Velina Brown (SFMT Collective, actor) Velina has been a principal actor for the Mime Troupe in such shows as Social Work, Knocked Up, Escape to Cyberia, Gotta Getta Life, Coast City Confidential, Soul Suckers from Outer Space, Killing Time, Damaged Care, City for Sale, Eating It, 1600 Transylvania Avenue,Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan, Showdown at Crawford Gulch, she was Veronique of the Mounties, and was both an actor and Contributing Lyricist on GodFellas and Making a Killing. She has appeared onstage at A.C.T., Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, Word for Word, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, Pacific Jewish Theater, Thick Description and Theatreworks, as well as film, TV, and commercials.

Noah James Butler (Actor) is tickled from the top of his head to bottom of his unmentionables to be working with the Troupe again. He was last seen as James in the Troupes production of Doing Good. Since then he has appeared on TheatreFirst's stage in several productions and in the Berkeley Rep's world premiere of Virginia Woolfe's To The Lighthouse. As always huge chunks of love and stuff to his wife Colleen, Brutus the precious pit-bull, and his baby daughter, and now manager of his career, Rosalind Edith O'Brien. Excelsior!

Christian Cagigal (Writer) first acted with the SFMT in Veronique of the Mounties: Operation Frozen Fredom. Christian is a founding member of Precarious Theatre as well as being a graduate from SFSU: Theatre Arts. Christian is also a champion magician, winning awards for both his stage and close-up work as well as winning Best of the SF Fringe 2004 for his show: Magic @ The Fringe. He has also 'magic consulted' for various local theater productions including A.C.T.'s Master and Margarita. Look out for Christian's critically acclaimed magic show, "The Pandora Experiment" at The EXIT Theatre, SF, Ca.

Ellen Callas (SFMT Collective, writer) in 1976 co-founded Hit and Run Theater, a political sketch comedy troupe that toured rural northern California for many years. Since joining the Mime Troupe in 1986, she has worked as a writer, production and company manager, actor, director, stage manager, and is a teacher for the company's ongoing Youth Theater Project. Ellen also continues her twenty-five year career as an improvisational theater performer.

Lizzie Calogero (Actor) was born in Tehran and grew up among the brussels sprout fields of Bedfordshire, England, before moving to God's country in 1993. She has played short, feisty people of all genders and ages in theatres all over the Bay Area, including (more recently) SF Playhouse, San Jose Rep, Center REP in Walnut Creek, and TheatreFIRST.

Conrad Cimarra (Scenic Designer and Artist) is an actor, screenwriter, director, and also has produced several short films. Among them, featuring his original music, the animated Never Like This, screened at the Davis Film Festival in Davis, CA. Conrad has appeared in several television commercials and can be seen in 5 Card Productions' The Debut, directed by Gene Cajayon. He recently appeared as Rudy in The Black Eyed Peas' music video "Bebot: Generation One". Conrad's deep artistic roots stem from the theatre. He is a collective emeritus of the Tony Award-winning political theatre The San Francisco Mime Troupe in which he served as set designer, painter, actor, writer, director, and teacher. In Los Angeles, he acted with critically acclaimed th eatre companies including The Greenway Court Theatre, Circle X Theatre, and wowed audiences when he redefined Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, in which he garnered critical praises from The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Weekly, and Backstage West. He also brought up the issues of diversity and racism in Aspects (written by Colin Cox) - a nine-character, one-person play that toured for several years across America.

Kat Covell (Props Master) is a prop builder and filmmaker from Louisville KY. This past spring she designed props for the SFMT Youth Theater Project and worked in the set deco department of "Milk", a biopic about Harvey Milk starring Sean Penn and directed by Gus Van Sant. Most recently she production designed "The Butler's in Love," a 3D film directed by David Arquette. Covell wrote and co-produced "Waiting to Inhale," an award-winning documentary on medical marijuana and is co-producing "Up From Slavery: The Triumph and Tragedy of Booker T. Washington" for public television. Other film and TV credits include The Darwin Awards, Dead & Breakfast, Megastructures: The Berlin Wall, The Pursuit of Happyness and Bee Season. When she is not writing, making stuff or moving furniture she plays drums in the power ballad quartet Cheetahs on the Moon.

