This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof.
At least with Thanksgiving, I can counter the celebration of genocide with intimate gatherings amongst chosen family (at least, I could before this not-over pandemic happened). As much as Christmas brings out my inner-Charlie Brown, I’ve always found enough charity and genuinely-good art to sincerely anticipate the season every year. As for Hallowe’en… well, Hallowe’en is perfect. It’s the one time of year the world’s outlook matches my own.
The Fourth of July, however, sucks. It captures everything wrong with this country’s pornographic obsession with its own mythology and iconography. My empathy lies less with those who spend the day sitting on the sidewalk for their star-spangl’d parade and more with those who exercise their Constitutional right (for now) to burn the flag. Freedom is destroying a false idol with fire.
The only Fourth of July tradition I look forward to is the one that brought me to Dolores Park for the second-Friday in a row: the annual SF Mime Troupe show. After the previous week’s Trans March, I wanted to once again be around grassroots artists and activists refusing to go quietly into the “good night.” I wanted to make my annual trip to the event where the national anthem is treated as a jingoistic joke rather than a source of pride. And seeing as how we at the Trans March made the mayor run off to cry into his denim pillow, I was happy to see that this year’s show would also make him an object of mockery in Dolores Park.
If that ain’t patriotism, I don’t know what is.
Disruption: A Musical Farce by SF Mime Troupe
As hit-and-miss as Mime Troupe shows can be, there’s a renewed energy to be found in this year’s show, it’s 66th, called Disruption: A Musical Farce (through August 3 at various Bay Area parks). Perhaps it’s because the show came dangerously close to not happening, or that what is happening does so with a reduced production budget and touring schedule. Maybe it’s just the fact that they have clearer targets this time. Budget goals or not, they didn’t know that they’d be opening the show the same day the “big, beautiful bill” would be signed. For the gathered crowd of Mime Troupe regulars, newbies, and rubber-neckers, a cultural balm was needed now more than ever.
Written, directed by, and co-starring Michael Gene Sullivan (who, despite eschewing traditional titles like “artistic director,” consistently serves as the Troupe’s driving creative voice), Disruption doesn’t depict an imaginary San Francisco so much as satirize the current one. The primary focus is Augie Dimalanta (Jed Parsario), a Philippine-born, Daly City-raised resident whom we first meet wearing an orange jumpsuit in an ICE detention center. In the five or so minutes that open the show, he has no idea what he’s doing in this Kafka-esque gulag, nor has he any idea of when he’ll get out.
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Augie flashes back to some time prior, when he happily practiced the “pay it forward” ethos of his parents, anti-Marcos activists in their homeland before immigrating to the States. He works at the Civic Center-adjacent diner owned by the thickly accented Chester (Sullivan), who’s adapted the diner to every kale-loving (or -hating) trend his rich techie customers have asked for. Chester’s a stickler for not making waves and insisting on no political talk in the café. That’s a bit of a problem with when Augie’s friend Orwell (Lizzie Calogero) pops in. Y’see, Orwell has a habit of vandalizing cop cars and ICE vehicles—something Augie discourages, even though he empathizes. Still, it makes Orwell a wanted person.
Another café regular is City Hall mover-and-shaker Ms. Macintosh (the chameleonic Alicia MP Nelson), who stops in for her regular caffeine fix as she pitches our illustrious mayor (Parsario) such corporate-friendly ideas as selling the naming rights of local landmarks (“Golden Arches Gate Park”, the “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Fire Department”). Both she and the chatty AI on her watch (Guinevere Q) are all too eager to appease the annoying orange in the White House. Their latest goal is to orchestrate a public show of force to, they hope, finally rid our fair city of activists like Orwell. Naturally, Augie and Chester try to stay neutral, but that’s not really an option when your neighbors are vanishing into the backs of vans.
This isn’t the first Mime Troupe show to use the line “There’s no such thing as ‘not political,’” and it holds the same relevance now as it did then. One of the show’s most recurrent themes is how attempting to stay neutral just makes you compliant. One can’t fall back on a “Can’t we all just get along?” delusion when the so-called leader of the free world holds a military parade on his birthday. Remaining silent about that (or the genocide in Gaza) is you saying you’re OK with it.
The Mime Troupe aren’t OK with it. Disruption benefits from a laser-like focus on the narrative rather than the usual tangents into history. Granted, those tangents are always informative, but some of them tend to bring the story proper to a screeching halt. Recalling the opening day performance of this show, I’m at odds to recall a single digression that wasn’t simply a character flashback. Those flashbacks reveal the characters’ historical underpinnings (Augie’s anti-Marcos parents, a corrections officer’s anti-Clinton resentment, Macintosh’s white privileged upbringing in Hillsborough) by seamlessly integrating them into the narrative instead of distracting from it.
The focus stays on the nightmarish version of San Francisco and the equally disturbing country surrounding it. When Macintosh and the Mayor wonder where they’ll magically get the money to respond to a spate of fires around the city, it’s hard to regard their exaggerated conversation as fictional when it rings uncomfortably true.
All of this played well to the assembled Fourth of July crowd in Dolores, several of whom were sporting small, inverted US flags. Both the newbies and the SFMT regulars were hanging on through the occasional wind gust (which knocked down a table at the Green Party booth) and during a short technical SNAFU that saw the audio cut out. They were there to laugh at the graffiti Orwell sprayed on an ICE van, to jeer at the gold dome placed atop City Hall (and the statue with it), and sit in silence as Augie is given the third degree by a faceless voice off-stage. More than ever, the annual SFMT show tapped into an anxiety the assembled crowd needed to excise, or at least acknowledge.
Last year’s show imagined the worst of what could happen after the election. This year’s show is about coping with the result, then acting to push back.
As with every other element of the 2025 production, Sullivan’s post-show speech came off more pointed than usual. He peppered it with irreverent remarks to get some chuckles, but he didn’t shy away from abridged nature of this year’s tour, nor the dire landscape caused by never-ending cuts to vital services. Yet, the Troupe still hope to remount their well-received Christmas show, A Red Carol, which premiered last year. There are several months and countless factors to consider between now and December, making such a remount nothing short of a miracle.
That’s why Disruption has such a palpable energy coursing through it. In addition to the entertaining performances and relatable story, Sullivan and his ensemble treat the show as if it were the last show they’ll ever do. Hopefully, that won’t be the case. Last show or not, it’s one that’s not at all easy to forget.
SF MIME TROUPE’S DISRUPTION: A MUSICAL FARCE runs through August 3rd at various Bay Area parks. Further info here.
