Friday, August 6, 9:00am-12:00pm
10 minimum, 30 maximum -- $35

This workshop will provide hands-on experience with the SF Mime Troupe's trademark style of collaborate "commedia-meets-agitprop" theatre, which can then be implemented within your own theatre education programs. SFMT company members will guide participants through the basic physical training required to play in the larger-than-life style, including a series of games designed to mold participants into an ensemble. This leads to a survey of contemporary archetypes of commedia dell-arte characters, and improvisation exercises designed to elicit dynamic, “whole-body” character development. We will then touch on using these skills to investigate political and social ideas, and turn this entire crazy stew into theatre. The workshop concludes with video highlights from SFMT’s Youth Theatre Project, which engages teens in this same process over an 8-week program that culminates in the creation and performance of their own original, socially-focused plays.

Founded in 1959, the SF Mime Troupe - which does NOT perform silently - is a cantankorous elder statesman of U.S. theatre.  Based in the traditions of commedia, melodrama, and broad farce, the SFMT creates FREE musical comedies that both satirize and make sense of the headlines. In their quest to "produce socially relevant theatre and perform it before the broadest possible audience," the Troupe has been jailed, banned, censured . .  and picked up a Tony and a few Obies along the way.