Great Solo Performance
Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame
Thursday September 09, 2010
$10 gen. $7 adv. & students - 8pm
For advance tickets click here.
TWO DAYS! Thursday & Friday, Sept. 9 & 10
Echoes of Shakespeare, Hendrix and Kerouac charge solo artist-comedian-guitarist R. Ernie Silva's true-life tale about his odyssey across the great American outback. Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame follows Silva's haunting, touching and often humorous journey across the country.
Here’s what the critics are saying so far:
"Silva is a charismatic talent! I expect we'll be seeing more of Mr.
Silva and this is a good place to get acquainted"
- LA Weekly
"The sheer strength of will that it took for Silva to outstrip such
negative indoctrination is inspiring" - LA Times
"Watching R. Ernie Silva in his autobiographical 'Heavy Like the
Weight of a Flame" is like listening to exquisite poetry, music both
classical and jazz all wrapped in the true life experience of the
urban jungles of New York" - LA Times Website Readers Review
"The prose he uses has hints of slam poetry; The kind of verse
that tells it like it is using hard phrases and meaning that sounds
as if he means business--all without threats or snide meanings.
Silva's talents shine throughout!" - Accesibly Live Offline
"Silva is a dynamic performer—lean, lithe, and athletic—and he
calls upon all his skills in this outing. He sketches his characters
with speed and accuracy, and displays a sassy manic wit in
regaling us with his adventures"
- BackStage West
R. Ernie Silva's "Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame" - is
absolutely sensational. - ArtBeat Magazine, San Antonio Texas
R. Ernie Silva Bio
R. Ernie Silva is a product of the Bushwick projects in Brooklyn New York where he grew up the youngest of 13 siblings; he’s hardly typical in any sense of the word. His creative career started at the age of 12 when one day while break dancing in the streets he and his crew Love Disco Style were discovered by radio station 98.7 KISS FM where Eddie Rivera chose them to be the station’s resident dancers.
It was there Ernie got his first tastes of life in front of live audiences as they immediately began performing in shows with some of street music’s hottest acts across the city. As Ernie grew so did his taste for performing, but now with a more eclectic edge. He left breaking and became fascinated with performers like Flip Wilson, Freddie Prinze, and Richard Pryor. These raw and brutally honest performers seemed to fuel the mischievous juvenile delinquent in Ernie! His new found inspiration for comedy began resulting in obscene amounts of hookie-playing; the train passes he should’ve been using to get to school he instead used to dodge truant officers and travel around the city looking for comedy clubs he’d seen listed in the newspapers.
Consequently, the desire to make people laugh drew him back to the stage at places like the upper west side’s Stand Up New York, The Comic Strip in the upper east side, and the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village. At age 17 standup became his new voice. However, while he was enjoyed the exhilarating feeling that came with being a stand up gave, his fascinations with performance still had wider places to spread.
Eventually his musical side came calling to be recognized. It was then that the voices of people like Andres Segovia, John McLaughlin, Paco DeLucia Son House,and Jimi Hendrix began to join all the other voices he loved. These also began intriguing Ernie to mimic them as much as he could. While embarking on his tutelage in guitar styles ranging from classical to blues (most of which he taught himself while staying sleeping on odd couches here and there, random nights at hostels and homeless shelters, and a few nights riding freight trains around the country.)
All these exploits and years of traveling around playing guitar, acting and doing comedy in stand up and sketch comedy forms eventually earned him a full scholarship to the newest Graduate Acting Program at the University of Southern California. In fact, after a worldwide search conducted by the school of over 360 applicants, he was given the only full scholarship awarded that year to a class only housing ten students.
Oddly enough stand up comedy’s voice eventually began to feel too limiting an art form. It was then that the world of one man shows moved into his sights. It was in this realm that Ernie would find the creative room for all of his individual abilities to coincide in harmony in whatever capacities he chose. There is where he has been ever since. Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame, a one man show Ernie Co-wrote with novelist James Gabriel about a period of Ernie’s life and some of his experiences on the road.
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