Trevor Noah announces two new comedy tour dates at San Diego State University and Pechanga

San Diego Union-Tribune

Aug. 6, 2018 10:50 AM PT

Trevor Noah is headed to San Diego.

The host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” the South African-born comedy star and social commentator will perform Dec. 14 at Pechanga Resort & Casino and Dec. 15 at San Diego State University’s Viejas Arena. Ticket information appears below for both shows.

Noah released his memoir, “Born a Crime,” in 2016, followed by his Netflix special “Afraid of the Dark” last year and this year’s “The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library,” which collects and analyzes an array of tweets by President Trump.

Noah is the first South African comedian to achieve major success in the U.S. The son of a black Xhosa South African mother and a white Swiss father, he grew up in South Africa during apartheid. His mixed race parents made his very existence a crime under the repressive laws of his homeland.

“Free speech didn’t exist, so comedy wasn’t a big part of my life. Comedy was a thing I didn’t understand,” Noah recalled in a 2016 Union-Tribune interview.

“But laughter, luckily, was something that we all had access to, in some shape or form. With regards to comedy itself, in South Africa, it wasn’t performed anywhere by comedians of color. Because there were laws that restricted people of color being in the same place, because (of the fear) we’d be plotting against the government, not practicing punch lines. And even whites would get arrested if the government thought they were being disparaging.”

Tickets for Noah’s Dec. 15 performance at SDSU’s Viejas Arena are priced from $39.50 to $85, plus service fees. They go on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m. Friday at Ticketmaster — (800) 754-3000 and ticketmaster.com. An online pre-sale for Citi card members begins Wednesday at 10 a.m. and concludes at 10 p.m. Thursday. An online Official Platinum pre-sale also begins at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Tickets for Noah’s Dec. 14 Pechanga performance are priced from $79 to $129, plus service charges. They go on sale to the general public at 3 p.m. Friday at at Ticketmaster — (800) 754-3000 and ticketmaster.com.

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevarga

Arts | Culture

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”