First Principles

WHAT IS TRAV S.D.?

Trav S.D. n. 1. Travesty…parody, satire, burlesque and the grotesque. 2. A potent hallucinogen resembling LSD.  3. The alter ego of Donald Travis Stewart (born Westerly, Rhode Island, Nov. 8, 1965)

CAPSULE BIO

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.

INTERESTING FACTS

• Once worked as a personal assistant for international singing sensation Tony Bennett

• Has interviewed: Margaret Cho, Bill Irwin, Harry Anderson, Penn & Teller, the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, Jules Feiffer, Andy Borowitz, Rose Marie, Oskar Eustace, David Ives, Jay Johnson, Ralph Bronner (of Dr. Bronner’s soaps) Uncle Floyd, and dozens of other unique American characters.

• Presented hundreds of vaudeville, burlesque acts and other performers since 1996, including recording star Lizzie West, political performance artist Reverend Billy, sideshow artist Todd Robbins (Carnival Knowledge),  bearded lady Jennifer Miller (Circus Amok), the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, clown Red Bastard, burlesque dancers World Famous Bob, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and scores of others.

• Began doing stand-up comedy as teenager, winning a state-wide comedy competition in his home state of Rhode Island.

• One of his high school friends was Pulitzer-prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri.

• Was an early co-producer of Tim Haskell’s Nightmare haunted house

• Never finished college, but has lectured at Columbia University, the University of Kansas, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Barnum Museum, Makor (92^nd Street Y), the Theater Museum, Eldridge Street Synagogue, the Ziegfeld Club, the Moisture Festival (Seattle), and numerous other institutions.

• Has literally played the Palace

• Is 1/64^th Cherokee Indian

• Is on the Board of Advisors of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus

• Attended NYU film school, where one of his fellow students was Drea de Mateo (Joey, the Sopranos) who appeared in one of his films

• Grew up in the area of Rhode Island written about by John Casey in his novel Spartina. It is across the Narragansett Bay from where Spalding Gray grew up

• His mother’s family has been in New England since the 1630s

• His father was from rural Tennessee, and grew up in a family of sharecroppers during the Great Depression (true fact).

• His parents were never married

• First started using the handle Trav S.D. in 1986, while a student at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence.

• Interned at the Manhattan Punchline Theatre in the early 1990s, where scene partners included Ileana Douglas and Kevin Draine the Bitter Poet

• Founded a theatre company The New Facktory for Excentrick Acktors in 1992, which became Mountebanks in 1995. An elaborate 60-page manifesto was written and distributed at the founding, excerpts from which may occasionally be exhumed for this blog, mostly for the purposes of ridicule.

• Is a former altar boy, crossing guard, and hall monitor

• Does not drive

• Was born with a potentially life-threatening condition called pyloric stenosis, which was treated with an operation at age six weeks

• Is the father of two exceptional boys