SHAZOOM!

The McCarl Coverlet Gallery is a nonprofit cultural organization that collects, preserves, interprets, and disseminates the history of weaving and folk traditions in the Northeastern region of the United States.

Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery

SHAZOOM! It’s up close and personal, and it beams from Dan’s Magic Parlor directly to your home.

Master magician DAN KAMIN responded to the Covid crisis by creating a mind-bending performance of eye-popping online magic called SHAZOOM! It’s up close and personal, and it beams from Dan’s Magic Parlor directly to your home.“Demented, charming and brilliant” is how Allentown’s Morning Call described Dan Kamin, who created the physical comedy sequences for Chaplin and Benny and Joon, and trained Robert Downey, Jr. and Johnny Depp for their acclaimed starring performances in those popular films.Another critic raved that Kamin’s stage performance was “a breathtaking display of theatricality that’s sharp, funny, and highly inventive.” But Kamin’s favorite review came from eleven-year old Kenneth: “You made me laugh so hard I got a headache,” said the lad. “Nobody’s ever done that before.”Asked about his movie work, Kamin says, “Classic movies inspired me, and I came full circle by adding classic visual comedy to modern films. I taught Johnny Depp how to roll the coin around his fingers the way he does at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean. But does he call? Never.”In addition to working with Depp and Downey, Kamin played the wooden Indian that came to life in the cult classic Creepshow 2 and created Martian movement for Tim Burton's horror spoof Mars Attacks!Despite his impressive stage and screen credits, Kamin's artistic beginnings were humble. At age twelve he began his performing career as a boy magician. “I struggled in vain to entertain hordes of hyperkinetic, sugar-crazed, children at birthday parties.” He attended Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University to study industrial design, “but when I saw the eye-popping movement illusions practiced by master mime Jewel Walker my hopes for a normal life evaporated.”The great silent comedy films of Buster Keaton and CharlieChaplin added more fuel to his fire, and soon Kamin was touring the country with his first original show, “Silent Comedy...Live!” Undeterred by the fact that vaudeville was long dead, he cobbled a new vaudeville circuit out of colleges, theatres, symphony orchestras and corporations, for whom Kamin often appears as a keynote speaker who falls apart. “I applied my industrial design skills to building a collapsing lectern.” He also becomes "Mr. Slomo," an eerie character who strolls through public places in slow motion “terrifying the very children who tormented me as a youth.”Kamin returned to his comedy roots to write Charlie Chaplin's One-Man Show, revealing the secrets of Chaplin's comic art. Hailed as a breakthrough work, the book boasted a preface by another Chaplin fan, the legendary mime Marcel Marceau. Kamin’s recent book, The Comedy of Charlie Chaplin: Artistry in Motion, updates his earlier book and features an account of how he trained Downey for his Oscar-nominated performance.During recent seasons Kamin has toured his solo show throughout America and Europe, and “humiliated many symphonies”—including Cleveland, Atlanta, Montreal, Shanghai, Singapore and Malaysia—with his comic antics.

Our {communityGuidelinesLink} describe the sort of content we prohibit on Eventbrite. If you suspect an event may be in violation, you can report it to us so we can investigate.

To report other categories of prohibited or illegal content, submit {link}

SHAZOOM!

More events from Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery

Discover more events from Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery, from Arts to other experiences you might love.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.

SHAZOOM!

More events from Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery

Discover more events from Foster and Muriel McCarl Coverlet Gallery, from Arts to other experiences you might love.

More Arts events

Browse more Arts events with different dates, prices, and formats to find your next great experience.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.