Formation | 1959 |
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Type | Theatre group |
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Notable members | |
Website | www |
The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a theatre of political satire which performs free shows in various parks in the San Francisco Bay Area and around California. The troupe does not, however, perform silent mime, but each year creates an original musical comedy that combines aspects of commedia dell'arte , melodrama, and broad farce with topical political themes. The group was awarded the Regional Theatre Award at the 41st Tony Awards.
The group was founded in 1959 by R. G. Davis as a medium of expression of his divergent theatrical concepts. [1] The group debuted on October 29, 1959, with Games—3 Sets, and two other plays. [1] By 1961, the group transitioned to the commedia dell'arte format to more thoroughly comment on perceived political repression in the United States, the growing civil rights movement and military and covert intervention abroad. [2]
We believed ourselves to be the political artistic voice of the community.
In the mid-1960s the group started to rely less on the direct commedia dell'arte format and transitioned into having an objective of "teaching, directing towards change and to be an example of change". [3] It also began integrating elements of jazz into its musical composition, eventually leading to the inclusion of a jazz band within the troupe. Their first outdoor performance was in May 1962 at Golden Gate Park. [4] The group also gained notoriety for its numerous altercations with law enforcement, which resulted in performing at benefits to raise money for legal fees. [5] In 1967, a benefit called "Appeal IV" featured the bands; the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Moby Grape. [6]
They also traveled to Canada and played at Simon Fraser University in 1966 with A Minstrel Show or Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel by Gary Davis and Saul Landau. [7]
The music for Minstrel Show was composed and performed by Steve Reich, who worked with the troupe for at least two seasons. The troupe has always been known to employ the best composers and musicians in the area, who work intimately with the actors, writers, and whole theatrical operation. [8] By the early 1970s, the troupe had earned a reputation for opposing capitalism, sexism, and war. [8]
In the early 1970s Davis left the troupe when it re-formed as a collective, the members of which operate as the artistic director, at which time the troupe produced one of its most successful shows, The Independent Female (1970). In the 1980s, the group's productions retaliated against the Reagan administration.
As well as the park-based shows, the Mime Troupe also tours nationally and internationally, having performed throughout Europe, Asia, South and Central America. [9] The group also facilitates community workshops. They are a nonprofit organization. The season traditionally starts on Fourth of July weekend and ends on Labor Day weekend. [9]
Notable members include: Saul Landau, [10] Nina Serrano, [10] Steve Reich, [11] John Connell, [12] William T. Wiley, [13] Wally Hedrick, [14] Victoria Hochberg, [15] John Broderick, [16] Peter Coyote, [9] Luis Valdez, [16] Barry Shabaka Henley, [17] Bruce Barthol, [18] Joan Mankin, [16] Emmett Grogan, [19] Bill Graham, [9] and Ed Holmes. [16]
Posters for several of the 1970s productions were designed by Jane Norling, and are accessible online. [20]
The Troupe has won three OBIEs, [21] and in 1987, the troupe's Brechtian style of guerrilla theatre earned them a special Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theater. [22] Red State, the troupe's 2008 fable about a small Midwest town that, after years of being ignored, demands accountability for their tax dollars, was nominated for a San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best New Script, as was their 2009 production, Too Big to Fail, which detailed how credit and the philosophy of profit at all costs trap mesmerized citizens in a cycle of debt, while endlessly enriching the capitalists who cast the spell. [21]
Zanni, Zanni or Zane is a character type of commedia dell'arte best known as an astute servant and a trickster. The Zanni comes from the countryside and is known to be a "dispossessed immigrant worker". Through time, the Zanni grew to be a popular figure who was first seen in commedia as early as the 14th century. The English word "zany" derives from this character. The longer the nose on the characters mask, the more foolish the character.
Innamorati were stock characters within the theatre style known as commedia dell'arte, who appeared in 16th-century Italy. In the plays, everything revolved around the lovers in some regard. These dramatic and posh characters were present within commedia plays for the sole purpose of being in love with one another, and moreover, with themselves. These characters move elegantly and smoothly, and their young faces are unmasked unlike other commedia dell'arte characters. Despite facing many obstacles, the lovers were always united by the end.
The Fillmore is a historic music venue in San Francisco, California.
Bill Graham was a German-American impresario and rock concert promoter.
Grammelot is an imitation of language used in satirical theatre, an ad hoc gibberish that uses prosody along with macaronic and onomatopoeic elements to convey emotional and other meaning, and used in association with mime and mimicry. The satirical use of such a format may date back to the 16th-century commedia dell'arte; the group of cognate terms appears to belong to the 20th century.
