EngAGE Blog

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ERNIE DE SILVA
with hosts
TIM CARPENTER & JOHN SEMPER JR.

ERNIE DE SILVA‘s award-winning play, SMOKE, returns to the Barnsdall Gallery Theater in Hollywood, on Friday, October 26th @ 7:00 PM. Get tickets here!

SMOKE is a seriocomic, solo driven piece starring Ernie De Silva and rapper/poet Eternal Mind. The story finds our main character locked in a battle of epic proportions for control of his creative voice. On one side stand the ancient forces inherent to all humans, and on the other, the influence of modern day pharmaceuticals. Who wins in the end? Director Ann Noble cleverly crafts SMOKE’s journey into a rollercoaster ride that is sometimes poignant, other times irreverent, always touching, and most importantly . . . relevant.

Tim Carpenter, Ernie De Silva, John Semper Jr.

ERNIE DE SILVA  is a product of 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 all across the city in shows with some of street music’s hottest acts. As Ernie grew, so did his taste for performing, but now with a more eclectic edge.

He became fascinated with performers like Flip Wilson, Freddie Prinze, and Richard Pryor. At age 17, stand-up became his new voice 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. While he enjoyed the exhilarating feeling that came with being a stand-up, eventually his musical side called to be recognized.

The voices of people like Andres Segovia, John McLaughlin, Paco De Lucia, Son House, and Jimi Hendrix began to join all the other voices he loved. They also began intriguing Ernie to mimic them as much as he could. He embarked on his tutelage in guitar styles which ranged from classical to blues, most of which he taught himself while sleeping on odd couches, spending random nights at youth hostels and homeless shelters, and even a few nights riding freight trains around the country.

All these exploits and years of traveling, playing guitar, his innate abilities for both dramatic acting and doing comedy in stand-up and sketch comedy forms first earned him a Bachelor’s Degree in Acting from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and eventually the amazing honor of being bestowed 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.

Ultimately 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.

See a teaser here for Ernie’s first one man show, Heavy Like the Weight of a Flame.

See his new show, Smoke, Friday, October 26th!  GET TICKETS HERE