Monday, September 06, 2010

End of summer with the Mime Troupe

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We marked the "end of summer" yesterday as we often do by taking in the San Francisco Mime Troupe show in Dolores Park. POSIBILIDAD or Death of the Worker is good anarcho-communist agitprop and the audience clapped as enthusiasticly at the idea of overthrowing the capitalist system as I've heard us do in a long while.

A small U.S. factory is shutting down. All of the workers are losing their jobs, and to add insult to injury, they have also lost their last two weeks of pay and retirement funds, which were raided over the years to pay stock dividends. On the final day of work, a pregnant employee, suddenly overtaken with labor pains, sits down on the job. Interpreting this as an act of defiance, The Boss calls security. The situation escalates and before anyone has a chance to think, the Workers have accidentally occupied the Factory!


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Some past Mime Troupe shows have seemed faster paced and wittier to me, but this one is certainly enjoyable. And timely.

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The audience enjoyed the sun and each other.

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This eager little fellow following his nose as far as the leash allowed seemed delighted to be out in the bright, lazy day.

2 comments:

hleighh said...

Hi Jan! M and I saw this show with friends in Palo Alto. I enjoyed it and found it very thought-provoking. I really liked how it connected the situations across the great (imaginary) divide between the US and Latin America. But I also left feeling demoralized. The vision of a pan-American network of workers' collectives, no bankers, no owner/padron class, was beautiful but seemed so "pie in the sky" that I couldn't even be inspired by it. Where to begin?

janinsanfran said...

We begin where we are? Maybe? :-)