Artist Profile: Comedian Josh Caven ’24 is Bad at Sports but Good on Teams

Joshua G. Caven ’24 says that the best thing he ever participated in was his sixth-grade production of “Alice in Wonderland,” in which he played The Mad Hatter. And true to his roots, as a senior at Harvard College, Caven wears quite a few hats. Caven is the lighting designer for the original musical “White House Princess,” co-President of On Thin Ice, Harvard’s oldest improvisational comedy troupe, and a stand-up comedian performing with the Harvard College Stand-Up Comedy Society (HCSUCS). His art is all over campus, across comedic media — both on and offstage.

“The through line for me, for everything I do, is the simple fact that I’m bad at sports,” Caven said. “But I like working on teams.”

From Caven’s point of view, technical theater, improv, and stand-up have one primary element in common: the opportunity for collaboration.

“[Technical theater] is a very collaborative experience. You are working with other people; you’re communicating with other people; and you are given the chance to be creative in a way that’s entirely separated from a self-serving element,” Caven said.

But even though a traditional theatrical performance requires an incredible amount of teamwork, Caven believes that this medium does not require nearly as much cooperation as improv, which he calls “the most radically collaborative art form.”

“With something like theater, you have roles you’re assigned to, tasks you’re assigned to, responsibilities,” Caven said.

On the other hand, he describes improv as a “completely flattened field” because the performers can take on any role they choose.

“Every time you enter a scene, you have no idea who’s going to be leading it. How are you going to play off each other? Who’s going to take power in the scene, who’s going to be subversive, who’s going to be funnier?” Caven said. “And there’s a really great joy in that. There’s a joy in the spontaneity.”

Even in his conversation with The Harvard Crimson, Caven cracked jokes constantly and intuitively. This sense of humor serves him not only in improv, but also in his work with HCSUCS. Given that stand-up involves talking alone on a stage for three to five minutes, it’s an unlikely medium for someone as passionate about collaboration as Caven — but from his perspective, stand-up comedy is a team sport.

“Stand-up at Harvard is all about giving each other jokes, riffs, and bits — and there’ve been many times when someone else will come up with a bit and be like, ‘Ah, this is a good bit, but I think you would do it better, you know? Like, if you want to take it and run with it, it’s all yours,’” Caven said.

Comedians giving each other their best material may seem counterintuitive, but in Caven’s words, artistic collaboration is “very rarely a zero-sum game.”

These three media almost encapsulate Caven’s artistic pursuits, but not quite. He describes improv as his “second favorite thing in the world.” His first favorite, which he wishes was “considered more artistic”?

“It’s cringe: Dungeons & Dragons.”

For Caven, the role-playing game combines the best parts of his other three arts forms. From technical theater, it has the idea of “mastering a craft”; from improv, “pure collaboration” and “pure spontaneity”; from stand-up, the opportunity “to really bring yourself into it.”

Another advantage of Dungeons & Dragons is that it “removes the failure” — unlike improv, where failure is a major risk, according to Caven.

“There’s no guarantee that you’re going to do well. You can practice as much as you want, but you’re still going to have shows where you bomb, and that feels awful,” Caven said.

“Sometimes you open for THUD, and sometimes it goes well, and sometimes you get stuck in a Perry the Platypus scene. That probably wasn’t great,” Caven said. “And maybe afterwards THUD doesn’t have people open anymore. And it probably wasn’t because of you, but maybe it was, and that happens.”

But as painful as “Phineas-and-Ferb”-inspired fiascoes can be, improv helps Caven work through his self-described “really deep fear of failure.”

“Improv is the only space I give myself in life to just fall on my face in a really embarrassing, humiliating way — and I’ve fallen on my face a lot in improv, and it never feels good in the moment, but I think I grow as a person because of that,” Caven said.

As much as he says he loves Harvard improv, Caven struggles with the exclusivity of the art form on campus, especially in comparison to technical theater and stand-up.

He said that “anyone can do technical theater at Harvard,” and he described stand-up comedy as “entirely welcoming.” But he pointed out that improv is “different” because its collaborative nature requires extreme trust between the performers. While he enjoys on campus improv, its exclusivity frustrates him.

“Harvard does not need more things on campus that prevent people from being a part of them, and I do wish that improv could be one of those more welcoming spaces on campus,” Caven said.

Considering improv’s lack of accessibility on campus, Caven is interested in “expanding opportunities in comedy,” a pursuit that began in high school, when he participated in an inclusive performing arts program called Live Art and an improv class for underserved students in Richmond, Virginia.

“It’s not about a savior complex — ‘we need to reach out to people and pick them up by their comedy bootstraps,’” Caven said. “It’s just that doing improv with people is fun, and when we’re thinking about what kinds of people to do improv with, we should have a wider perspective.”

Caven’s commitment to making comedy inclusive is crucial to his conception of the arts as a space, first and foremost, for collaboration, not competition. Beyond making people laugh, he realizes comedy’s power as a force for social good.

Part of that power, in Caven’s opinion, lies in comedy’s ability to subvert mainstream narratives, and he takes inspiration from the Black comic tradition.

“There’s a really long history and tradition of using stand-up comedy to express things about America, life, society, and racism that you couldn’t get away with expressing in day-to-day conversation,” Caven said. “And I think for me, as an art form, in addition to the collaborative piece, I really find the potentially subversive element in comedy, especially stand-up comedy, to be really interesting and compelling.”

“But yeah, I really was not good at sports.”