Two Adelaide Fringe festival comedians say a member of their team was attacked while he was promoting the show last Friday night in the heart of the city.
Comedians Aditya Gautam and Chetan Singh were scheduled to perform that night as part of their show The Racist Immigrants that features a multicultural group of comedians.
But they had to find others to stand in so they could take the victim to the emergency department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Gautam said he was worried when he arrived outside the Rundle Mall venue and saw the show's sign flung on the ground with blood on and around it.
He said concerned bystanders told him that they had contacted police after witnessing someone being punched in the face.
"Instantly, obviously, I started looking for our friend to see how he is and where he is," he said.
"I went inside, and the boy was in the bathroom, he was sort of cleaning himself.
"He was cleaning the blood basically, because there was a lot of blood, it was all over his clothes."
Gautam, who arrived shortly after the attack that occurred about 7:45pm, said they left for the hospital soon after around 8:20pm.
According to Singh, the victim, who is of an Indian background but does not wish to be identified, was approached by two men prior to the attack.
The men, described as being Caucasian and in their early 30s, said they wanted to know about the show, before pushing the victim around when he told them about it.
"They didn't actually attack him at that point. They just went away and sat there for a little while," Singh said.
"He moved on from that spot to a different spot, trying to get away from them.
"About five or 10 minutes later, one of those guys came running to him and punched him in the face."
Singh said the victim had to receive several stitches for the cut on his lip and that his front tooth was chipped in half.
"Obviously, he's been deeply shaken by what's happened," he said.
Attack makes performers feel unsafe
Singh said they would no longer have people spruiking their show in Adelaide – a city he has lived in for nearly two decades.
"A couple of days ago we were doing this ourselves, so we were like, 'this could've happened to us'," he said.
"It definitely makes us feel really, really unsafe to ever do this kind of marketing again for our show."
Gautam said the stand-up show – which premiered at the Adelaide Fringe in 2021, and has since toured Melbourne, Sydney and Perth – was a satirical take on the performers' experiences of racist attitudes.
"The whole point of the show is to talk about how people from different races and cultures are coming and making Australia home, which is how we want to counter racism," he said.
"We're trying to make everybody see how we're all the same."
Gautam's solo venture, Don't Call Me a Papadum, which debuted at the Adelaide Fringe this year, is based on an incident when he faced verbal racial abuse in Queensland.
He said it was not the only time he had had such comments directed at him.
"I ignore it, and I take it as whatever ... maybe I'll do another joke about that someday and I move on," he said.
Singh, who has been performing for around four years, is no stranger to hecklers in the audience either, but said he had never experienced physical abuse in relation to his performances.
"Obviously, I've experienced stuff outside of the show, in general, daily life," he said.
Despite the shock of the assault, the performers are keen to keep raising awareness on and off stage.
"There's no reason for us to be scared to talk about this," Singh said.
"We should in fact be talking about it more, so such a thing doesn't happen again.
"That's the intention of the show, as well to create a sort of awareness so these things don't happen as often, and people appreciate other races and their existence in this country."
An SA Police spokesman said they could not find details of the attack based on the information provided by the ABC.
Aditya Gautam and Chetan Singh said a police report was made by both bystanders and the victim.
