San Francisco Mime Troupe: "Doing Good"

Today we headed over to a free performance the San Francisco Mime Troupe was giving in a Palo Alto park. The Mime Troupe is a theater collective that has been staging radical leftist plays since Hippie days.

Today's show, "Doing Good", tells the story, over several decades, of an American couple who set out to help poor people in several troubled countries. The husband, who starts out simply trying to avoid the draft, eventually becomes an operative of the World Bank and, unwittingly, of the CIA, while the wife hangs on to her ideals. Along the way, the Troupe gives a recount of American meddling in Ecudor, Indonesia, Panama, and Iran.

I'm not going to give a comprehensive review here. Just a few random thoughts and impressions:

• I approached the play with a bit of dread. It's not that I'm not sympathetic to a lot of the Troupe's political concerns. But earnest political diatribes ain't necessarily all that entertaining. To the Troupe's credit the acting and singing were top-notch, and the play did have some nuance. On the other hand, it did go on a bit long. I found myself wistfully recalling the movie, "The Quiet American". This movie makes essentially the same point as "Doing Good", but much more powerfully, with a complex mix of romance, world weariness, ambiguity, and avoidance of belaborment. Of course, I'm comparing a multi-million dollar film to a play staged in a park, but it wasn't just the budget that accounts for the difference in quality.


• Still it was cool just to watch a counterculture play in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. You just gotta love living in the Bay Area with all its diversity and unique culture!


• The performance reminded me that one of the qualities I find disagreeable in extremists of every stripe from conservative to liberal to libertarian: being long on criticism, but short on any positive vision. So much political thought in this country seems to follow the fallacious line of reasoning, "The other side is wrong, therefore I must be right!"


• There was a scene within a scene where an Uncle Sam-like demon, representing American imperialism, is slayed by a group of Indonesian street mimes. I got it intellectually, but it still made me feel uncomfortable and sad. I'm four square against American imperialism, but I also love America: our free, vibrant culture and our ideals. For making me feeling uncomfortable, I have to give the Troupe credit -- the scene had dramatic power. The most dramatic moment in the entire play. But it disturbed me that many in the audience applauded so joyfully at the scene. And played right into the hands of conservatives who try to paint all liberals as "hating America".


• The behind-the-scenes root of all evil in the play is the World Bank, manipulating third-world countries into taking on levels of debt impossible to repay. I have to admit I don't know enough about the World Bank to assess how accurate their charges are. I'll have to learn more. Their accusation that America forces debt on third-world countries made me think about American's own national debt, dwarfing the debts enumerated in the play -- who is forcing debt on Americans? Americans, I suppose.