Dave Maher

Dave Maher comes to Cleveland from Chicago. He trained in improv and sketch comedy at The Second City, iO, and The Annoyance, and he studied Meisner technique at The Artistic Home. He performed with improv teams K.C. Redheart, Computer, and Sports Team, and he found a comedy home at the fiercely independent Upstairs Gallery. Dave started stand-up in 2013, and in 2014, he fell into a monthlong coma, during which the Chicago comedy scene eulogized him on Facebook. From this experience, he created Dave Maher Coma Show, which he performed at Steppenwolf, The Annoyance, and Cincy Fringe Festival, plus bars, black boxes, and punk houses across the U.S. In 2018, he took that show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and studied with legendary experimental theatre ensemble The Neo-Futurists. Both encounters opened his eyes to the spectrum of possibilities in solo theatre. His one-man shows blend stand-up, storytelling, improvisation, and performance art to tackle topics like death, disability, grief, and apocalypse with candor and mischief. He brought Feed Wolf Ice Cream: A Comedy Show in the Afterlife to Edinburgh in 2019, and in 2023 at The Neo-Futurist Theater, he debuted Here to Make Friends, a show inspired by watching 40 seasons of Survivor in four months during the quarantine phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dave acted on Season One of FX’s The Bear, and he told the story of his coma on This American Life. He has a passion for audio, which includes producing and hosting the death-and-transformation interview podcast This Is Your Afterlife and the movie podcast Genre Reveal Party! Dave is excited to live in the city that birthed Albert Ayler, where he can apply his DIY ethic to work that honors his values: community, experimentation, liberation. He loves CD shopping and finding the perfect chili movie.