Tony Winning San Francisco Mime Troupe Announces Additional Events

The San Francisco Mime Troupe announces the addition of several 50th Anniversary events to its lineup of scheduled celebration happenings around the Bay Area.

In addition to the company's 50th Anniversary production TOO BIG TO FAIL, currently touring throughout Northern California through September 27, and previously announced events to be held at the San Francisco Library and Mill Valley Film Festival, five new events commemorating the seminal Troupe's milestone are now scheduled to be held at UC Davis and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this fall and winter: "Selections from the San Francisco Mime Troupe Archives," "Engagement, Commitment, and Fresh Air - Celebrating 50 Years of the San Francisco Mime Troupe," "San Francisco Mime Troupe 50th Anniversary Exhibition Birthday Bash," "Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Consumption Christmas Street Theater Workshop," and a special screening of the 1968 documentary "Have you Heard of the San Francisco Mime Troupe?"

Additional 50th Anniversary events will be announced in the coming weeks.

Selections from the San Francisco Mime Troupe Archives
September 24-December 11, 2009
Shields Library, UC Davis
Department of Special Collections
Free and open to the public

In recognition of the San Francisco Mime Troupe's 50th Anniversary, the Department of Special Collections at UC Davis will exhibit highlights from the Troupe's archives, which are permanently housed at the university. Early scripts, programs, posters, designs, news articles, legal citations, and other documents will be featured, detailing the irrepressible creativity and revolutionary spirit of this internationally-recognized, Tony and Obie Award-winning political theater company.

The exhibition will be free and open to the public during regular library hours (Monday-Thursday, 8am-10pm; Friday 8am-6pm, Saturday & Sunday 1-5pm; Holidays & exceptions: Tues 11/11, 10am-6pm; 11/25 8am-5 pm; Closed 11/26 and 11/27).

For more information, call UC Davis at (530) 752-1621, or visit www.lib.ucdavis.edu/specol or www.sfmt.org.

Engagement, Commitment, and Fresh Air -
Celebrating 50 Years of the San Francisco Mime Troupe
November 5, 2009 - January 31, 2010
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St. @ 3rd Street, SF
Room for Big Ideas
Free and open to the public

Coming of age during the Vietnam War and spurred to heightened resistance in the Reagan-era 1980's, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has become what the San Francisco Bay Guardian recently called "the conscience of the city, our proudest export, and . . . perhaps our most enduring sociopolitical institution." "Engagement, Commitment and Fresh Air" celebrates this rabble-rousing, precedent-setting, Tony and Obie Award-winning street theater company in an exhibit of photographs, props, costumes, scripts, and other eccentric ephemera from its first half-century. The exhibit, like most Mime Troupe performances, is free and open to the public.

Leading a path to the YBCA exhibition will be a street gallery of Troupe photographs, a composite portrait of the Troupe onstage and offstage over the past 50 years. The photos will be featured in display windows along the Mission Street side of the Fifth & Mission Parking Garage, between 4th and 5th Streets.

YBCA Gallery hours: Thursday & Friday, 2-8 p.m., Saturday 12-8 p.m., Sunday 12-6 p.m., first Tuesdays of the month 12-8 p.m. Closed major holidays.

For more information, visit www.sfmt.org or www.ybca.org .

San Francisco Mime Troupe 50th Anniversary Exhibition Birthday Bash
Thursday, December 10, 2009, 7:30-11:30pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St. @ 3rd Street, SF
YBCA Gallery lobby and adjacent Forum Theatre
Free and open to the public

Happy Birthday! Join San Francisco Troupe members past and present in a toast to the company's first 50 years. This special reception features the exhibit "Engagement, Commitment & Fresh Air," live music, appearances from famous/infamous Mime Troupe characters, and a performance of "Ghosts," the one-act play commissioned by the City of San Francisco for the opening of the Moscone Center, performed by the original cast. 

For more information, visit www.sfmt.org or www.ybca.org

"Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Consumption Christmas" Street Theater Workshop
Saturday, December 12, 2009, 12:30-4:30 pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St. @ 3rd Street, SF
YBCA Gallery
$15 General/$10 YBCA Members

Veteran San Francisco Mime Troupe member Ed Holmes, best known for his spot-on portrayals of Dick Cheney and as his alter ego Bishop Joey, founder of the St. Stupid's Day Parade, and Keiko Shimosato, long-time Troupe designer/actor/director, will lead a unique interactive street theater experience for the holidays, "Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Consumption Christmas." This workshop will begin with field work - mingling among downtown shoppers, collecting impressions and images - then returns to the YBCA Gallery to create a pageant/procession. Characters, costumes, masks, speeches, and songs will be crafted and developed among the workshop participants, then all will take the newly-formed show on the road in a procession through the streets of downtown San Francisco.

For more information, visit www.sfmt.org or www.ybca.org .

Have You Heard of the San Francisco Mime Troupe?
Friday, January 15, 2010, 7:30 pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St. @ 3rd Street, SF
Forum Theatre
$10 General/$8 YBCA Members

In the mid-1960's, when the San Francisco Mime Troupe was in the midst of its first tumultuous decade, award-winning documentary filmmaker Don Lenzer ("Woodstock," "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision") trained his camera on the controversial group. The resulting hour-long work became "Have You Heard of the San Francisco Mime Troupe?," a film that gives a true insider's look at the then fledgling political theater company. "Have you Heard..." chronicles performances of the free commedia dell'arte productions in the parks deemed obscene by the park commission, the financial hardships and in-fighting within the Troupe, and includes live footage of the Troupe's controversial 1965 production "The Minstrel Show, or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel," which was performed in black face by both black and white actors and banned by city and university officials at campuses across the country, bringing the Troupe's trademark brand of confrontational social satire to the attention of the rest of the country for the first time.

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will host a screening of "Have You Heard of the San Francisco Mime Troupe?" followed by a Q&A with actors featured in the film.

Previously announced 50th Anniversary events include the San Francisco Main Library retrospective "Free in(g) the Parks - The San Francisco Mime Troupe vs. The Censors, 1963 to 1969" and panel "Radical Theater Revisited," and the Mill Valley Film Festival screening of Glenn Silber and Claudia Vianello's film "Troupers," hosted by Mime Troupe alum Peter Coyote.

Free in(g) the Parks
The San Francisco Mime Troupe vs. The Censors, 1963 to 1969
October 24, 2009 - February 1, 2010
San Francisco Main Public LibrarySteve Silver Beach Blanket Babylon Music Room, 4th floor
Free and open to the public

Radical Theater Revisited
Sunday, November 1st, 2-4pm
San Francisco Main Library
Koret Auditorium
Free and open to the public

Troupers
Friday, October 16, 7:30pm
142 Throckmorton Theatre
Part of the Mill Valley Film Festival

Founded in 1959, the San Francisco Mime Troupe creates and produces socially relevant theater; their work is political satire and anything but silent. Winner of three OBIE awards and a Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theatre, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, about which The New York Times stated, "Anyone concerned about the state of global politics -- and about the state of political humor -- should listen to the Mime Troupe's message," creates plays that make sense out of the headlines, close-up stories that make audiences feel the impact of political events on their personal lives. The New York Post called the Mime Troupe "America's oldest and finest street theater," with the The Boston Globe concurring, "You're never only watching a political theater piece, but rather a double barreled re-invention of politics and theater at once." To make this work accessible to the broadest audience possible, the Mime Troupe performs as a regional touring company, presenting their work at a price everyone can afford: free.

For more information about the San Francisco Mime Troupe, TOO BIG TO FAIL, and the 50th Anniversary events, the public may call 415.285.1717 or visit www.sfmt.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.