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  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.

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