Tag: Trav S.D.
I never met or studied with Philippe Gaulier (1943–2026), who passed away on February 1st at the age of 82, but many of my friends did. While some found his confrontational, via negativa teaching style not to their liking, most found his pedagogy valuable and indeed many returned to his school in Étampes for multiple sessions. Either way, it is hard to exaggerate the enormous influence he had on contemporary performance, including but not limited to the clown world. Especially noteworthy is the long list of successful performers who credit him for major breakthroughs in their artistic development, including Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat); Théâtre de Complicité; Roberto Benigni (Like is Beautiful); Aitor Basauri (Spymonkey); Dr. Brown (Phil Burgers); and Geoffrey Rush (Shakespeare in Love).
The carpenter gag or construction gag is a staple of physical comedy: large lumber merely missing unsuspecting heads; tools flying; wet concrete welcoming any descending pratfall. Classic stuff.
Chain of Fools
Silent Comedy and Its Legacies
from Nickelodeons to YouTube
by Trav S.D.
Trav S.D. —oddly enough named after his gritty home town in the middle of South Dakota’s Badlands — is a so-good-he’s-bad vaudevillian: a performer, producer, historian, popularizer, and blogger whose popular blog Travalanche is a must for the variety arts fan.
James Agee once wrote a famous book called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which was about tenant farmers who were in fact guys but certainly not famous, so I was going to title this post Let Us Now Praise Three Guys Who Aren’t Famous Either but Should Be for All the Cool Work They do Promoting and Chronicling Clowns and Variety Artists — but that title was already taken.
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin