Politics in the Park

For decades, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has been offering brainy commentary on the state of the nation, sans the snark that often passes itself off as political theater. And no, the players don't deliver their lines in monochromatic muteness — when watching a Mime Troupe show, expect everything from Greco-Roman farce, Renaissance commedia dell'arte, and activist-inspired Theatre of the Oppressed. This season, the troupe brings us an election satire, Red State, which follows on the heels of last year's antiwar piece, Making a Killing. Head writer Michael Gene Sullivan joins forces with composer and lyricist Pat Moran, creating a simple yet hard-hitting story revealing how the rhetoric of hope is undercut by a rotten system. The play pivots around a little town in Middle America (Bluebird, Kansas, to be exact) where change is afoot. In Bluebird, fairy tales about the American dream have been replaced by failed union efforts, survival tactics, and poverty. Things take an interesting turn when a voting glitch enables the downtrodden district to be the one that casts the deciding vote in the presidential election, causing its citizens to ask substantive questions about the shit that needs to get done. Expect scathing slices of realpolitik tempered with thigh-slapping humor.
July 4-6, 2 p.m., 2008