NYC’s Comedy Cellar Gambling on Vegas!

The Comedy Cellar stage, one of the locations that the "Louie" show is filmed.

Here’s some exciting news for Sin City residents: Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s fabled Comedy Cellar, announced on the most recent episode of his podcast, The Comedy Cellar: Live From the Table, that he’s moving forward with plans to open a venue in Las Vegas.

Right in the beginning of the episode, which featured co-host Dan Naturman, comedians Sam Morril and Sean Donnelly, and ACLU attorney Lee Rowland, Naturman excitedly announced that the Cellar was finalizing plans to open a new venue in Las Vegas. Dworman and Naturman said that the deal is 90% finalized– some details still need to be worked out. Noam went into detail explaining that he’d been looking into the move for some time. While his original offer was first denied by the casino which he had contacted with the proposition, a year later they informed him that they accepted his terms. He did not mention which casino would be the club’s home away from home, although the name Caesars Palace did come up. It’s a bold idea, and an expensive one as Dworman admits, but the move isn’t purely profit-driven:

“I’ve gotta rev the engine of the Comedy Cellar to as many RPMs as I can get right now, just to know that I did it, otherwise five years from now when it calms back down, I’ll be like ‘Oh shit,’” said Dworman. He went on the say that, as “childish” as it may seem, he loves the idea of seeing “a big sign in Caesars Palace that says Comedy Cellar.”

Describing the future venue, Dworman says that it will be built to look “exactly like the Comedy Cellar” in NYC, just on a larger scale, even down to the exposed brick-and-mortar walls, a comedians’ table, and he’d like to name the front bar after the Cellar’s sister bar, The Fat Black Pussycat.

Dworman plans to run shows at the venue with a showcase format, just like the New York location, sending out four comics and an emcee to perform each week in order to make it truly feel like a Comedy Cellar show. He even talked about the early thoughts on what comedians will be paid for the gig. “The fee that we’re looking at is $2,500 a week,” Noam said, indicating that the comics would perform nine spots over a six-night period. “That seems to be what works.”

It’s unclear when Dworman plans to move forward with the project, but the prospect of having a Comedy Cellar-branded venue in a city that desperately needs a go-to comedy club is an exciting one indeed.

To listen to the episode, follow this link and either download or stream from there.

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Bill Tressler

Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.
Bill Tressler
Bill Tressler
Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.