The San Francisco Mime Troupe Looks at Globalization

As a Bay Area transplant, one of the things I miss most this time of year is sitting on a summer afternoon on the slopes of Dolores Park in San Francisco and seeing the San Francisco Mime Troupe perform its annual show. Through the comings and goings of a Summer of Love, yuppiedom, a dot.com boom and bust, the Mime Troupe and its full-throttled satire has endured.

I won’t be able to see this year’s show, Doing Good, but I was lucky enough to be invited in a few months ago to consult with the writers and actors about the topic it covers – economic globalization and the many different forces at hand. The Troupe calls its new work, “A Fable Based on Fact”, one inspired by the book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins. When we talked about the show last April, as the writing was still under way, I told the Troupe that I had come to the conclusion that some of the worst sins committed by institutions like the World Bank and IMF are actually the product of people who think they are doing good things, but are so convinced of their position that they stop seeing obvious failures – like Bolivia’s debacles with water privatization.

If you live in the Bay Area or will be visiting there in the next couple of months, check out the schedule on the Mime Troupe Web site. If you can, go see the show.

Here’s the link to the Troupe’s Web site. Here’s a link to an article published in this month’s Common Ground about the show, which kindly includes a note about The Democracy Center at the end.