City of Santa Cruz: Keep SF Mime Troupe at San Lorenzo Park!

Photo by Bradley Allen.

Thanks to Bradley Allen of Indybay for documenting this performance!

Photos are from:

Trash Orchestra Parades to Mime Troupe's Making a Killing
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/01/18450902.php

Photo from August 15, 2015. The San Francisco Mime Troupe in San Lorenzo Park. #BlackLivesMatter

2015: Freedomland

Written by Michael Gene Sullivan
Music & Lyrics by Ira Marlowe
Directed by Andrea Snow with the SF Mime Troupe

Freedomland features Mime Troupe Collective Members Hugo E Carbajal, Lisa Hori-Garcia, and Michael Gene Sullivan plus new trouper George P. Scott

And band members Ray Fernandez, Aaron Kierbel and Daniel Savio

A door is blown off its hinges! Into a blasted room of scarred walls and shattered windows, armed with M-16's, America's bravest duck and dodge for cover, finally training their deadly gunsights on... an old black man watching TV on his couch? This isn't Baghdad or Kandahar - its home, and for ex-Black Panther Malcolm Haywood it's just another wrong door police raid in the War on Drugs. So of course Malcolm is horrified when the grandson he's tried to protect, Nathaniel, returns from serving in Afghanistan only to find another war zone at home - and one where young Black men like Nathaniel are in the crosshairs! Meanwhile the Mayor and the Police Chief - one desperate for votes, the other desperate to fund his militarized police force - ramp up the fear (and their shiny new tank) to fight the newest, drug threat to America... worse than weed, meth, coke, crack, or crank, it's... SNORF!! And, of course, the SNORF trade is centered in the.. darkest... part of town...

Are the police out of control? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Is Malcolm's neighbor Lluis (an undocumented immigrant,) actually a SNORF-lord? And can Malcolm convince his grandson that it is safer to re-up and fight overseas than to try to survive here at home, in Freedomland?

The show in 2011 was titled: "2012 - The Musical!"

http://www.sfmt.org/company/archives/2012themusical/2011.php

August 28, 2011

A member of the SF Mime Troupe collective left the following message on the social media account of a local volunteer:

Hi everyone! I am a Collective member with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and I'm also the Tour Manager for our summer season. We appreciate all the comments and concerns that you have expressed regarding having our shows remain at San Lorenzo Park.

As the tour manager, I am the person directly responsible for applying for and securing our special event permits, sound permits etc. G-rant mentioned in a comment above that it is the city's Building Dept that is the root of the problem, and that is correct. The Parks and Rec department and their representatives have always been incredibly supportive when I've worked with them. To clarify, the Mime Troupe WAS NOT DENIED a permit this year to perform at San Lorenzo Park. This part of Karen's letter is incorrect. We were not denied, we elected not to apply for reasons I will outline below...

To maintain transparency, this is the part of the permit process where we get tripped up due to requirements from the Building Dept:
1- We must provide plans of our stage that have been approved by a certified engineer
2- We submit the plans and if those are approved we then fill out other application materials
3- Once "approved" we then must pick up the permit in person, Being that we're based in SF and have many other parks to deal with, I am unable to just drop everything in the office and head down to Santa Cruz. Last year I had to send a local proxy to do the pick up. (AFTER I was made to write a letter on official letterhead AND filling out a form saying we were okay with having a proxy do the pick up.)
4- At this point we have now paid for and picked up an officially stamped permit, but there's more.
5- On the day of our event, we are subject to an inspection of our stage wherein the inspection can make or break our ability to continue our performance. (Last year we were ALMOST shut down during the inspection for not having the proper railings for our stage.)

We are required to do these steps because our stage is more than 18 inches off the ground. Now I will say, this is the ONLY city that we have worked with that requires us to fulfill any kind of extra permitting from the city's Building Dept. The SC Building Dept sent me the attachment that I have included here. They underlined why we are required to have a permit in red.

All-in-all, we understand that the City of Santa Cruz is concerned about safety. We are too! But some of the things required in order for our stage to pass the permitting process and inspection is to have railings and other structural pieces added to our stage in places that would either hinder the audience's view or just would hinder the overall design of our set. The other big concern is that say we did go through all of the bureaucratic steps leading up to our event, but if our approval hinges on the final inspection that has to happen in the park ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT because we cannot feasibly bring our entire set down to Santa Cruz, set it up and have an inspection done PRIOR to the event. We just couldn't take that gamble of going through this process again as we did last year knowing that we could get denied on the day of. That is why we chose to look for other options this year and that is why we settled to have our performances be at UCSC versus at the park again.

We share your concerns of getting the word out to our audience down there and also that UCSC is not as accessible to the public as San Lorenzo Park. I know this isn't ideal, but I heard that there are buses that go up to Porter College so I hope people are able to make use of those as well as carpooling with fellow audience members. If you have any other ideas for helping spread the word and/or ideas for transportation, please feel free to email me: junelle [at] sfmt.org

In solidarity,
Junelle