Mark Shunock, host and creator of Mondays Dark, has juggled more than a few high-profile gigs in his lifetime. But ultimately, they all point back to the star-powered, twice-monthly charity event to which he’s dedicated the last decade.
“I love being the Golden Knights guy. I love being the Top Rank Boxing guy. But I love when I get stopped at a hockey game running up the aisle after we score a goal and somebody grabs my arm and says, ‘Hey, I love dark Mondays. I love the dark!’” he says. “They don’t know the name, but they know what it’s about. They know they got this goofy guy hosting a hockey game who does a sh*tload of work behind the scenes for the community.”
Since Mondays Dark began in 2013, it’s donated more than $1.8 million back to the local community, consistently raising $10,000 in 90 minutes at its live show for 181 local nonprofits to date.
Now it’s primed for an extra-special version of its annual anniversary show, held this year at the Pearl at the Palms, where next year’s nonprofit partners will be announced—along with lots of special guest performers.
Paige Strafella, a Las Vegas performer and producer of Mondays Dark, has had the privilege of watching the boisterously unscripted variety show evolve over time, with many Strip entertainers and Hollywood crooners passing through for one unforgettable night after another.
“We’re throwing a party, we’re having the best time, but we’re literally changing people’s lives,” says Strafella, who books entertainers for the shows at the Space, just west of the Strip. “It’s so cool to get to be part of something like that, and we’re international now. Last [show], we had people from Ukraine and Italy. We’ve got the loyal people on the livestream that watch from everywhere, like New Zealand and Brazil.”
Mondays Dark was one of the few Vegas shows still running during the pandemic, thanks to Shunock shifting it to a livestream event. Its online following has only strengthened with time, making it more than the hottest $20 ticket in Vegas.
The charm of the show has always been in its unpredictability. You never know when Shunock’s going to break out into song or call out that entire group of women in the back for all being from Ohio (“The hell? Did you all take a bus together or something?”). Entertainers run through blistering Led Zeppelin covers. They deploy full trumpet sections for a jazzy cover of Sia.
Those who attended Mondays Dark in its earlier days might recall a much different scene.
“The first one was god-awful,” Shunock remembers. “It was an attempt at some sort of Jimmy Kimmel meets Saturday Night Live meets Carol Burnett.”
There might have also been a whole segment of reading Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, against his wife Cheryl Daro’s wishes.
“I was like, ‘This is one of my favorite childhood books. I’m going to leave you with this wonderful piece of literature.’ People were in the crowd going ‘What is this guy doing?’”
Somehow, the core message won out and people started spreading the word about this ongoing party for a great cause.
“Everyone talks about it, everybody wants to do it. It’s one of the only things that anybody does for free in town. That says a lot,” says Dai Richards, former Tenors of Rock performer and current Magic Mike Live emcee.
Richards, like Strafella, started performing in Mondays Dark shows and now works as a producer and helps coordinate a waitlist of more than 300 local charities.
In 2020, the variety show aired a six-hour telethon starring dozens of local performers and Strip stars to benefit national organization the Entertainment Community Fund and raised $127,000. It was the first time Mondays Dark had ever raised money for a group outside of Las Vegas.
“The agreement was that I would write the check to the organization based in LA, and I said [we] have to earmark it to Vegas. They took that $127,000, and in around eight months, distributed $1.5 million to our entertainment community because of the partnership with Mondays Dark,” Shunock says.
That partnership with ECF is expected to grow in 2024, with Vegas artists, technicians and entertainment industry workers having access to the national organization’s resources and programming on the Mondays Dark website very soon. And there’s more change to come.
“The next chapter for the next decade … is to make sure that we’re helping cultivate not only an entertainment scene out of the Space, but a younger generation of kids, professionals, that know that they don’t have to have millions of dollars to create change,” he says.
The priority is growing the online presence, he adds, as some streaming deals have already presented themselves. The possibility of Mondays Dark one day becoming its own late-night show is very real.
“If this room was a half-size bigger … we would have that traditional late-night set, and I’m going to look at that for next year,” he says. “You can go into post-production then and write and edit the live version of Mondays Dark into a 30-minute or 60-minute television program that airs the following Monday.”
That would give Mondays Dark a four-week presence with a global audience. It’s a lofty goal, but with the all-star team Shunock has, he’s confident they’ll further the mission together.
“Everybody who walks through these doors on a Monday night, they’re not here for their stipend,” he says. “They’re here because this is home. They know that they’re a part of something that’s bigger than they are.”
MONDAYS DARK 10TH ANNIVERSARY December 11, 8 p.m., $20-$50. Pearl Concert Theater, ticketmaster.com.
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