Creativity: An Eternal Mystery

A Monthy Film Series sponsored by Ginger and Stuart Polisner

                                                    

Vaudeville on Vitaphone

             

 

Thursday, May 15 @ 7:30pm

Guest Speaker: Author & Vaudevillian Trav S.D.

$9 Members / $12 Public / Includes Reception & Book Signing / No Refunds

Tickets can also be purchased at the box office during theatre hours or by calling

Brown Paper Tickets toll free at 1-800-838-3006. No Refunds

 

Trav S.D., modern-day vaudevillian and author of No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book
That Made Vaudeville Famous presents an evening of rare and hilarious comedy shorts from the late 1920s starring vaudeville's top comedians, including Burns and Allen, Bert Lahr, Joe E. Brown, Fred Allen, J.C. Flippen, Baby Rose Marie, and more! From 1881 to 1932, vaudeville was at the heart of show business in the United States. Its stars were America's first stars in the modern sense, and it utterly dominated American popular culture. Trav S.D. explores the many ways in which vaudeville's story is the story of show business in America and documents the rich history and cultural legacy of our country's only purely indigenous theatrical form. The arrival of sound movies was the final blow that knocked vaudeville from the top of the entertainment world but ironically it also preserved many of vaudeville’s greatest acts. Right around when they were making The Jazz Singer (1927), Warner Bros. brought countless vaudeville performers into their Vitaphone studios. Newly restored by UCLA Film and Television Archives, these amazing short films offer an eye-opening, side-splitting window into a lost world of delightful American entertainment.

Click HERE for Trav S.D.'s official Website

 

About the author: Performer, writer and producer Trav S.D. is the author of 50 plays, 200 published articles, and the book No Applause, Just Throw Money, The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Faber & Faber, 2005). A frequent radio guest and public speaker, his voice has been heard on the Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC), The Joey Reynolds Show (WOR), Cat Radio Café (WBAI), and a dozen others throughout the country. He is currently the host of the nytheatrecast, a regular podcast on nytheatre.com. He has contributed to American Theater, the Village Voice, Time Out New York, the New York Sun, Reason, and many others. His play House of Trash was published in Plays and Playwrights 2001. His works have been presented at Joe’s Pub (the Public Theatre), Theater for the New City, LaMama, the Ohio Theatre (Soho Think Tank), HERE, and, regionally and internationally, in London, Portland, Minneapolis, Austin, Seattle, and Providence.