Guest Blogger of the Week: Trav S.D.

We are very happy that our first blogger of 2012 will be the prolific and intrepid Trav S. D.

Performer, writer and producer Trav S.D. is best known for his 2005 book No Applause, Just Throw Money, The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. A frequent radio guest and public speaker, his voice has been heard on the Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC), The Sound of Young America (NPR), The Joey Reynolds Show (WOR), Cat Radio Café (WBAI), and a dozen others throughout the country.

As an arts journalist, he has contributed to American Theater, the Village Voice, Time Out New York, the New York Sun, Reason, and many others publications. In 2000, he became the first contributing reviewer, after editor Martin Denton, to nytheatre.com; where he also hosted dozens of podcasts (and two television specials), interviewing 250 indie theatre artists between 2006 and 2009. Since 2008, he has also written the popular arts and culture blog Travalanche (travsd.wordpress.com), and the “Downtown Theatre” column in The Villager, Downtown Express, and three other papers.

His plays and performance pieces have been presented at Joe’s Pub (the Public Theatre), La Mama, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre (Soho Think Tank), HERE, Dixon Place, the Brick, et al, and, regionally and internationally, in London, Portland, Minneapolis, Austin, Seattle, and Providence. His plays include Willy Nilly a musical about the Manson Family that was a hit of the 2009 NY Intl Fringe festival and House of Trash, published in Plays and Playwrights 2001. He has also presented hundreds of New York's top variety acts through his American Vaudeville Theatre.

His next book, Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube will be out in September 2012.