Bill Burr took to his podcast to give a detailed rundown of his experience last week in the Middle East, where he performed at the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival.

The actor-comedian described rather nervously warming up for the event with a set in Bahrain to get a feel for what an audience in the region would find funny (and acceptable) and then performing at the Saudi Arabia festival’s opening night on Friday.

The event has been billed by organizers as the biggest comedy festival in the world. But its performers (which also include Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Kevin Hart, and about 50 others) have come under intense criticism — even from some other comics — given the kingdom’s history of oppression and human rights abuses.

Burr painted a portrait of a region where people were, well, “just like us” — wanting live comedy, wanting to relax and have fun, and consuming a surprising amount of Western culture.

“It was great to experience that part of the world and to be a part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia,” Burr said. “The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians that I’ve been talking to are saying, ‘Dude, you can feel [the audience] wanted it. They want to see real stand-up comedy.’ It was a mind-blowing experience. Definitely top three experiences I’ve had. I think it’s going to lead to a lot of positive things.”

Burr said the restrictions on what comedians could say had been softened by the festival after some back and forth (Burr didn’t specify with whom). “When they first set it up, the rules on what they had about what you could and couldn’t say in Saudi Arabia, [organizers were told], ‘If you want some good comedians, this isn’t going to work.’ And, to their credit, they said, ‘All right, what do we got to do?’ And they just negotiated it all the way down just couple things, which were, basically: Don’t make fun of royals [and] religion.” (The speech restrictions were posted online by comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, who turned down the festival’s offer to attend, and it’s unclear if these were the rules from before or after the talks).

Burr first described going to the island country of Bahrain — which is more socially liberal than Saudi Arabia — where a customs agent immediately clocked his anxiety about doing stand-up in the region and gave him grief about it. “When I was landing in Bahrain, like I’m fucking nervous, right? … [Then the agent says], ‘You tell jokes about the Middle East? You think you’re going to come over here and get beheaded, right?’”

After a successful show in Bahrain, Burr was at a bar where he was watching interactions among the locals and decided, “I’m like, these guys, they’re just like us … I don’t speak the language, but I get it.”

When he flew into Saudi Arabia, Burr’s nervousness crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. “You think everybody’s going to be screaming ‘death to America’ and they’re going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off, right?” Burr said. “Because this is what I’ve been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense. And I’m thinking like: ‘Is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to McDonald’s…? They got a fucking Chili’s over here!”

Once on stage at the Riyadh show, Burr kept pushing his material and crowd banter further and further — including doing a bit about gay men at the gym — until he was eventually performing his regular act. “I had to stop a couple times during the show [and say], ‘I’ll be honest with you guys, I cannot fucking believe any of you have any idea who I am. This is really amazing.’ And it was just this great exchange of energy. They know their reputation. So they were extra friendly.”

Burr’s take on the event comes as some comedians such as Shane Gillis, Marc Maron and David Cross have voiced objections to the festival, with Cross blasting comics — including citing Burr — who participated. “I am disgusted and deeply disappointed in this whole gross thing,” wrote Cross. “That people I admire, with unarguable talent, would condone this totalitarian fiefdom for … what, a fourth house? A boat? More sneakers? We can never again take seriously anything these comedians complain about.”

While MSNBC opinion writer Zeeshan Aleem accused the performers of participating in “comedy-washing” in an op-ed, describing the event as “an insidious tool to project a misleading image of the country’s incremental efforts to liberalize … this comedy festival functions fundamentally as propaganda, allowing the country to falsely present an image of an open society when, in fact, the government remains hostile to democratic civil liberties tied to freedom of speech and assembly.”

There is a long history of debate on this issue, weighing a refusal to normalize and endorse an authoritarian regime vs. the benefits of exposing such cultures to Western values and fostering a sense of openness. The political scientist Joseph S. Nye popularized the term “soft power” in the 1980s to describe using forces like art and culture to shape what other countries want and value.

The pop singer and humanitarian Sting has likewise spoken out about this concept in the past when defending his performance in Uzbekistan in 2009.

“I am well aware of the Uzbek president’s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment,” Sting said at the time. “I made the decision to play there in spite of that. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.”