Hey. everyone!
It's almost Michael's birthday, and for his birthday this year, he's doing a Facebook fundraiser for the always revolutionary, never silent Tony award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe.
"I started watching SFMT when my father brought me to a show while I was a teen. I was not a theatre kid - I’d seen a handful of plays - but what I saw that afternoon in Golden Gate Park changed everything for me. It was musical, it was comedy, it was history, it was activism, it was a thumb in the eye of corporatism, militarism, anti-intellectualism, fascism, racism, sexism...it was The Revolution on stage, and it was everything I wanted to be.
For those who don’t know: The San Francisco Mime Troupe does not perform silently. SFMT is a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, gender-balanced, collectively-run activist theatre company whose mission is to create and produce socially relevant theatre of the highest professional quality and perform it for the broadest possible audience. To that particular end, the majority of the performances are at a price everyone can afford - FREE. You also don’t see a big list of all the fat cat capitalists plastered on every program because the Troupe does not take corporate sponsorships. A theater won’t be allowed to fight for the Working Class if the Corporations holds its purse strings.
But that means the Troupe relies on donations more than any other theatre.
The Troupe is also dedicated to paying its own workers. Many people don’t know that not only is SFMT an Actors Equity theatre, but that it pays union and non-union actors, musicians, and everyone on salary the same weekly pay the general manager receives. But that kind of commitment to equality comes at a steep cost.
SFMT also provides both in-school and after school theatre education programming for high school-aged youth, and hopefully inspiring other generations of kids to be activist artists the way they inspired me.
So anyway - if you can spare it - please donate to The San Francisco Mime Troupe. Keep activist revolutionary theatre free in the parks, help inspire the next generation of activist artists, and support the Mime Troupe it’s mission of bringing The Resistance to whatever communities need it."
Click here to see Michael's Facebook fundraiser. If you've already given, thanks!
Click here if you want to donate, but don't have Facebook.
