Episode: 4 San Francisco Mime Troupe

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Listen to our follow up episode, “Back to the Way Things Were”

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In this episode we feature the voice of Michael Gene Sullivan, a Board Member, writer, director and performer of The San Francisco Mime Troupe. Over the past Sixty Plus Years The San Francisco Mime Troupe Collective has created and produced theater through the lens of the working class by exposing social and economic injustice with a call to action to make the necessary changes on behalf of working people. The collective's mission is to present their work to the broadest possible audience with both artistry and humor and thus, their performances are free and performed in public parks throughout California and the nation.

Michael Gene Sullivan

As an actor Michael has worked with the American Conservatory Theatre, the Denver Center Theater Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Theatreworks, California Shakespeare Theatre, SF Playhouse, San Francisco and the African American Shakespeare Companies, and the Aurora, the Marin, the Magic, the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, and has been a principal actor for the San Francisco Mime Troupe for over 30 years.

Michael’s directing credits include work with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, TheatreFirst, the African American Shakespeare Company, Street Of Dreams Theatre Company, and over a dozen shows with San Francisco Mime Troupe. Michael was also director of the all-woman, all-clown Circus Finelli.

From 1992 -1999 Michael was a Contributing Writer for the despite-its-name-never-silent, Tony and OBIE Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe before being named San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Resident Playwright 2000 to present. Michael is also a Resident Playwright for the Playwrights Foundation, and in 2017 was playwriting resident at the Djerassi Arts Center. Mr. Sullivan's political dramas, musicals, and satires include Walls (Ningun Humano Es Ilegal!), Treasure Island, For The Greater Good, Freedomland, Red Carol, Too Big To Fail, Did Anyone Ever Tell You-You Look Like Huey P. Newton?, Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan (with Josh Kornbluth), Godfellas, Too Big to Fail, Possibilidad or The Death of the Worker, the all-woman farce Recipe, and his one person show, Did Anyone Ever Tell You -- You Look Like Huey P. Newton? Mr. Sullivan's plays have been performed at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the International Festival of Verbal Art (Berlin), The Hong Kong Arts Festival, and in Greece, Spain, Columbia, Argentina, New Zealand, Ukraine, England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Mexico, as well as in theaters throughout the United States. Michael is also a Collective Member and Board Member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe

The history and mission of the San Francisco Mime Troupe is to create and produce theater that presents a working-class analysis of the events that shape our society, that exposes social and economic injustice, that demands revolutionary change on behalf of working people, and to present this analysis before the broadest possible audience with artistry and humor.

Founded in 1959 by R.G. Davis, as an experimental project of the Actors’ workshop, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s early works were…silent, (but not pantomime) avant-garde pieces that today would be called performance art. By the early sixties, the SF Mime Troupe began performing spoken plays with character archetypes drawn directly from the Commedia dell’Arte. Continuing in the broad styles of popular theater, the SFMT’s productions became overtly political.

In 1965, the city's Recreation and Park Commission revoked the troupe’s performance permit, on grounds of "obscenity". Refusing to allow his company to be censored, on August 7, 1965, R.G. Davis attempted to perform Il Candelaio in Lafayette Park, loudly announcing to his audience: “Today for your appreciation, we perform an arrest,” as Davis was swept up by the police for performing without a permit. The ensuing court case, argued by Marvin Stender, established the right of artists to perform uncensored in the city's parks. The SFMT has opened a new show in the parks every summer since. In 1965, future rock impresario Bill Graham, then the company's business manager, organized his first rock dance/light show at the Fillmore Auditorium as a bail benefit for the SFMT.

The collective of the San Francisco Mime Troupe exists not only to create this activist art but also to embody our ideals of combating the fragmentation of the working class: we are a democratically run, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-cultural, gender-balanced theater of social justice that by its very existence sustains a vision of community governance of, by, and for the people. Find out more about the San Francisco Mime Troupe: https://www.sfmt.org/about-us

Donation / Volunteer

The San Francisco Mime Troupe does not take funding from corporations and relies on audience members, foundations and government grants. Donations are tax-deductible and critical to the Collective's survival. Please consider supporting the collective’s work by donating whatever you can.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is always looking for volunteers to bring their expertise in supporting the collective’s work. Please check out volunteer opportunities

An Introduction to the San Francisco Mime Troupe

To find out more about the San Francisco Mime Troupe Collective check out this video:

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Our Sponsorship

We are fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which allows us to offer you tax deductions for your contributions. Please consider making a donation to help us provide future shows just like this one. If you want to send us a check, please make checks payable to Intersection for the Arts and write [Voices of the Community] in the memo line of your check. This ensures that you’ll receive an acknowledgement letter for tax purposes, and your donation will be available for our project.

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