however, which journalists cribbed without fact checking, Mayo posted that I was prone to anger and had suddenly become possessive a year later. She was also quoted by INDY Week that her all-women comedy group Elaine had to “fight for shows.”
I ended our romantic relationship in 2007.
The statements made about our relationship after 2007 were untrue.
Mayo continued to perform at DSI until she moved in 2009.
In fact, she continued to treat me as a friend well after our relationship ended. Together with Paula Pazderka and Kit FitzSimons, Mayo bought me an acoustic guitar — which I still have — for my 31st birthday in 2008, six months after our consensual relationship ended. We were friends.
Mayo was contracted as a DSI comedy camp counselor in summer 2008.
I never made advances after we ended our relationship in 2007. I struggle to understand how any action I took could be construed as possessive or jealous. Most importantly, Mayo and I never had a conversation where she was asked to leave DSI. Any claim that happened is flat-out untrue.
When I read Mayo’s July 2, 2017 post on Valdivia’s Facebook thread, I texted Kit FitzSimons immediately.
I was confused and wanted to process what was being shared.
Her all-women comedy group was celebrated at DSI. The feature article below was printed in The Daily Tar Heel in 2008 — I have been unable to find the exact date. I wrote the press release and was personally quoted in the article praising her group.
Let me repeat that: The release that spurred this laudatory newspaper article came from me.
I don't know whether Katie Mayo was contacted by Mettlesome and weaponized by the whisper campaign started in 2016, or whether a decade of misremembering had changed what she thought happened. Katie Mayo (who left NC in 2009) and Valdivia never crossed paths at DSI, but Mayo was welcomed into what Carnes called a “brave sisterhood” and given a purpose: protect the comedy community and victims from Zach Ward.
Sources
Monica Byrne
Monica Byrne — author and playwright based in Durham — inserted herself into the 2017 smear campaign almost as soon as the public news broke.
She tweeted about DSI's "abusers" and "machineries of enablement, and said that I, Zach Ward, was the reason she left DSI and improv comedy altogether.
Byrne leveraged nearly 16K followers to help spread disinformation and destroy my reputation.
She continued to smear my name long after I had been publicly ruined and DSI had closed its doors. She engaged directly with INDY Week and INDY Managing Arts Editor Brian Howe on January 26, 2018.
Prior to her public tweets we had a series of brief professional interactions.
When Byrne stepped back from DSI in 2008, she also left her job at Duke, as I recall.
Byrne told me she wanted to pursue her artistic passion as a writer. Inspired to make playwriting a business, Monica contacted me after she returned from her sabbatical. She asked if she could “pick my brain” about “making a living in the arts.” We met at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC. I have had a lot of these conversations with a lot of people seeking careers in the arts, and was delighted to help. She asked how DSI started and what sacrifices were made along the way. As I recall, she was most interested in how anyone could pay rent while running a business that made art, a problem most artists can sympathize with.
There was a long gap in communication.
She reconnected in a message to me on Twitter in 2012, asking “Where’s the baby and stuff?”
This would have been roughly 4 years after she left DSI, at least 3 years after our conversation about art and business.
These tweets did not appear to be anything other than friendly and celebratory — both of my fatherhood and her writing success.
In 2013, I replied to a public tweet by Byrne referencing the “asscrack of dawn.” Byrne replied with an implication that she would DM me an instagram of her asscrack. I did not reply.
We did not interact ever again. Her next public comment on me in her Twitter stream would be more than 4 years later — after Carnes’ false accusation was published by INDY Week.
Now an outspoken supporter of Ashley Melzer and Mettlesome, Byrne has been featured at least once at Mettlesome’s theater space in Durham.
I can forgive people who were weaponized by fear, manipulated by people they trusted, egged on by those who sought to destroy me, welcomed in, and given purpose by Mettlesome and others who wished to destroy DSI.
I have not enjoyed calling to account the people involved here — who themselves I believe were used by a business rival run by people they trusted.
The very best version of this story, that I had pre-planned and consensual sex with a person who decided to publicly post graphic details of that encounter, still fills me with overwhelming shame as a private person who became a public figure, entertainer and business owner in a small town.
I would like to find peace, to heal from what happened and move on.
I would like to continue supporting the arts and the community where I live.
I would like the opportunity to help people again.
I would really like the chance to be happy and reasonably unafraid.
I am not able to do any of that with the story that was manufactured — a story that's still out there.
Truth matters.
I believe that truth matters, in comedy and in life.
Somehow, after everything, I still believe “every interpersonal situation has a solution in which everyone wins.” I have been paralyzed, absolutely terrified of sharing this story, but I am doing the thing that scares me most. — Thank you, Del.
I am following the fear, so that I can live.
I'm not sure exactly how that’ll look or how long it might take, but I am relentlessly optimistic.
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.