Actors Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, Jed Parsario and Chloris Li performed Sunday afternoon at Laurel Park outside of the London Nelson Community Center as the San Francisco Mime Troupe presents the second of two weekend shows in Santa Cruz. The troupe is currently traveling throughout Northern California through Sept. 7 presenting its musical “Wreckage” in San Francisco, Ukiah, Cotati, the East Bay, Mill Valley, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Palo Alto and Davis. Founded in 1959 by R.G. Davis as an experimental project of the Actors’ Workshop, the San Franciso Mime Troupe presents humorous original political theater that is staged outdoors and for free. The group is a collective and is self-described on its website as “a democratically run, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-cultural, gender-balanced theater of social justice that by its very existence sustains a vision of community governance of, by, and for the people.” While the name of the troupe includes the word “mime” its productions include significant dialogue and singing. The troupe says it uses the term mime, “in its classical and original definition, the exaggeration of daily life in story and song. It is a form of popular theater that is as old as the marketplace itself. From the ancient Greek and Roman farces to the Renaissance commedia dell’arte to modern Chinese Opera, using archetypes comically to illustrate people’s issues is a time-honored worldwide tradition. Our broadly drawn characters are instantly recognizable allowing the audience to immediately engage in the action. Our work is political satire and anything but silent.”
