SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The 100-year-old Balboa Theatre is going back to its roots in the 1920s.
The refurbished venue is bringing back the silent movies long shelved, now revived and paired with the very organ that would have been used 100 years ago.
Reaching back to an era searching for wonder, Balboa Theatergoers are kicking off the immersive experience of seeing the silent movie comic stylings of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy punctuated in the musical medium of the time.
“If we go back 100 years, entertainment was live, the movies were silent. It would have cost a theater manager a ton of money to pay an orchestra pitiful of musicians,” said Ken Double, a master organist. “This is what the theater organ was developed to do, make music for silent films.”
Already over 900 tickets have been sold for the Phantom of the Opera scheduled for Oct. 28. Silent Movie Monday is expected to be a hit for months to come.