Saul Landau was an American journalist, filmmaker and commentator. He was also a professor emeritus at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he taught history and digital media.
John C. Broderick was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and entertainer.
El Teatro Campesino is a Chicano theatre company in California. Performing in both English and Spanish, El Teatro Campesino was founded in 1965 as the cultural arm of the United Farm Workers and the Chicano Movement with the "full support of César Chávez." Originally based in Delano, California, during the Delano Strike, the theatre is currently based in San Juan Bautista, California.
Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
I Gelosi was an Italian acting troupe that performed commedia dell'arte from 1569 to 1604. Their name stems form their motto: Virtù, fama ed honor ne fèr gelosi, long thought to mean "Virtue, fame and honour made us jealous", or "We are jealous of attaining virtue, fame, and honour", signifying that such rewards could only be attained by those who sought for them jealously. Modern reevaluations have considered "zealous" as a more accurate translation over "jealous", redefining their motto to signify that, as actors, they were zealous to please.
Carlo Mazzone-Clementi was a performer and founder of two schools of commedia, mime and physical theater as well as a contemporary and colleague of leaders of modern European theater. From his arrival in the US in 1957, he was largely responsible for the spreading of commedia dell'arte in North America.
Guerrilla theatre, generally rendered "guerrilla theater" in the US, is a form of guerrilla communication originated in 1965 by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, who, in spirit of the Che Guevara writings from which the term guerrilla is taken, engaged in performances in public places committed to "revolutionary sociopolitical change." The group performances, aimed against the Vietnam war and capitalism, sometimes contained nudity, profanity and taboo subjects that were shocking to some members of the audiences of the time.
Devised theatre – frequently called collective creation – is a method of theatre-making in which the script or performance score originates from collaborative, often improvisatory work by a performing ensemble. The ensemble is typically made up of actors, but other categories of theatre practitioners may also be central to this process of generative collaboration, such as visual artists, composers, and choreographers; indeed, in many instances, the contributions of collaborating artists may transcend professional specialization. This process is similar to that of commedia dell'arte and street theatre. It also shares some common principles with improvisational theatre; however, in devising, improvisation is typically confined to the creation process: by the time a devised piece is presented to the public, it usually has a fixed, or partly fixed form. Historically, devised theatre is also strongly aligned with physical theatre, due at least in part to the fact that training in such physical performance forms as commedia, mime, and clown tends to produce an actor-creator with much to contribute to the creation of original work.
Fratelli Bologna is a business theater company based in San Francisco.
Commedia dell'arte was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is also known as commedia alla maschera, commedia improvviso, and commedia dell'arte all'improvviso. Characterized by masked "types", commedia was responsible for the rise of actresses such as Isabella Andreini and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. A commedia, such as The Tooth Puller, is both scripted and improvised. Characters' entrances and exits are scripted. A special characteristic of commedia is the lazzo, a joke or "something foolish or witty", usually well known to the performers and to some extent a scripted routine. Another characteristic of commedia is pantomime, which is mostly used by the character Arlecchino, now better known as Harlequin.
Kenneth Sawyer Goodman Dewey (1934-1972) was an American performance artist, playwright, and director who was active in the happening and action theatre movements in the U.S. and throughout Europe in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Joan Mankin (May 16, 1948 – September 26, 2015] was an actor and clown prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area, from the early 1970s through 2014. Mankin started her professional career in San Francisco in 1970 with a production of the San Francisco Mime Troupe's An Independent Female. Thereafter, she appeared in major roles in many Bay Area theater companies including the American Conservatory Theater, Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley Rep, San Francisco Playhouse and California Shakespeare Theatre as well as the feminist Lilith Theater in the late 1970s early 1980s, of which she was Artistic Director for two years. In 2006 she had a major singing role in the Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatre's production of The Black Rider: The Casting of Magic Bullets.
Jane Norling is a visual artist active in San Francisco Bay Area cultural venues since 1970. Her work addresses social & environmental justice and aesthetic concerns through public art, graphic design, painting, printmaking & small press publishing. She graduated from Bennington College in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts and began her career designing books at Random House before relocating to San Francisco in 1970.
Darryl Henriques is an author, satirist, stand-up comedian, and actor on stage and radio, and in TV and film.
The theatre of Italy originates from the Middle Ages, with its background dating back to the times of the ancient Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, in Southern Italy, the theatre of the Italic peoples and the theatre of ancient Rome. It can therefore be assumed that there were two main lines of which the ancient Italian theatre developed in the Middle Ages. The first, consisting of the dramatization of Catholic liturgies and of which more documentation is retained, and the second, formed by pagan forms of spectacle such as the staging for city festivals, the court preparations of the jesters and the songs of the troubadours.
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