SF Mime Troupe The Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime
Troupe exaggerates situations with song and dance.
By Barbara McGuire
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The San Francisco Mime Troupe is anything but silent.
An acting group whose performances are flavored with politics,
pop cultural issues and comedy, these mimers don’t paint
their faces white and dress in black suits. Performing “City
for Sale” on
Oct. 22 in Santa Monica, the Tony Award winning San Francisco
Mime Troupe will be making quite a lot of noise with live musicians
and singing actors.
“First of all, the San Francisco Mime Troupe name is
confusing to Americans because of the narrow concept of the
definition of mime,” said Velina Brown, a member of the
troupe since 1992.
“Actually, we are not silent pantomimes,” she
continued. “We do political, musical theater ““ the
definition of mime is the exaggeration of everyday life in story
and song.”
Ironically enough, their style of acting is actually quite loud
and extravagant. With usual performances in various parks and open
venues, the mime troupe has learned to make a lot of noise to get
some attention.
“We actually have a portable outdoor set, a stage that we
load up in a truck, set up in the park and strike and put back in
the truck every show,” said director Keiko Shimosato.
“We have a sound setup; even though we’re low tech,
I guess we’re on the higher end,” she continued.
“We also have microphones because nowadays when we open in
(San Francisco’s) Dolores Park, for example, or for a park
show, we can have up to 3,000 people and there’s no way that
they could hear us.”
The mime troupe is a collective, meaning that everybody, no
matter what his or her position, helps out with whatever needs to
be done, especially when it comes time to set up the stage.
Shimosato said that because of the need to re-set the stage for
every performance, their type of acting can be considered an
athletic style and that most members are required to be strong and
in pretty good shape.
“The biggest difference between working in a theater that
has actual usable space, versus taking a show on the road and doing
it outdoors or doing it in a different theater space is that there
is a lot more set-up involved,” said stage manager Karen
Runk, of the difficulties of their outdoor performances. “You
can’t just leave your stage up with your props set out and
come back the next day and maybe adjust the stage and then be ready
to go.”
“City for Sale” is their current show and focuses
around the political issue of the uprooting and displacement of
certain artistic communities in San Francisco due to a take over by
the “yuppie,” upper class.
“The underlying theme started out being just about the
gentrification here in San Francisco of yuppies wanting to live in
the quote-unquote hip, funky, multiculturally diverse section of
town,” explained Shimosato. “But, just by the nature of
the fact that their salaries are higher, they can afford higher
rent for living spaces, the nature of the same neighborhoods that
they wanted to move into are changing. It’s becoming a
universal problem.”
Though the story started out describing the upscaling of San
Francisco, this same idea can be applied to any major city. The
director noted that these performances are relevant to Santa Monica
because of a similar uprooting which has been taking place for
about a year. The Drawing Room, Drescherville and Santa Monica Fine
Arts Studios are some local places out of which artists have been
forced to move due to increasing rent costs.
“That often is the case, where the owner dies and then
their kids just start kicking everybody out,” said Brown,
relating the story line of “City for Sale” to events
happening around the nation.
“They’re not terribly interested in the history and
the promises that were made to those people,” she continued.
“They just go “˜Oh well, I can make money if I kick
everybody out and up the rent,’ so that’s basically
what’s happening.”
The mime troupe does not convey these strong messages through a
dry, boring and political manner. Using comedy as a tool to attract
the interest of the audience, the lessons learned through their
performance are learned through laughter, as opposed to frowns.
“Humor is a very effective, powerful way to reach
someone,” said Brown. “If you think about your own
life, if someone is trying to talk to you or teach you about
something and they’re very serious and they’re very
intense, you just sort of go, “˜Oh my gosh, what’s on
television?’
“But, if they’re able to tell you in a way
that’s fun and entertaining and still get the information in,
that’s going to be a lot more effective.”
Keiko also felt that the San Francisco Mime Troupe performed in
a style which in a way is trying to give theater a new, younger
face.
“I think in a lot of ways, theater has been given a bad
name,” she said. “If you ask most young 20-somethings,
what they do for entertainment, I don’t think that going to
the theater would be on the top of their lists. It would probably
be a movie or going for a beer or going to see a band.
“I think that somewhere in your mind it’s that
theater’s too expensive and that it’d probably be
boring and you’d probably fall asleep,” she continued.
“So, I think that we accomplish the “˜other,’ when
we bring it out to the park. It’s available to everybody,
it’s free and because it’s live music it’s got
kind of a rock ‘n’ roll energy too.”
THEATER: The San Francisco Mime Troupe will be performing
“City for Sale” for one night, Oct. 2 at 6:30 p.m. at
Bergamot Art Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., in Santa Monica. The
performance is free, with suggested donations of $20. Call (310)
251-4299 for information.