On a recent Wednesday night in the back room of a Lincoln Park bar, a guy standing near the front door with a mike said to the crowd, “And now, please welcome to the stage one of my very best friends–Cayne Collier!” He put down the mike, walked to the stage, sat down on the stool behind the mike stand, and said, “Hey, thanks for coming out!”
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“It is very unusual for an independent comedy show to run anywhere for ten years,” says Deb Downing Grosz, a stand-up and improviser who’s been with the show since the beginning. “Especially being run by the same person–Cayne has a steadfastness that’s almost inhuman.” She thinks one reason the show’s lasted so long is that Collier isn’t callous. “He creates what he calls a ‘with’ not an ‘at’ experience,” she says. “There’s no attacking people in the audience. Instead he brings them into the show.” Greg Mills, an eight-year veteran of “The Elevated” and a former writer for Martin Short’s Primetime Glick, agrees. “He personally goes out of his way to learn as many of the audience members’ names as he can.” Mills says there’s another reason for the show’s success: “I think overall, more than the other nonclub venues, this has the most solid lineups in any given week.”
A year later the booker at the Improv on Wells Street, Tom Tenney, who’d seen Collier perform there and at open mikes, asked him to emcee a new showcase of local stand-ups. Collier had made friends with lots of young comics, and he quickly put a show together, though it lasted only two months. In 1996, after the Improv closed, Tenney produced a similar show at the Cue Club, the pool hall in Lakeview that’s now Cherry Red. Within a week he’d abandoned the show and offered Collier the reins.
Some of his former regulars have gone on to bigger stages. Dwayne Kennedy has been on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Mike O’Connell on Jimmy Kimmel Live, John Roy on CBS’s Star Search (he won) and Comedy Central’s Premium Blend, and Rob Paravonian on Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn.
“The Elevated” Ten-Year Anniversary
