travsd

3 Great Reasons to Virtually Visit the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum Now Through Sunday

Here are three very good reasons to visit the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum’s website today through Sunday:

  • Today (April 16) is Charlie Chaplin’s birthday! The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum is literally located where Chaplin made some of his early movies, and is an important caretaker of and repository for material related to Chaplin’s career as well as that of the Essanay Studio, his artistic home throughout 1915. And every June, they have their Charlie Chaplin Days festival. Visit their most recent edition here.
  • The third Saturday in April (tomorrow, April 17 this year) is World Circus Day! This past Fall, NESFM did a terrific three part series of circus related programs, most with a silent film or clown emphasis. Here are Part One and Part Two and Part Three of that series.
  • And lastly April 18 is the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Niles scholars are the folks who identified the very last motion pictures taken in San Francisco prior to the earthquake, bringing them national attention. Every year they have an Annual Earthquake Anniversary Show featuring that film and numerous others related to the earthequake as well as talks and panels by scholars. It’s happening all weekend. Details for that are here.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.