One of the few things people seem to agree on lately is that the best days of comedy are long past, even if we disagree about the cause. Woke culture is strangling comedy, spouted The Spectator earlier this year. The Web site Refinery29 accepts the premise that comedy is being asphyxiated but blames comedians such as Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle for “choking the life out of it.” According to Noam Dworman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar in New York’s Greenwich Village, however, “we’re in a golden age of comedy.”
“I think there is a higher level of comedian now than there’s ever been,” he says, citing young comics such as Marcello Hernandez, Jeff Arcuri, and Tyler Fischer. And he’s seen them all. “If I showed you old recordings from the 90s, the shows were not nearly as good as they are now,” he says. “It’s not just that they’re dated. You can hear it in the response of the audience.”
I met Dworman on a recent Saturday evening at the Olive Tree, the café above the brick-walled, claustrophobia-inducing club he runs. It’s a holiday weekend and the block is crowded. There are lines outside Minetta Tavern and Cafe Wha?, as well as outside the Comedy Cellar and its offshoot rooms down the street, the Village Underground and the Fat Black Pussycat. The people queued up will soon find out that all 15 shows at Dworman’s clubs are already sold out.
“Tourists who plan their trips early will crowd out New Yorkers, who think they can make their plans at the last minute,” he tells me, noting that tourists typically make up about a quarter of the audience. “It’s not because New Yorkers aren’t there,” Dworman says. “It’s because they can’t get in.”
The Comedy Cellar was co-founded in 1981 by Dworman’s father, Manny, and the comedian Bill Grundfest. After a slow start, business started picking up and hasn’t slowed since. Dworman took over after Manny died, in 2003. In 2020, “the Cellar,” as it’s known among comedians, was turning down around 1,000 customers a night. From the very day they were allowed to reopen post-pandemic, Dworman says, “we were sold out in every room, and it never stopped. And there were zero tourists. Zero.”
The Cellar is one of the best-known comedy clubs in the world. Jon Stewart, Ray Romano, Jerry Seinfeld, and Dave Chappelle all got their start there. Before each night’s show, a slideshow runs through pictures of some of comedy’s most recognizable faces—like Robin Williams, Norm Macdonald, and Dave Attell—on that same tiny stage, in front of the same brick wall the audience is seated around.
As Dworman and I descend the stairs leading down to the club, laughter roars up from the basement, almost as if on cue. Keith Robinson, a regular at the Cellar, is killing when a tall, broad-shouldered man in a black T-shirt, recognizable even from the back, heads to the corner where the bathrooms are. “Shane Gillis!” shouts someone in the audience. “Don’t say ‘Shane Gillis’ like that,” Robinson says with mock bitterness. The whole room laughs. “I’m up here right now.”
Gillis is a New York City–based comedian from Pennsylvania who, in 2019, was hired to the cast of S.N.L. When a video from an old podcast in which he uses a racial slur as part of a joke was posted to Twitter, he was dropped from the cast before he had even started.
Dworman thinks Gillis, whose latest special, Beautiful Dogs, is among Netflix’s Top 10 most-streamed TV programs in the U.S., is more successful today than he would have been had he ended up joining S.N.L. “Shane Gillis and some of those guys are who are bringing the biggest audiences right now,” he says, citing Andrew Schulz and Tim Dillon, other comics who have made a name for themselves outside the mainstream. Dworman recalls being impressed by Gillis’s confidence when they first met. “He didn’t play the game,” he says.
“He knew he had it. And the son of a bitch was right,” Dworman says.
Tourists typically make up about a quarter of the audience. “It’s not because New Yorkers aren’t there,” Dworman says. “It’s because they can’t get in.”
Dworman has faced criticism for allowing comedians such as Louis C.K. to perform after they admitted publicly to sexual misconduct, but he never thought it was his place to enforce punishment. He believes the audience members should have the right to decide what they do and don’t want to see.
“Back when we were in hot water because of Louis, a few tweets felt like the whole world was coming down on us,” he says. But the club was just as busy as ever.
Dworman has since implemented a “Swim at your own risk” policy, which states that customers are free to leave without paying if a performance is not to their liking. Louis C.K. still shows up now and then; some people in the audience get up, but most stay. Cell phones are strictly forbidden at every show, sealed away from their owners in padded envelopes.
Dworman’s approach to his business is simple: comedy should be fun—and funny. “I don’t think there is any type of person that doesn’t like comedy,” he says. He believes it’s begun to replace live music as a go-to night out. But people really drawn to the form, he believes, have an innate irreverence and thoughtfulness. “I’m not saying ‘thoughtful’ as a value judgment,” he notes. “I’m saying people who ponder and are open to looking at things from a different angle. Who like to hear somebody make fun of something they might have held dear.”
In the 80s and 90s, it was people on the political right, according to Dworman, who objected to transgressive humor. “In those times,” he says, “people on the left who would consider themselves liberals were the ones who thought it was awesome to go hear somebody say something outrageous.” Today, calls for emotionally protective measures such as trigger warnings, or for staying away from controversial material altogether, are coming from the left.
Estee Adoram, the club’s one and only booker for roughly four decades, has another take. “As long as it’s funny,” she says, “you can get away with anything and everything.” Adoram, who is known as the most powerful woman in stand-up comedy, moved to the U.S. from Israel nearly 50 years ago. “There is so much positivity that comes out of comedy and laughter,” she tells me. “If you are able to take a joke, it makes your life better. It unlocks a door.” She explains that it doesn’t ultimately matter who you are or what you believe: if it’s funny, you’ll laugh.
Adoram informs Dworman that Dave Chappelle will be coming later. Comedians on the night’s lineup walk past us to the table at the back, a spot always reserved for comics. Some stop to say hello and quickly catch up; others pat Dworman’s shoulder as they walk by.
Dworman’s two grade-school-age sons tuck themselves into the booth next to him, wrapping their arms around his neck and whispering in his ear. “Do you guys want to run the Cellar when you get older?” he asks them. “Yeah!” they shout. “I’m gonna be the manager!” his younger son says.
The Cellar is expanding: Dworman recently bought the building that once housed McDonald’s on Third Street and Sixth Avenue, right next to the Village Underground and the Fat Black Pussycat. Like all his venues, this new one will be small—about 300 seats—though larger than the original MacDougal Street location. “I’m very, very excited about it,” he says. “Hopefully it’s going to be the best of all the rooms.”
Meanwhile, the crowd is roaring. Some people, who have probably had too much to drink, are quick to laugh. Others sometimes appear unsure whether they’re allowed to. But the energy in the room is tangibly gleeful.
Dworman says good-bye; it’s time to take the kids home to bed.
At the end of the show, Ray Romano is announced. “This is where it all started,” Romano says, tapping the stained glass Comedy Cellar sign behind him as he approaches the stage. Adoram stands at the back to watch, a smile on her face.
Later that night, Dave Chappelle also performs, bringing Shane Gillis (“one of the funniest motherfuckers”) onstage to tell a joke in which Gillis impersonates Trump getting assassinated. The audience of 200 is almost in tears.
Anna Jube is a writer based in New York
