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Each summer, spectators of the San Francisco Mime Troupe are part of an ancient tradition.
Millennia ago, audiences “made pilgrimages to Athens to see how Aristophanes would satirize their community,” the theater historian Susan Vaneta Mason notes in her “The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader.” Today, when fans of the 67-year-old company picnic in Northern California parks while enjoying its free, open-air matinees, they’re essentially doing the same thing, she points out. In trumpeting the revolutionary agency of the ordinary worker and skewering San Francisco’s real-world, present-day villains, she writes, the troupe celebrates “the possibility of social change.”
Written by Michael Gene Sullivan, “Wreckage: A Musical Tragicomedy” features Sullivan as an artificial intelligence developer charged with releasing a tool that could accidentally destroy the world and Jed Parsario as an ICE officer who must face down protesters who are simply exercising their freedom of speech.
Lisa Hori-Garcia directs the show, which runs through Labor Day at parks and other venues throughout Northern California after its traditional Fourth of July opening at Dolores Park.
More Information
“Wreckage: A Musical Tragicomedy”: 2 p.m. Friday-Saturday, July 3-4. Dolores Park, Dolores and 19th streets, S.F. • 2 p.m. Sunday, July 5. Yerba Buena Gardens, 750 Howard St., S.F. Through Sept. 7 at various Northern California parks and other venues. Free. 415-285-1717. www.sfmt.org
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This article originally published at This 67-year-old San Francisco theater troupe is taking on AI and ICE.