The San Francisco Mime Troupe is in trouble and is calling upon the community to pitch in and help so they can move forward with their 2025 season. Due to a variety of factors, beginning with the COVID shutdowns of a few years back, the troupe has seen their funding sources dry up.
They are currently running a fundraising campaign, which they have dubbed “The Cost of Free.” They hope to raise $236,000. Unless that amount is raised there’s a very real possibility that the Mime Troupe won’t perform this year. It would be the first time in the troupe’s 66 years that they’d be forced to cancel.
The San Francisco Mime Troupe has always offered their shows to the public for free, a practice they hope to continue. But their expenses are substantial. As they usually perform in parks, they must pay park staff and park permit fees. These fees alone come out to $10,583. Salaries for actors, musicians and tech people can be as much as a whopping $114,970. Even the porta potties, which they provide at each performance, cost $2,340. There are a lot of other expenses.
In an interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Andre Amarotico, an actor with the troupe who also serves as its board president, spoke about, among other things, what happened to their funding sources.
David-Elijah Nahmod: Please tell me what the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s mission statement is?
Andre Amaratico: The mission of the San Francisco Mime Troupe is to create and produce theater that presents a working-class analysis of the events that shape our society, that exposes social and economic injustice, that demands revolutionary change on behalf of working people, and to present this analysis before the broadest possible audience with artistry and humor.
The collective of the San Francisco Mime Troupe exists not only to create this activist art, but also to embody our ideals of combating the fragmentation of the working class. We are a democratically run, multi-ethnic, multi-generational gender-balanced theater of social justice that by its very existence sustains a vision of community governance of, by, and for the people.
What’s going on in the United States right now is pretty grim. How do you find humor in such situations?
Humor has a special power when it comes to the ugly truths of humanity that pervade historically, and in our current moment. If you can laugh at something, you can strip it of some of its power over you. As Mel Brooks said of his many humorous jabs at Hitler, he wanted to get even by “taking the Mickey out of him.”
That is to say, to mock or tease until the bully is reduced to something ridiculous. I’ve played a lot of villains at the Troupe over the years. I enjoy it. Not because I’m a bad person, but because I think it makes them naked. There is of course a nuanced balance. One must maintain an awareness of how dangerous the maniacal, power-hungry brutes of our day are.
Simultaneously, if you can’t make fun of them, if you can’t have a joke at their expense, they have absolutely won. Humor is a cornerstone of free speech.
What caused the troupe to find itself in such a dire financial situation?
The short answer is that we don’t have as much money coming in as we did in the past, and our costs are rising. Making theater is just more expensive in 2025, partially due to increased payroll costs to make sure artists make a living wage that keeps up with inflation.
Material expenses have also risen with inflation. Grants we have depended on in part years have not come in. Perhaps most notably, the National Endowment for the Arts, once a significant source for funds, has become completely out of reach as a resource. The current administration has changed the landscape for so much of our civil life.
Perhaps most impactful for us, is the change in guidelines on the allocation of NEA funding. Grant requirements now discount applicants that affirm diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as anything the administration deems to be a promotion of “gender ideology.” The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a theater company committed to social, racial, environmental, economic and gender justice. We are exactly the people the administration wishes to defund.
What are some of the things you’ve done to fundraise?
We’ve certainly gotten more aggressive in our appeals. Our fundraising campaign, “The Cost of Free,” has been a confluence of emails, snail mail, social media, and phone calls. I have personally written 200 of our most reliable donors asking if they can chip in more this year.
Last week, the collective had a phone bank at our studio in the Mission, and there will be another one in the coming days. Our grant-writing team has been working hard to find other funding sources. But we remain true to our pledge of no corporate sponsorship. You will never see the Mime Troupe beholden to anyone but the working class. At the end of the day, we are relying on what we have always relied on, people power.
Can you say something about the importance of the Mime Troupe to continue its work, given the current political climate?
The importance of the Mime Troupe’s work at this moment cannot be overstated. This is the fight of a generation. Democracy dies in complacency. The Troupe will never be complacent. We will continue to be always radical and never silent.
You can count on us to be your voice, the voice of the working class. Those in power have done a painfully visible amount of harm to the most vulnerable among us. The vulnerable need an advocate. We are the loud and vocal artistic wing of advocacy for the disadvantaged. Who’s with us?
To make a donation, please send checks payable to the San Francisco Mime Troupe at 855 Treat Ave., San Francisco CA, 94110, or visit: https://www.sfmt.org/
