“Underground” Comedy Club Hosts Final Shows
When it comes to the underground entertainment and stand-up comedy scenes, comedian and Temple University student Lyle Drescher found something lacking in the current offerings around Temple’s North Philadelphia campus.
“The only place to perform, really, was this place called Saige Café, and they hated us,” Drescher said. “Towards the end of the open mic, they wanted us to leave, so the baristas would blend drinks really loudly while the performers were talking. So that was the end of that.”
After a semester of similar experiences, Drescher and Dave Hogsett, another student comedian, decided to create a judgement-free venue for student comedians to perform their own sets. Hogsett was the first to pitch the idea: host a basement open mic at his house, similar to the events popular in the underground punk music scene.
“Musicians are cool, those underground performances are cool,” Drescher said. “We wanted to give comedians a space to feel cool, too.”
That space became known as Cave, an underground comedy open mic, where anyone could sign up to perform a five-minute comedy set.
During Cave’s first 2018 summer show, 55 people signed up to perform. The basement was packed; performers also sat on the basement stairs and waited to perform on the upper levels, leaning against walls lit with string lights or wandering out the back door to the narrow backyard. This is one of eight Cave shows to be held before Drescher and Hogsett leave Philadelphia for Rome in the fall to study abroad.
“We might bring it over to Europe,” Drescher said. “I don’t know too much about the comedy scene there, though. We’re also going to L.A.; we’d love to one day open a club there.”
“It was definitely a labor of love,” Hogsett added. “But Cave is different from other places because other house events are more like parties, but this has some structure to it.”
Before every show, Drescher and Hogsett set up the cramped basement with chairs from Drescher’s mother’s home, a small wireless microphone and a TV boasting Cave’s logo, designed by Hogsett’s girlfriend. That same logo adorns the large butcher paper sign taped to the exterior brick wall of Hogsett’s home every night before the show.
During Cave’s “early days,” Drescher said mostly college students showed up to perform. The weekly Friday night events would draw a crowd of maybe 15 or 20 performers and their friends, and that number grew.
“We’ll usually get anywhere from 20 to 40 performers,” Drescher said. “We usually have the whole basement packed at least at one point during the show.”
During the summer, Drescher said, they don’t always know what to expect. Students have gone home for the summer, but Cave’s audience has expanded past Temple and into the larger Philadelphia comedy scene.
Last semester, Hogsett organized a showcase night and invited several Philadelphia-area comedians, some of who have performed on television shows like “Saturday Night Live,” to perform their sets for Cave’s regular audience. The house grew so crowded that Hogsett and Drescher had to turn people away from the event.
It’s not something he wants to be in the habit of doing, Hogsett said. The appeal of Cave is its spontaneous atmosphere.
“People don’t really come in by accident,” Drescher said. “You kind of have to choose to be here. But at the same time, sometimes people see comics hanging out on the steps and they come in just because they’re curious.”
Cave may be dying, Drescher said, but there’s still eight more shows left to bring people together. Before the beginning of the first Friday night summer show, David Feinberg, the evening’s host, wandered the house, talking to performers, cracking jokes and wondering aloud if there were certain “Jewish jokes” that were off-limits. Most performers he saw tonight were new, he said, but there were other familiar faces he recognized right away.
“This is honestly the highlight of my week,” said T.J. Swigart, a recent Temple graduate and a self-professed “Cave regular.” “I know these guys and they know me. It’s a really comfortable place to work on my art.”
He gestures at the photographs on Hogsett’s kitchen wall. “I mean, look at these dudes. There’s some cool shit going on in here.”
From downstairs, someone yelled Swigart’s name. “You’re up next!” they shouted.
Swigart downed the last of the beer he’d brought from home. “Hopefully they laugh,” he said, and jogged down to the basement as the crowd applauded.