Comedian Dave Cave is going across Canada looking for love, and is bringing his search to The Theatre on King in Peterborough on February 13th with his one-man show Win a Date with Dave Cave (The Gay Comedy Reality Show).
Inspired by reality dating shows such as The Bachelor, Dave invites the audience to participate in his own condensed competition where the grand prize is a date with him.
“It’s such an insane plan when you say it out loud,” Dave says. “It’s more of a statement.”
Dave admits that the idea came from watching relationship reality shows on TV.
“I was watching Millionaire Matchmaker and those shows are awful,” Dave confesses. “They are horrendous. I was watching it and hating it, but then I realized that why I was watching was that I wanted it to happen to me. Just a room full of potential guys who wanted to date me in the same room.”
Premiering the show last year in Toronto, Dave’s plan is to bring it to multiple cities across Ontario. But is this just all a joke, or is it the real deal?
“Like most things it started off as a joke and then it became real,” Dave says. “I’m taking this to different cities through Ontario. Peterborough is the second stop. Its 90% entertainment, but 10% is me actually trying to meet someone. After the Toronto show, I realized that there were a few people in the audience that were there with a serious agenda of putting themselves out there and taking a chance.”
So what can the audience of Win a Date with Dave Cave expect?
“The concept is pretty self-explanatory,” Dave says. “I’m condensing the reality show dating process into an hour and a half. The audience is given an application and they fill it out. I review the applications on stage. I will go through what the audience members list and then there are challenges. I feel like on dating shows the challenges are so haphazard that they are kind of designed for just entertainment and have no insight as to if the participant would be a redeemable partner or not. So some of them are meaningless, some of them are meaningful. There will be elimination ceremonies.”
And Dave isn’t picky who applies for a date. Everybody is welcome.
“Just to clarify, it is open to anyone,” Dave says. “I am gay so I’m only interested in dating other guys, but I do open it up to everyone as part of the experiment and part of the fun. Who knows? I may meet a friend out of this.”
From Lindsay, Dave has worked in comedy clubs in Toronto and premiered his one man show Madonna What the Hell: A Worst Hit Musical at The Theatre on King during Peterborough Pride 2014. Dave also hosts a weekly comedy open mic at the Lindsay Little Theatre.
“It’s very surreal to do comedy two blocks from where you grew up in the town you grew up in,” Dave says of performing in Lindsay. “Most comedians go to bigger cities to joke about where they are from, but it’s another thing to joke about your small town in your small town. I like to think that Lindsay is the new Peterborough. I don’t know what that means for you guys. Maybe Peterborough is the new Detroit.”
So why is Dave putting himself in front of an audience in such a bizarre attempt to find love?
“All my good friends are now in relationships and they are starting to have couple weekends, which might as well be called ‘Everybody but Dave Cave’ weekends,” Dave laughs. “This is kind of a dig at that very petty universal advice ‘You just got to put yourself out there.’ I’m doing it to the extreme by saying ‘I’ll show YOU putting myself out there!’ If this does not work, I want to show people that advice is not enough.”
“The other piece of advice I don’t like is ‘It’ll happen when you stop looking’,” he continues. “That’s such bullshit. Only people in relationships give that advice. What happens is that, when they met the person, they stopped looking. I feel like they got those chronological events mixed up. They kind of forget: no, you met that person and THEN you stopped looking. I know it might be a blur, but that’s how it came about.”
But now the million dollar question: if you do win a date with Dave Cave, who pays?
“That depends on the situation,” Dave says. “I don’t want to make any grand assumption of things. I’m a fairly low maintenance guy. I’m from Lindsay.”
For your chance to date Dave, make your way to The Theatre on King on Friday, February 13th at 8 p.m. Admission is $10 or pay what you can.
