I spoke with founder Ben Lillie about Caveat’s new weekly series, “Comedian Interview Experts,” which kicks off in full force this fall. Caveat, located at 21A Clinton St., is a neighborhood performance venue known mostly as a smart comedy club, but now the team is ready to home in on their original mission, to be a space that makes intellectual curiosity entertaining, “where comedy, science, journalism, history, and storytelling intersect.”
Ben told me that this new series, which features comedians interviewing an expert on a topic they’ve always wanted to know more about (ranging from neuroscience, astrophysics, mental health, spirituality, cultural history and more) is the purest distillation of what they’ve been doing at Caveat for a while now.
“I had the option for a weekly series open up, and I thought, well…let’s just do the most basic thing we can, that is based on what we do already. So — take a comedian, take an academic, or some kind of expert, put them in conversation, and see what happens,” he said.
“The thing I originally wanted to bring into the world by opening this space is this kind of mix,” he continued. “I have this belief that there’s room for comedy that really tackles complicated subjects, and I think we’re showing that it can be done.”
Caveat is celebrating their 9th anniversary next month, which makes for a long list of people who they’ve worked with – both the comedians and the experts – so Ben knew they had a large enough “roster” to make it a regular thing.
Upcoming shows feature people like comedian Brandon Collins interviewing Justin Williams, a professor of History and the director of the African American Studies Program at University of Detroit Mercy about African History, or comedian Asher Perlman interviewing Weiji Ma, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, about consciousness, and television host/food expert Padma Lakshmi (Top Chef) interviewing Lisa Miller Ph.D, a professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Columbia Teachers College, about the psychology of spirituality.
The 90 minute show includes a warm up, a substantial interview, and Q & A with the live audience. Caveat shows are also recorded and posted online for at-home streaming.
I asked Ben if the audience for these might just be a bunch of brainiacs…?
He assured me the show is geared towards people who are generally curious about all kinds of things.
“There’s a lot of people in this city, and I think everywhere, that really want to engage and really want to learn stuff,” he said, “and then for the Caveat crowd, there’s definitely people who not only want to learn, but if they’re laughing uproariously at the same time, that’s great.”
You can find tickets and more info HERE.