Robert Ernst (actor) is a co-founder of both The Blake St. Hawkeyes and the Iowa Theatre Lab (definitely inspired by Jerzy Grotowski and no, we didn't work with him). He has written 10 solo shows, two plays, four pocket operas (some award winning, some not). The latest was last year- Catherine's Care; a musical about aging, confinement and death. He has also worked improvisionationally with Ruth Zaporah every year for 30 years. On Decemeber 13, 1987, he performed non-stop, according to Guinness Book of World Records rules, for 24 hours and one minute, besting the existing record for longest play. He understudied for Nick Nolte in Sam Shepard's play, The Late Henry Moss, in December of 2000.

Joel Fadness (Band) is hailing from the annual cycle of humid then frozen corn fields of southern Minnesota. Fadness has lived and worked as a musician in Duluth MN, Portland OR, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Albuquerque & Santa Fe New Mexico. He graduated from PSU in 1998 with a B.S. in Environmental Science and has since managed to remain engaged and inspired by playing music in collaborative and solo projects.

Lisa Hori-Garcia (SFMT Collective, actor, assistant director) joined the Mime Troupe in summer 2004 for the production Showdown at Crawford Gulch and was selected for collective membership later that year. She received her BA from Smith College and upon graduation started her first professional theater job with New WORLD Theater in Amherst, Massachusetts. Since moving to San Francisco, Lisa has performed with Asian American Theater Company, the Magic Theater, Woman's Will, Impact Theater and Word for Word, to name a few. Lisa is also a teacher/director with the Mime Troupe's Youth Theater Project.

Will McCandless (Colective, Sound Engineer/Designer) is the most recent addition to the San Francisco Mime Troupe artistic collective. Will began with the Troupe in 2006 as the sound engineer for the California tour of Godfellas. Since then, Will has been the Troupe's sound engineer as well as the sound designer for the SFMT Youth Theatre Project. During the off-season, Will designs sound for several Bay Area Theatres. Will has designed sound for the Magic Theatre, Center REP, Marin Theatre Company, Solano College Theatre, A.C.T. Conservatory, Alter Theater, Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, and Custom Made Theatre Company. Will is a recipient of the 2008 Landisman Fellowship. The Landisman Fellowship supports emerging theatre designers and technicians and is a program of Theatre Bay Area.Kevin McHugh (Band) is a pianist and composer who has lived in cities including Seattle, Berlin, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, São Paulo, Mumbai and Cairo, performing as a leader or sideman in many prominent venues, and has toured over 100 cities in the United States and 20 countries. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Oberlin College and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and winner of a DAAD and VDAC scholarship for study in Berlin, Germany. Recently he won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a $25,000 grant to research the sound and music of megacities. Besides working on solo electronic music, old blues, free improv, noise, tap dance and ballet accompaniment, and musical improv comedy, Kevin is also the keyboardist for the experimental band Capillary Action. He recently became the pianist for the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Big City Improv.

Adrian Cervantes Mejia (Actor) is thrilled to be joining the Mime Troupe for the first time this summer. Originally from the smoggy Southern California City of Riverside, and having spent the past seven years living intermittently in Humboldt County, he is happy to now call San Francisco his home. He earned his BA from HSU and his MFA from The Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre. Having toured up and down the West coast with The Dell'Arte Players Company as a guest artist and ensemble member, traversed the jungles of Chiapas Mexico with Clowns Without Borders, and performed in street festivals of Northern Europe with Teatro Pachuco, Adrian is happy to have work close to home.

Elisabeth Millican (Writer) is a co-founder/director of Rococo Risqué and the founding artistic director of Featherlead Productions. Elisabeth served as the lead director on Rococo Risqué's five original full-length productions, including Liberties Taken, and last November she directed and produced Featherlead's world premiere production of Lalé Shafaghi's The Breeze At Dawn. She is currently co-writing and developing a new play called Boop! and working with poet/performance artist Phillip T. Nails on a travelogue titled "Gwa-Ru".

Pat Moran (SFMT Collective, Composer, Lyricist) joined the Mime Troupe collective in January 2007. He worked as a musician and composer for the shows Godfellas and Doing Good. Pat can be currently seen performing with Les Croque-Notes (an acoustic quintet specializing in the music of Georges Brassens) and Lord Loves a Workingman (nine piece 1960s style southern soul).

Keiko Shimosato (SFMT Collective, Costume Designer) joined the Mime Troupe in 1987. Keiko holds a BFA in Theater Arts, MA in Multi-Media from Univ. of Iowa. She came to California with the horse-drawn Caravan Stage Company of Canada. Since 1987, has performed in, designed for, written or directed all but one of the summer shows.

