Honolulu Weekly

On Sunday evenings at Chinatown’s rRed Elephant Cafe, tree farmer/ex-standup comedian, Dark Sevier hosts A Dark Night–Live at The rRed Elephant, a variety show with the ambition of being a commercially viable television program. The stage is split between a jazz quartet and a coffee table from which Sevier interviews guests before they perform on the best sounding stage in Honolulu. Like teaching a group of cats to tango, getting a group of artists to truly collaborate week after week is generally a difficult act to pull off, especially without pay–the seething egos and roaring maladies. A Dark Night’s crew functions with a seldom seen camaraderie spread from the top down: Sevier’s onstage nice-guy persona that soothes guest’s nerves is as true to form offstage–Sevier is supportive and calming in the whirlwind of pre-show production.

The cafÈ’s co-owners, Joey Wolpert and Paul Kreiling, are the dynamic duo behind A Dark Night, graciously bankrolling and producing the show without a profit in sight. Wolpert methodically runs the sound and stage with the cool patience of a music industry veteran. While Wolpert’s poker face is impenetrable, Paul Kreiling’s exasperation is palpable–of any collaborator, Kreiling is most likely to stroke out due to stress and giving 100 percent of his energy toward creating an ever-tighter running show.

The rawness of improvisation is key to keeping A Dark Night afloat; if things ever got too tight, the show might become another forgettable late-night throwaway. During a recent show, freestylist Joel and viola virtuoso Lev Zhurbin improvised together producing a remarkable mix of Russian classical music and Hawaiian hip-hop. If A Dark Night can grow yet retain this kind of electrifying charm, Hawai’i may just have a legitimate alternative to the doldrums of late-night talk shows. Sevier sat down with Honolulu Weekly to give us the lowdown on the show.

How did A Dark Night originate?

Initially, it was going to be an open mike with ringers, basically some really skilled talent that isn’t quite in the $30 echelon yet. We were trying to create a venue where people who were playing $5-band nights at a bar and have been doing so for a long time to find some ground between the bar and what the rRed Elephant does on its feature night–a middle ground to foster new talent for their label, Elepani Productions.

But it’s morphed into the prototype for a television show.

There was talk in the beginning of me doing interviews–what I’ve done in the past with audience involvement–but that changed after the first show. When I got on that stage with all the lights on, the audience completely disappeared, because you can’t see anything from up on stage. I realized that the whole breaking down the third wall was not going to happen on that stage. The room isn’t built for a lot of back and forth because it’s a recording studio. The first show was four hours, then we decided to cut it down to two hours because it was too loose, and they wanted it to be tighter.

At the moment, A Dark Night takes on the appearance of a late-night variety show, a format that has been done to death–Leno daydreams through his shows, and Letterman seems to snicker every time he gets another bad joke past the audience: How do you reinvigorate such a spent medium?

When I did stand-up comedy, all the comics would get together and watch Carson because Carson was the Holy Grail. If a comic got on Carson, their career was made. It’s not the same with those talk shows. You can be a comic on those shows and get a credit to your name and tour nationally, but it’s not the same as it was getting on Carson because Carson was very choosy about who he let on stage. Comics don’t have a product to sell other than themselves. Most talk shows serve as a way to sell books and movies, a salon for the Hollywood marketing machine. Carson at least kept up the guise that he wanted you on his show because he liked you and ‘we’re going to sit down and chat and by the way, you have a movie.’ Whereas Leno and Lettermen are just like, ‘OK. Sell it! Tell us about your project!’ There’s no talk-story premise. They cut out the humanism. I’m trying to get people that want to get up on stage that don’t necessarily have a product to sell, but have something to offer in themselves.

Why did you leave comedy?

I got out of stand-up because the guys who were really funny were only funny off stage because of all the [commercial] squeezing of their personality into a marketable format. It was frustrating–I thought, if these guys could find a setting in which they could just be themselves, instead of having to squeeze themselves down, that would be far more entertaining.

How do you find your guests?

I’ve actually been pulling in people who know people. I’m really hesitant to get anybody on stage who I haven’t seen before–one, just out of respect for everyone else who’s going to be on that stage, two, the guys at the rRed Elephant want to raise the bar and have a tight show. There’s room for new people, but they have to have a genuine dedication to what they do. We’re getting booked three weeks out. I checked out one guest visiting from L.A. through her MySpace profile, she checked out so I had her come on the show.

A Dark Night is growing quickly with a really basic backbone structure–a quartet back-up band, three production guys and a host–how are you going to keep the creative momentum up?

I got poets who are finding other poets. I have musicians who are finding other musicians–we’re going to get to the point where we’re going to have to assemble a bigger production crew. People to handle band setup. People to go out and find bands. Having people like [stage manager] Zack Adams. I don’t think it’s a small thing–it’s amazing that we’re getting this many people to get together for free every week to do something this fun.

A Dark Night–Live at The rRed Elephant is looking to expand its crew of volunteers. The rRed Elephant is located at 1144 Bethel St, for directions please call 545-2468 or visit [www.rredelephant.com].