Michael Gene Sullivan (SFMT Collective, Director, Head Writer) joined the Troupe in 1988 as a replacement actor. Began writing for the Troupe in 1992 (Social Work), directed his first SFMT show in 1995 (Coast City Confidential), and became headwriter for the Troupe in 2000. In the last twenty years Michael has performed in, written, and/or directed over twenty Mime Troupe productions, including Offshore (actor/writer), 1600 Transylvania Avenue (writer/director), Mr. Smith Goes To Obscuristan (actor, co-writer, co-director), Showdown at Crawford Gulch (actor/writer), GodFellas (actor/writer), and most recently Making a Killing (actor, writer, co-director)
Other work includes performances with American Conservatory Theater, Denver Center Theatre Company, the Magic, Eureka, and Lorraine Hansberry Theaters, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Theatreworks, and the Berkeley and San Jose Repertory Theaters. Michael is the author of the award winning one person show, Did Anyone Ever Tell You - You Look Like Huey P. Newton?, which he performed in New York, Vancouver, and San Francisco, and is the author of 1984, the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of George Orwell's dystopic novel. The play, directed by Tim Robbins, opened at the Actor's Gang Theatre in Los Angeles, has been performed in Europe and Asia, and has had several American tours.

Michael Carreiro (SFMT Collective, Technical Supervisor) first came to the Mime Troupe in 1998 as a participant in summer workshops for actors. He continued his studies in Commedia and improvisation in Los Angeles, returning to the Mime Troupe in 1999 as technical director for City for Sale. He has performed with the Mime Troupe in City for Sale, Eating It, The Independent Female or A Man Has His Pride, 1600 Transylvania Avenue, and Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan. Michael constructed the sets for all three shows and recently designed the traveling set used during the Berlin tour for 1600 Transylvania Avenue. Michael enjoys acting with other alternative companies including Black Artist Contemporary Cultural Experience and Theater Rhinoceros.

Liza M Frolkis (Production Manager) is a native Clevelander who relocated to San Francisco in 2007. In her short time with the Mime Troupe she has worn many hats including: YTP Educator, Props Designer, Summer Performance Workshop Participant, and Fedora. Other Bay Area theater credits include work with the Magic Theatre and Featherlead Productions. In addition to her work in the wonderful world of stage, Liza is an active freelance artist and designer.

Matt Lowe (Technical Director) is proud to have just today received his first key ring dog clip from Karen, now subtly displayed just to his right, your left, of his belt buckle, unless you're standing behind him. He is now much more convincing in the role of the Master Carpenter for this summer. Since first moving into his cubby as an intern for 2005's Doing Good, he has been the technical intern, workshopper, tour crew, YTP Teaching Assistant, writing intern, and carpenter. He does carpentry and other tech work around town. He is also an actor - come see him in Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde in June and the yet-untitled ensemble piece in development with mugwumpin and Golden Thread. Also he's a cofounder of the MyFarm urban permaculture CSA, which you should ask him about.

Karen Runk (Stage Manager) moved to SF with the intention of only staying for a few months. Eleven years later she's still here! This is largely due to the talented folks at the Troupe. Doing the math you'll discover she first experienced the Troupe by stage managing two '97 youth projects, Revenger Rat Meets the Merchant of Death and Inside Out. After which she ran screaming into the arms of the Magic Theatre and there she stayed, contently for two years. The Troupe then wooed her back for their '99 Summer Production City For Sale. Still under the Troupe's spell she's stage managed a plethora of their summer shows and has only managed to escape, successfully, one full summer back in '02 when she worked with SFShakes.

SFMT STAFF

Rollin Feld (General Manger) is the Troupe's new General Manager. Raised in the Chicago-land area, Rollin brings not only his business acumen, but also his artistic talent to the Troupe. As an artist, Rollin studied sculpting at The Chicago art Institute before moving to the Bay Area, and continuing his studies at The California College of Arts and Crafts, and later the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduation from the Institute he began a design firm, specializing in uniquely sculpted furniture. Living for a time in South East Asia, Rollin's, designs were featured in major showrooms throughout the U.S. While his entrepreneurial spirit led him to start other companies, he also began work in the nonprofit world, where he was program director for the theatre and arts department at a school for disadvantaged youths.Merging his business and artistic talents, for 15 years Rollin was Director of Operations for Skywalker Sound, working as a creator, support for film, and as a coordinator of events. Concurrently, he was working as an independent producer and creative director for a wide range of events and venues. After leaving Skywalker Rollin followed his passion for youth and community development, becoming Operations Director for Youth Media International.

Jerome Moskowitz (Development Director) lives in Palm Springs, so you won't often see him. He writes our grants and manages our individual fundraising.